Can Obama lose Appalachia and win the Presidency?

It's a question that's been on my mind for over a month.  Can Obama just cede all of Appalachia and still pull off a victory?  He ran so weak there in the primaries, as Jay Cost has documented with the first map above.  Appalachia was an ocean of blue--blue for Hillary Clinton.  

What if Obama loses all of Appalachia in the general election?  That is to say, every state with a portion of the region in it, within reason (i.e., excluding NY and Maryland).  This would include the swing states of Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania.  What if McCain wins all three of these, West Virginia, and the southern states he'll win anyway?

This scenario, based on the polling we have today, would give McCain 243 and Obama 219 electoral votes.  There would be 7 swing states left outstanding.  Obama could win 6 out of the 7 and still lose--if McCain won Florida.  So McCain would be pretty close to winning in this scenario; he'd only have to win Florida to clinch it.  Or he could lose Florida, but still win Indiana (Bush won in 04), Nevada (Bush won in 04), Colorado (Bush won in 04), and New Hampshire (Bush lost in 04 by a paltry 9,000 votes).  If McCain picked off Minnesota, where the race has tightened over the summer and is currently tied, and the Dems in the state might be dragged down by Al Franken's Senate candidacy, then he's in even better shape because he could then win with just Indiana and Colorado, or Indiana, New Hampshire, and Nevada.  

Hillary Clinton was a tougher candidate for electoral college reasons.  But so much can change.  I still think Obama could win in a blowout.  McCain cannot win in a blowout.  But I would not be surprised with Obama wining in a blowout.  He is a realigning candidate, which we might see in 2012 even more than now.  But now I'm getting way ahead of myself.  

The polls are meaningless (almost)

Polls at this point in time are absolutely worthless in terms of their predictive value. At this time last year, if you had believed the polling, Edwards or Hillary would have won Iowa. Or nationally, Rudy Giuliani would be the Republican nominee! See what I'm saying?

Intrade is no better, pace Michael Brendan Dougherty. Buying Obama and McCain futures this time last year would have netted you a small fortune (more so with McCain, but also with Obama).

CBS Horserace writes:

In those blue states being talked about by Republicans as possible targets, Obama is doing more than holding his own. In Pennsylvania, the RCP average has Obama up by 7 points. In Michigan, it’s a 7.2 point lead, 11.2 points In Wisconsin and 12 points in Minnesota. When it comes to those states Obama is looking to flip into the Democratic column, the race is much closer. McCain holds an average lead of just 0.7 points in Virginia and just 3.8 points in North Carolina. Obama meanwhile leads by 3.6 points in Colorado and holds a slight 0.5 lead in Indiana. And in Nevada, it’s a dead heat. Meanwhile, some of the more traditional swing states look to be tilting slightly towards the Democrat. Obama holds the lead in poll averages in places Republicans have won in recent cycle. He’s up 4.5 points in Ohio and 2.5 in Missouri. Obama is holding strong in Iowa, with an average 7.4 point lead. McCain clings to a 2.2 point average lead in must-have Florida and New Hampshire is a toss-up. In other words, Obama is looking much stronger in the states Democrats have relied on in the past two close elections while appearing to make real inroads in traditional Republican states and competing very well in big swing states like Ohio.

Stuart Rothenberg says the bellweather states will be Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, Nevada and Michigan. Obama has small leads in all of these, except in Michigan where he's up by 7+.

Obama is doing the right things right now; moving to the center during the summer when nobody's paying attention; grabbing all the headlines (for those who are) by going overseas. The trip is looking like it will be a masterstroke; Barack looks presidential, McCain is diminished by comparison.

Could Obama slip up and harm his candidacy? Of course, but that can happen with anything. He's dominating the airwaves so far and will continue to with his overseas venture. The more people just get used to the idea of Obama being their president, representing them to foreign leaders, etc., the better off he is.

He's got four months to do this, yet the drawn-out primary campaign helped immensely. Obama was not dropped on us from heaven; he had to earn it gradually over a grueling schedule of primary after primary. All these voters seeing his name on the ballot, hearing about him on the local news. And the campaigning sharpening his presidential campaigning skills. I will repeat until doomsday comes that a plethora of democracy only helps a party (and the US as a whole) and the people who only see the divisiveness have no imagination and miss the big picture entirely.

