Obama’s taking the 50-state strategy seriously

June 8, 2008

Well, maybe “50” is a little strong. Barack Obama, in all likelihood, will not seriously compete in Utah. And Oklahoma would probably be pretty tough.

But everywhere else is on the table.

Senator Barack Obama’s general election plan calls for broadening the electoral map by challenging Senator John McCain in typically Republican states — from North Carolina to Missouri to Montana — as Mr. Obama seeks to take advantage of voter turnout operations built in nearly 50 states in the long Democratic nomination battle, aides said.

On Monday, Mr. Obama will travel to North Carolina — a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 32 years — to start a two-week tour of speeches, town hall forums and other appearances intended to highlight differences with Mr. McCain on the economy. From there, he heads to Missouri, which last voted for a Democrat in 1996. His first campaign swing after securing the Democratic presidential nomination last week was to Virginia, which last voted Democratic in 1964. […]

A Republican strategist said that, according to party monitoring services, Mr. Obama’s campaign had inquired about advertising rates in 25 states, including traditionally Republican states like Georgia, Mississippi and North Carolina. That would constitute a very large purchase. President Bush, whose 2004 campaign had the most expensive advertising drive in presidential history, usually ran commercials in a maximum of 17 states.

How ambitious a plan are we talking about here? Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the primary process left operations in place in smaller Republican states where a Dem surge of support could make a real difference — so much so that Alaska, which Kerry lost by 26 points four years ago, might draw some attention.

“Do we have to win any of those to get to 270?” Plouffe said. “No. Do we have reason to think we can be competitive there? Yes. Do we have organizations in those states to be competitive? Yes. This is where the primary was really helpful to us now.”

Following up on an item from the other day, this is the obvious advantage that comes with very successful fundraising. Obama can “stretch” the map and compete outside the traditional battlegrounds, not just because of his strengths as a candidate, but also because he can afford to compete everywhere. And in the process, he’ll put McCain in a position in which he’ll have to spend money on states he’d prefer to take for granted, or take a big gamble.

For that matter, Matt Yglesias notes some of the other advantages, including the benefits that come with even appearing to run a broad-based, national campaign.

Bush talked in 2000 about the problems of poor minority children in school not so much because he thought he was going to get huge numbers of black people to vote for him, but to signal to voters everywhere that he was “a different kind of Republican,” caring, etc. Even if Obama doesn’t have any realistic prospect of winning North Carolina or Montana he certainly wants to win in places like Minnesota and Virginia and parts of Minnesota are like Montana, parts of Virginia are like North Carolina and an image as a broad-minded person who campaigns everywhere can be helpful. After all, Obama’s eruption onto the national stage was a critique of the red/blue politics of cultural division, so it’s good to dramatize that by running a nationwide campaign.

Beyond that, the more places you campaign the more places you’re in a position to take advantage of unexpected good fortune. If for some reason McCain commits some kind of horrible gaffe that alienates the people of the big empty square states, it’s good to have laid the groundwork to take advantage of that. Or maybe Bob Barr will catch fire in the Deep South. In a narrowcast campaign, you need to guess in advance how things will unfold over the next several months and that’s just difficult to do. If you have the cash to run a wide-focus campaign, then you can simply try to respond competently to events as they unfold however they unfold.

Sounds good to me.

every district in every state in every election

  • The country is heavily networked. Many, many people have ties across the country, with scattered family, and long personal work and educational histories mean that people have lived in disparate places. If Obama campaigns, say, in North Carolina, for two weeks, he can do the kind of retail campaigning that actually moves a few percentage points of the vote. And, he can amplify the gains across the country, as the shifting consensus of North Carolina propagates across the network.

  • The best way to win is to go on the offensive but in the cleanest sense of the word. The Repubs and the DLC have taken the “red” states for granted for too long. As Howard Dean once said, “It doesn’t hurt to ask people to vote Democratic.”

    As seen in the primaries, firewalls rarely work. Ask Hils or 9ud11 or anyone who thought that hanging on was the way to victory.

