Redstate

Posted at 2:02pm on Jun. 10, 2008 "YEAAARRRRGH!": Obama's 50 State Strategy is a joke.

Is Barry really as clueless as Howard Dean?

By Mark Kilmer

We've heard a lot of blather about how the changing electoral dynamic favors Obama playing ball in the once-upon-a-time GOP strongholds: Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, etc. It's the rebirth, the redemption of Howard Dean's old 50 State Strategy.

I like the notion of Barry throwing money at Mississippi and Colorado in earnest hopes of winning their electors and thus the Presidency, and thus his face on the $7-bill. But it's not going to happen.

Charlie Cook says to our Dem buddies, dream on. Although he believes that Colorado and Nevada are possible take for Barry, he calls the indiscriminate grab for 50, "cliché":

[P]residential campaigns are pass-fail, and pass is defined as winning 270 electoral college votes. Ask former Vice President Al Gore about moral presidential victories.

With 270 electoral votes the definition of success, "50-states" isn't a strategy, it's a cliché.

Sure, a candidate might give some modicum of attention to all 50 states; the appearances are important. But if that candidate spends significant resources in the 20-25 states that are a lock for him or his opponent, he will look pretty foolish when his top priority states run shy on money down the final stretch.

Gore's "moral Presidential victory" was that he could not even win with hypothetical votes (chads, dimples, impressions) being counted by partisan Democrats in Florida. He lost. But we're digressing.

Stu Rothenberg does not even put much credence in the "Obamamania puts States in play" argument.

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