So to pose the question put by CBS Horserace (not excerpted) why isn't Obama up by more? I think the answer is that the heat has not yet been put on John McCain. McCain is benefiting from the surge's short-term success, and the fact that the economy dominates the headlines distracting people from Iraq. People are not thinking about the election. When they do the poll numbers will move around. No doubt McCain will have a lead at some point in time. But there is plenty of ways for Obama to go after McCain, and not a whole lot of ways for McCain to go after Obama, except alterization, the impact of which is/will be blunted by the fact that Obama has/has had time for people to get used to him. The media fawning all over him doesn't hurt, along with the fact that McCain has finally met his match in the media-darling category; now he's standing in the way of what the progressive media elites most desire, which is new for him.

Crist as veep if McCain needs Florida

Race 4 2008 has a good post up today pushing for Charlie Crist as McCain's running mate, on the thinking that it takes Florida out of play, limiting the possibilities for Obama to flip Republican states.

He writes: By taking Florida out of play, McCain limits possible red state defections to seven states: Missouri, Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. The geographical concentration of these states into two distinct regions would make multi-state campaigning easier on the part of a cash-strapped Team McCain, and would force Obama to make inroads into the very sorts of voters who are most suspicious of him in order to win. In this scenario, McCain could simply spend the entirely of the fall campaign jumping back and forth between Missouri, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, knowing that whoever wins the majority of those five states probably wins the election. And we all saw how far Obama’s millions went in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania during primary season.

The swing states can be seen at the bottom of this blog, with the margins from '04. If Obama wins Pennsylvania (and at this point seems like he probably will) and Michigan, he can win without Missouri, Virginia, and Ohio only by batting 75% in Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. That's difficult, but not impossible. As Chris Bowers has posted, Obama has had a lead in Iowa in every poll since January 2007, is ahead in every Colorado poll, currently leads by over 5 points in New Mexico, and is down over 2 points in Nevada.

So Obama is likely to win today. But oh how the polls can change!

Romney's retreat

I saw the news early yesterday morning on the Politico that Romney was ceding South Carolina and focusing on Nevada. I've been thinking about that decision since then.

My first reaction was that this was a great tactical move. He's playing the expectations game--he can't loose if he doesn't try. Nevada is much more friendly to his candidacy. Finishing fourth in SC would be a huge blow if he was campaigning hard. He can play it off as Nevada having 10 delegates more, so he looks like a business-type who's concerned about the hard results, not media fluff.

But this morning I'm wondering if this won't be looked back upon as the moment in which Romney lost the presidential race.

First of all, the "you can't lose if you don't try" means that I personally am in a great spot to win the presidency. Giuliani's trying it and it's failing. Of course it hasn't failed yet, and I could be proven wrong in my contention that it was a miserable strategic decision to skip all these early states. But you don't win the presidential nomination by shying away from the tough fights. That's what so appealed to me with Romney's kindling strategy. Don't ignore Iowa and NH but get in there, get your hands dirty, mow people's lawns for them if that's what they want, and earn every vote.

The playing with the expectations game would work better if Romney had said all along he wasn't going to contest SC. But of course that would make him look rather weak if he said earlier that he didn't think he could win the primary that's chosen the Republican nominee since 1980. It would work better if the other candidates would play along and try to contest Nevada. The expectations game is always a matter of media perceptions. The media have to play along, in other words. It began in 1988, when before the second presidential debate between Bush and Dukakis ABC News and the Washington Post released a 50-state poll announcing that Bush had an electoral college lock. Dukakis had to blow Bush away in the debate, or he was thought to be finished.

I don't know that the media's going to play along with Romney's show tune. The stories will be the Democrats in Nevada, and the Republicans in South Carolina. Oh yeah, Romney was in Nevada. What was he doing there? He knew he couldn't win in South Carolina. I don't think that this works for the Romney campaign.

What does it say about Romney's willingness to spend his own fortune? As John Ellis noted yesterday, Romney's got a huge advantage in being able to outspend his broke competitors.