  • This reads as confirmation of a piece in the HuffingtonPost a couple of weeks back–can’t come up with a link or name offhand–but the guy pointed out that one big result of the long nomination process was that Obama had been forced to run in so many states that it extended his ground operation to encompass almost all 50. One of the more convincing pieces I encountered that argued that the long fight was a net positive for Obama, given that he also had the organizing smarts and cash reserves that would make that operation successful.

    Somewhat disconnected thought, but it’s fascinating to see how the Corporate Mediocracy are struggling to get this election to fit into the Standard Model (haircuts, bowling, race, “elitism,” effeminacy vs Real Manhood, etc etc) even as these guys are strategizing around a very very different model in the electoral sphere. And they seem to have been very smart about it so far. I would so love to see an election where not just the GOP, but the Broder/Dowd/Tweety/Cokie Mediocratic Axis also got their asses well and truly kicked. He may or may not be able to carry it off, but it looks like he’s going to have a shot at it and for that alone he has my enthusiastic, if not fanatical support.

  • Good. Force McCain to play defense. Besides, even if he doesn’t win places like Oklahoma, with enough turnout in these places, people like Andrew Rice can replace Inhofe and others of his ilk. The Republicans have been so bad for this country, it is high time they were sent into the wilderness for 40 years.

  • Obama’s taking the 50-state strategy seriously

    Only 50? He promised me 57.

    In the primaries, the better they knew Obama, the more they liked him. The fact that he’s half-black will definitely magnify his name recognition.

  • I knnow it’s easy to write off as hopeless a state like Oklahoma, but this year may be different. They have a good Dem gov in Brad Henry, and as me said above Andrew Rice is running against inhoffe and he at least will need an Obama viosit and maybe a few surrogates. They also have many native American tribes and Obama BlackEagle is the only Crow running for President, folks like to vote for one of their own 😛 And they have quite a few military bases in the state. Military has not been too happy with the way Republicans have run things and McCain is promising them nothing but a continuation and maybe an expansion. And Norman is a good sized college town, not sure how big Stillwater is. I’ll let our friend from Muskogee correct my errors and assumptions. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, I’m not saying it’ll be possible, I’m just saying it’s do-able. Oh and Boomer Sooner!

  • Come November, I’m going to love the smell of coattails in the morning.

    A fifty state campaign is partly how it happens. As others have said, McCain has nowhere to go but down, and he will as people get to know more about him, and learn about his self-contradictions. (Most of the electorate and nearly as much of the media needs to learn that he’s not a maverick, he’s just confused.) As uninvolved Republican-leaning voters learn more about McCain, more and more of them will stay home on Election Day. Also, McCain is goin to get very little help from the current Republican power structure outside of nasty advertising – who from the Bush administration or what nationally known republican could appear with him on stage and help him appeal to independents or wavering democrats?

    If Obama does this right (and he’s done nearly everything else right so far), he is going to have the money and the ability to appear with candidates everywhere and to argue for electing not just him personally, but a Democratic team. This will be a win-win situation for everyone concerned. Obama will help down-ticket candidates by drawing crowds and media coverage, and he will help himself by having a whole lot of white politicians, both male and female, standing up for him and thereby giving him credibility with white voters who have never before voted for a minority candidate (because their unspoken message will be “look, I trust this guy, you should too”).

  • Fifty (50) states no, but it is pretty clear that all of the Southern States are in play.

  • It’ll be good for people to see Obama where they live, heck, to see a Democrat where they live. One of the successes of the GOP, Limbaugh, etc., has been to convince a bunch of folks that they know what Democrats believe and do, and they don’t want it, and without a real campaign, there won’t be any reason to believe otherwise. Imagine them discovering that Democrats actually aren’t crazy, and want the same things they do!

    Plus, the real advantage is that a President can’t do it all by himself. We need a House and a Senate that are Democratic and progressive if we want real change. Coattails, baby. We wants us some LOOONG coattails.

