The Obama strategy emphasizes down-ballot races

June 25, 2008

We know quite a bit about the Obama campaign’s intention to “stretch” the map and compete in “red” states that a) Dems would be expected to skip; and b) the McCain campaign doesn’t want to have to fight for.

But Ben Smith goes a little deeper today and considers what this might mean for Dems further down on the ballot.

Barack Obama will focus his resources largely in 14 states George W. Bush won in 2004, his chief field operative said Tuesday, hoping to score upsets in places like Virginia, Indiana, and Georgia.

But winning the White House won’t be his only goal, deputy campaign manager Hildebrand told Politico: In an unusual move, Obama’s campaign will also devote some resources to states it’s unlikely to win, with the goal of influencing specific local contests in places like Texas and Wyoming.

“Texas is a great example where we might not be able to win the state, but we want to pay a lot of attention to it,” Hildebrand said. “It’s one of the most important redistricting opportunities in the country.”

That’s a good point I hadn’t given much thought to. Long-time readers may recall Tom DeLay’s painful re-redistricting scheme, the result of which was five new Republican seats in the U.S. House. After the 2010 census, it’ll be time to draw those lines again, and if the Obama campaign can help strengthen the party at the state level, the efforts will pay dividends in the long run.

It’s not just Texas. Ben also noted a competitive House race in Wyoming, where Gary Trauner is running for the state’s U.S. House seat. He was narrowly defeated two years ago, but hopes the rematch will turn out better.

Is Obama going to win Wyoming? Almost certainly not, but when he invests campaign resources in the state anyway, he not only raises eyebrows at McCain HQ, he also gives candidates like Trauner a better shot at victory.

“If we can register more Democrats, if we can increase the Democratic performance and turnout, maybe we can pick up a congressional seat,” Hildebrand said.

I found the McCain campaign’s response rather amusing:

“It’s revealing that Barack Obama has now been forced to expand the states on his map because he’s so weak in traditional Democratic targets such as West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida, not to mention his ongoing problems in Pennsylvania and Ohio,” said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

Yes, right, Obama is stretching the map and going after 14 “red” states McCain would love to take for granted, and it’s because Obama is campaigning from a position of weakness. Got it.

For the record, Obama’s positioning in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio isn’t nearly as “weak” as the McCain campaign would like. For that matter, it’s a real stretch to consider Arkansas, West Virginia, and Tennessee “traditional Democratic targets,” given recent history.

Then again, if I were a McCain spokesperson, and I saw that my candidate was struggling in traditional Republican targets like Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Virginia, I might have trouble coming up with a good spin, too.

It was always about down-ticket races in these states–down-ticket races, building the party structure and GOTV efforts, and, in places like Texas, addressing glaring districting problems. Making McCain work for (and spend limited resources on) states he should have been able to count on is the icing on the cake. Grabbing some of these electoral votes would be icing on the icing.

A complete lack of understanding of this basic strategy–along with the ludicrous assertion that Obama wouldn’t win blue states in which Clinton had won the primaries–was by far the most frustrating thing about listening to the Clinton spinners these past few months. They mostly just did not get it (“State X doesn’t matter because it’ll be red in November”), and the ones who got it pretended they didn’t. They had no organization in most of these states, weren’t interested in building them and were more than willing to let the down-ticket races go to Repubs for lack of effort.

Ugh. Thank god the DLC is dead and buried for good now.

  • Obama’s team are brilliant tacticians. They have realized that the Republicans strength comes from narrowing the playing field and pushing tremendous human resources from around the country into a few areas where they can suppress Dem turnout, rally every Republican voter, and outmatch the Dems who don’t have tools like the Voter Vault and the 100 hour plan.

    If we have a truly national race, where Republicans are defending 100 House seats and every Senate seat they own, they can’t fly operatives from Orange County or Texas into Ohio.

    We have to attack the Republicans on their strengths by widening the playing field at the Congressional level and Senate level so they won’t have as many resources to use in swing Presidential states.

    It’s not about coat-tails and downballot races. Ir’s about diluting their resources at the house-to-house level.

    Obama is also brilliantly attacking their strength in evangelical churches , which has been one their most important and reliable turnout machines.

    When you play to win, you play to win.

  • For the 763rd time, WV in fact IS traditionally strongly Democratic — at least in Congressional races — which is why I have been calling it a lock for Obama. (The Presidential races were swung by the RRers, who won’t be coming out for McCain — he won only 76% of the closed Republican primary on May 13th.)

    But thanks, Steve, for reminding us about the state Legislative races. Pushing for Democrats on those down-ticket races will determine the redistricting breakdown after 2010.