I don't think it would be a damaging blow to Romney to campaign hard in SC and not do well. Huckabee did pretty miserably in NH and Michigan, and he's still in this thing.

Perhaps his team is looking at the polls and seeing not much of a possibility of a bump from Michigan, and a downward trend from early December (21%) to now (16%) with the possibility that it could trend lower. If he campaigned hard and lost to Thompson, finishing a distant fourth, that would be brutal.

But after winning Michigan, to abandon a primary everyone has always believed to be important is a strategy that doesn't settle well with me at all. Fight for everything, I say, take your lumps and try to spin the results in the concession speech.

Romney was quoted as saying that he'd be shocked if McCain doesn't win SC, that it's McCain-country. This is also expectations management. He knows McCain'll be hard-pressed to beat Huckabee, and he's trying to knock McCain out of the race. That's not a bad strategy--if it comes down to Romney vs. Huckabee, Romney will more than likely edge him out.

The Presidential Race

The next three contests on the Democratic side is Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida to finish the month. There are around 69,000 registered black voters in the state of Nevada. There's 180,000 registered Hispanic voters in Clark County alone (where 70% of Nevada residents live). About half the voters in the SC Democratic primary will be black. 15.5% of Florida's population is black.

Here's the numbers nationally from the NYTimes: "About half of black Democratic primary voters — 49 percent — said they planned to vote for Mr. Obama, while 34 percent said they backed Mrs. Clinton. Among white Democratic primary voters, 42 percent said they were supporting Mrs. Clinton, while 24 percent said they backed Mr. Obama." According to the census, nationally, 71% of whites are registered, 61% of blacks, and 54% of Latinos. In 2004 whites had 67% turnout, blacks 60%.

Bill Clinton's remarks about Obama's record on Iraq as a "fairy tail" have been taken out of context and given a racial overtone, as if he was talking about Obama and the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edwards is perpetuating this confusion.

The larger context though is Hillary's remarks about King and LBJ:

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Clinton told FOX News last week in remarks that sparked the current conflict. “It took a president to get it done.”

On Sunday, Clinton complained that Obama has been misrepresenting her words and their meaning. She said Obama has been comparing himself to King and President John F. Kennedy, who began the process that led to landmark civil rights legislation. But unlike King, who Clinton noted had marched, organized, protested, and was gassed, beaten and jailed, Obama is merely giving speeches about his commitment to racial equality.

“(King) understood he had to move the political process and bring in those who were in political power,” Clinton told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“And he campaigned for political leaders, including Lyndon Johnson, because he wanted somebody in the White House who would act on what he had devoted his life to achieving . So I think it’s important to set the record straight. Clearly, we know from media reports that the Obama campaign (is) deliberately distorting this.”

Clinton added that King deserves “the lion share of the credit” for moving the country and political process forward, but he couldn’t have done it without “partners who were in the political system.”

“I think it is such an unfair and unwarranted attempt to misrepresent and mischaracterize what I’ve said,” Clinton added.

Obama's response:

Later, in Las Vegas, Obama said he was "baffled" by Clinton's suggestion that his campaign has tried to make hay out of her statement.

"She made an ill-advised statement about Dr. King, suggesting that Lyndon Johnson had more to do with the Civil Rights Act," Obama said. "I did not make the statement. I haven't commented on the statement. For them to suggest that we're injecting race as a consequence of a statement she made that we haven't commented on is pretty hard to figure out."

I heard a lady call into Morning Edition a couple days ago and complain about what she called the Clinton campaigns "racist tactics" and claim that her view was widely shared in her circle. She lives in Ohio. She didn't cite any of the above, but rather the Clinton campaign's earlier bringing up of Obama's drug use. Here's Robert Novak's column on it:

Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.

This word-of-mouth among Democrats makes Obama look vulnerable and Clinton look prudent. It comes during a dip for the front-running Clinton after she refused to take a stand on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's now discarded plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens.

Experienced Democratic political operatives believe Clinton wants to avoid a repetition of 2004, when attacks on each other by presidential candidates Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt were mutually destructive and facilitated John Kerry's nomination.