  • I think we are, mentally, ruling out too many states — but Obama isn’t. We look at the race for President, and not Congress. Take Montana. Before Burns was elected. they had had exactly ONE Republican Senator — Zales Ecton for one term — since 1913!

    A similar point can be made about WV, as I’ve said before. Except for Capito — and did you hear her light into Cheney — they hadn’t reelected a Republican Congressman since Arch Moore in 1966 — those were the only two Republicans reelected since WWII — and they’ve never elected a Republican to replace another Republican in that time.

    But I think Obama is not just conducting a ’50 State strategy’ but a ’50 million voter strategy’ — referring to the 50 million votes that Bush got in 2004. George Bush has been so incredibly wrong on every single issue that he has probably done something to p*ss off every Republican as well. No, Obama isn’t going to get all of them, but I think that he believes, rightly, that — without pandering or ‘triangulation’ — he doesn’t need to write off ANY vote. (And how many of us know long-time Republicans who are going Democratic this year?)

    Yes, he will have strong coattails — and some state candidates will give him ‘top hats’ as well — which won’t be true about any Republican down-ticket candidates. Again, don’t expect McC to get more than 100 electoral votes — if that — and get ready for 65 Democratic Senators and at least 300 Congressmen.

    Let’s realize how lucky we are to have Obama as our candidate, and how many times we could have lost him. We would have won the White House whoever we ran, but not with majorites like this.

  • In the 2004 general election, about 122.3 million people voted, out of 203 million eligible (60.9% participation). In the 2008 primaries, there were around 205 million eligible voters, and not quite 58 million participated (28%). (The Democrats got almost 37 million votes in the primaries, while the Republicans got almost 21 million, but the Republicans finished earlier so the difference may not mean much.) Overall, slightly less than half of the people who are likely to vote in the general bothered to vote in the primary. What percent of those who didn’t vote still aren’t particularly well informed about the candidates? I’d guess quite a few, meaning that Obama still has lots of work ahead, but also lots of potential gain.

  • There was a John McCain ad next to this article!
    Awesome! There have GOT to be moles in his organization if his ad money is paying for ads on CBR.

    Anyone hear Obama ads on Michael Savage yet?
    Just checkin….

  • A 50 state campaign! It should be fun to watch McCain try to keep up.

    I’m not making any hard and fast predictions about the election outcome, but clearly Obama will have major fund raising and organizational advantages.

    Also, I thought it interesting that George Will (I know, I know) noted on ThisWeek that there are 600,000 unregistered black voters in Georgia. Think about that for a minute.

    The only thing McCain has going for him is the continuing illusion among many in the media that he is some kind of maverick. He can’t win with just the republican base, so he has to go after the independents. The only thing he can do is keep playing up his “independence” and “experience” while counting on the 527s to slime Obama.

  • I’m not a professional political operative, so I could be wrong about this, but I suspect that it costs less to open an office in Idaho than it does in Florida or Pennsylvania. And while there probably won’t be much advertising in Idaho unless the money starts pouring in and McCain’s campaign is falling apart in the middle of July, I’m not sure it’s that important. For one thing, the appearance of operating a 50-state campaign will be worth whatever the cost of some office in Boise or in any other small state capital. But let’s say the office in Boise or some place like it experiences success and registers new voters or attracts a great number of volunteers. It can use that influx of support, plus what was already there, to make McCain’s campaign sweat. And if something really strange happens, and he looks like he’s gaining in the state, he’ll have the groundwork to possibly win it. Aside from the old swing states, like Ohio and Iowa, and the newer ones, like Colorado and Virginia, something tells me that this is the election where a state nobody expects to be competitive, like Georgia or Mississippi, could flip sides. Plus, it always helps to have more Democrats registered, even if it’s a small number at first.

  • It’s been pointed out elsewhere but it’s worth repeating– Obama has a lot more money and far more organization than McCain. If he can force McCain to spend a lot of time and money defending states that are “red” then he could end up being far less competitive in the “purple” states and a lot less of a danger in borderline blue states. It’s clear that one of Obama’s strategies is to keep the GOP scrambling, not to mention that they’re clearly having a helluva time keeping their right-wing base happy, motivated and engaged.