  • Aeolus: entirely agree except for the question of down ballot races, which are important as well — see my post above and Steve’s original comments.

    As I have said, not only does McCain have no coattails, but he also has no ‘tophats,’ down-ticket candidates who will push him up, because people don’t like the Republicans, period.

    We won’t just be fighting for 100 Republican seats, we’ll probably win at least that many.

  • This sounds nice, but Obama is endorsing U.S. Rep. John Barrow in Georgia’s District 12, when Barrow is one of the worst Democratic Bush supporters in the country. If he is going to try and help down ticket races, he might want to actually see who he is endorsing and make sure he likes their politics. Barrow has helped push the Bush agenda at every possible opportunity. District 12 could easily be won by a more progressive candidate and there is one running- Regina Thomas.

    I applaud his efforts, but wish he would avoid endorsing and supporting DINOs.

  • Actually, Aeolus, one of Howard Dean’s projects at teh DNC has been to create the Democratic version of the “Voter Vault,” which is being used in this campaign. This is why the Obama campaign knows they can be competitive in these 14 “red” states.

  • Don’t know about winn9ing 100 GOP House seats, but the Cook Report does identify 70 as definite and 12 as leaners for turnovers. I’ll take that number. 100 would be nice, since it would mean there were only 98 Republicans in the House.

  • Will he coordinate with the Howard Dean / DNC 50 state strategy or will there be a lot of duplication?

  • Actually, what Tom DeLay showed, with his “painful re-redistricting scheme”, was that you *don’t* need to wait for a new census. If the Texas legislature regains a Democratic majority this year, there’s no reason why they can’t push through a new redistricting plan immediately.

  • I only hope that team Obama can make some headway in Texas. I’ve lived here 29 years and I have to tell you that people here are hard core wingers – always have been. I cried for 4 months when I first came from the culture shock.

    My husband introduced me to a fellow he worked with and his new wife in the hopes that I could make a friend. I asked her to meet me for lunch one day and she said she had to ask her husband first. I said, “Why? He’s at work isn’t he?” Later that day the guy approached my husband at work and told him to keep his damned woman’s libber wife away from him wife…

    I have many more stories like this…

  • I called my two Democratic Senators this morning to urge them to vote against the FISA amendments act. The Senator said blah blah blah, in the past the Senator blah blah blah… and the Senator blah blah blah… But could I get a statement from either office that they will honor the oath they took to defend the constitution and vote no on this bill? NO!

    We kid ourselves when we think more Democrats in office will make a P_big_ difference. Re member we put them in power in 2006 to end the war and we now have more troops and hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the war. Obama has shown us on this FISA bill that he is, in essence, just another corporate hack.

    I’m close to retirement so I’ll vote to protect my social security and medicare but I have no great expectations from the Democrats for the future. This country’s two political party system is slowly destroying this democracy.

  • Get real! — start following your own nick. We gave Democrats a one-vote majority in the Senate — and only because we put up with the Connecticut Mugwump. And the House majority includes a LOT of ‘blue dogs.’ No, they didn’t end the war, because they didn’t have the numbers to do so, and because President Bush still has the veto power, and Senatorial Republicans still have the filibuster — and despite the fact that it gives them a weapon, it is still a most valuable tool to keep a thin majority (on either side) from enforcing all their ideas on the country.

    One of the glories of our system is that it makes (true, not ‘McCain-style’) mavericks possible, which straight party-line voting would rule out, and almost every progressive idea in the last century and a third started out as the province of mavericks opposed by the majority of their party (Republicans before FDR, Democrats later.)

  • As for the disadvantages of a ‘two-party’ system, take a good look at the influence of the ‘religious parties’ in the Israeli Knesset. (There are examples from almost every multi-party state, but this is the most striking.) Most Israelis are not particularly religious, and they certainly aren’t Orthodox, but because of the need to form a majority, they have to give the Religious Parties influence way above their numbers.

    No, our system has worked pretty well over the years, despite frequent stumbles — we just happen to be at the end of one of them now. But that’s the point about Democracy, it is inefficient, messy, appears weak and sloppy. But it works.

    (In the 30s the frequent argument was that, because of these perceived weaknesses, ‘Democracy was Dead’ and the only true choices for the future were either fascism or Communism. Somehow, that turned out wrong. WHAT a surprise!)