    I think a lot of us have been pretty pessimistic over the years about the Dems’s defeat/jaws/victory problem. For once I think this will work in our favor– it will keep us all from being overconfident when all the signs are pointing to an Obama LANDSLIDE. I think that Obama’s operation is smart, tough and nimble enough to change this legacy of stumbling at the finish line.

    Understandably a lot of us have spent a lot of time wringing our hands over the length of the campaign, Hillary, etc. At the end of the day I don’t think any of this will matter if on November 5th we wake up to control of both houses of congress and the White House.

  • I have it on good authority that the Obama campaign will send its own staffers (not just DNCers) to every single state in the country. What’s more, their campaign definitely worked off the DNC’s national voter file in the primary (unlike the Clinton campaign), and as such did a lot of work in cleaning that up of wrong numbers, wrong addresses, deceased, strong GOPers, etc. Having his skilled staffers continuing to work the ground in all states and having done so much to ID Dems and left-leaning Dems—that’s what it means to have coattails. House Reps dont’ have the resources to clean their lists or get their voters out to the extent Obama’s campaign will, even in states where he’s apt to lose.

    There’s a reason red-state Dems by-and-large love him. He only makes the party stronger.

    I also understand that it’s been taken into consideration to do a national ad buy. Seriously.

  • The GOP never took red states for granted. There are always huge campaigns in those states to energize hate, anti-life, and swiftboat lies any time in the election calendar.

    We need to change it around, and bring hope to everyone in the country. This is the first time we have enough cash to do so. So we should.

  • Right now, Mitch McConnell is running behind a Democrat who most Demo activists in KY thought was the poorer choice of the two during their primary.

    In Mississippi, the Republican-appointee Senate candidate is running behind the Democrat. In Mississippi!!!!

    Outside of Nebraska, there aren’t too many Republican senatorial candidates with a solid shot at victory.

    The Democrats are looking to pick up every one of the 32 Republican House seats where the incumbent retired this season, and in another 15 House districts the advantage is theirs, and there are another 10 that could go either way right now.

    Polls in Texas show the Democrats could have a comeback with a good campaign there.

    The Democrat is leading in Republican safe house seats in Okie-land California.

    Make the thugs fight defense everywhere and they can’t win anywhere.

    We can wipe them out. Destroy them for a generation.

    Be still, my beating heart.

  • “Destroy them for a generation.” No, rather destroy the Republican Party as the ‘opposition.’ I really do expect that there will be a new party formed, center-right but secular, much like the old ‘moderate Republicans’ such as Eisenhower and Rockefeller. And I’ll welcome it, because a one-party dominance on the level we’ll have after November is good for neither the party nor the country.

    Btw, has anyone noticed that this is the first ‘phase-change’ in which a substantial part of the dominant party’s majority in Congress is not composed of people opposed, philosophically, to the shift. Kennedy had the Southern Segregationists, as did FDR — and couldn’t have had a majority without them. And TR’s phase shift, almost as important as his fifth-cousin’s, was supported by a large number of Republicans who were closer to McKinley than TR.

  • Except for money and scheduling, there isn’t any reason the Obama camp should count out Utah. There will be down ticket benefits and he could get close to 40% in the general if Obama could show up once or twice. Currently Obama only has one office in northern Utah where the major metro areas are, Salt Lake City and Provo/Orem, but there’s also ground to be gained in southern Utah, where there is Moab, and St George. It won’t be won in November regardless, but it would be really nice to try to get it closer to a 10% spread.

    Right now, I’m anticipating they could get up to 400K D votes. Utah has a chance to be receptive to Obama’s message. Many do not like McCain so there could be low R turnout, rather than the 800K that might have turned out based on average growth over the past eight years and the R primary turnout.

    Then again, if McCain chooses Romney as his running mate, go right ahead and count Utah out.

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