  • I say come on to Texas, it is completely plausable for Obama to win Texas. I remember a time when Texas was BLUE and it can be again. For sure a bunch of Texans bought into the Repub. bulls—, but we all feel couped and duped by the Delayed Bushes( republicans included) . It is very important to work on down the ticket, Mr Cornyn, Mr. Perry and Mr. (Texas House Speaker)Craddick must be replaced for us to feel like all the foxes are out of the Henhouse. TEXAS IS READY FOR HONEST CHANGE.
    Sorry you’ve had a hard time “always Hopeful”, Obviously you weren’t in San Marcos when Sen. Obama drew over 20,000 people to that little crazy town,it was amazing….

  • “Texas is a great example where we might not be able to win the state, but we want to pay a lot of attention to it,” Hildebrand said. “It’s one of the most important redistricting opportunities in the country.”

    Ugh. That’s a disappointing slip back into the mire of politics as usual. I wish Obama would take a principled stance on redistricting and insist that he wants to do away with gerrymandering and require states to use rational methods — zip codes, a grid, whatever — to apportion representatives.

    Hildebrand may be correct politically that controlling redistricting will help the party in the long run, but it hurts to be reminded that for all of Obama’s vision and integrity, he’s still willing to accept some systemic problems unchallenged.

  • I totally agree, Brooks. Redistricting is currently broken, and needs to be fixed to be fair and just, not to give one side an advantage. There is a right way to do it, and I still have hope that it can be done.

    However, I also had high hopes on protecting the 4th amendment until the FISA “compromise”.

  • “Actually, what Tom DeLay showed, with his “painful re-redistricting scheme”, was that you *don’t* need to wait for a new census. If the Texas legislature regains a Democratic majority this year, there’s no reason why they can’t push through a new redistricting plan immediately.”

    The reason you can’t is the governor’s veto. He’s still a Repugnant and he’s in office until January 2011.

  • Deb, thanks for the heartening report. I was talking about E. Tx area where I lived for 7 years. Now I live in San Antonio, but I work for a “wealth management” company where I am the only Democrat. They all sit around here listening to Rush all day and fight over opportunities for free tickets to go to see Glenn Beck with the tax partner. They think he’s “funny”. It’s easy to get jaded with company like this…

  • For that matter, it’s a real stretch to consider Arkansas, West Virginia, and Tennessee “traditional Democratic targets,” given recent history. — CB

    I think dealing with “recent” developments is a part of McCain’s problem. Somewhere between 2000 and now, he seems to have misplaced his short term memory (probably some virus passed on from Still President, during The Hug). He’s stuck in the past, not just because of a 72yr old body, but because of ebbing mental powers.

  • FISA makes it clear that Obama is not pure. It is naive to think that you will ever have a “perfect” candidate to vote for- one that does not do anything to offend YOU. It just is not the nature of humanity.

    To say that you will not vote for a person because they blew it on an issue, or to paint an individual with a braod brush because of their stance on an issue or three is self-defeating.

    It takes years to turn the ship of state. There will be no universal health care next year. The Iraq situation will not be solved in a year. The economy will not magically turn around in 2009. You have to look at every election as a chance to turn into a direction that you will not reach for 20 years. “Is the person going to generally head the country into the right direction or not?” is the question. If you vote on narrow issues, you will always lose.

  • We live in GA, and Barrow was our rep prior to the gerrymandering of Athens. (He was also our county commissioner.)

    We suspect that Obama’s support for Barrow is this: If he supports Regina Thomas, that’s a huge local story and brings some attention he might not want, ticks off some Reps whose support he needs. Now if Thomas wins anyway, then fine. But if Barrow wins the primary, then Barrow seriously owes Obama for his job, and can’t keep this voting-with-the-GOP krap up any longer. You think Barrow didn’t notice that little chat Obama had with Lieberman?

    It was the only semi-rational reason we could come up with.

  • This is a short synopsis of how my community feels about Senator Obama. We are so sick and tired of not having our voices heard. So here goes……..

    Obama, the new guy in town, is a con, a Chicago politician: Obama lacks high morals and will stop at nothing when it comes to further his ambition. He’s a fast talker speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

    He bragged about his church. He would never leave the “black” community.
    Then threw them under the bus

    Bragged about his pastor. He could never leave Reverend Wright, he’s like an old uncle.
    Then threw him under the bus

    Bragged about his grandmother then called her a “typical white person”
    She then went under the bus.

    He wrote a book about his father but now that he has been found to be a “non practicing” Muslim
    He threw his dad under the bus. Definitely had to disown him.

    His Chicago supporters consist of anti Semitics, racists, criminals or far left liberals.
    Farrakhan, Rezko, Ayers and Father Pflaeger are all under the bus too

    When it comes to Obama’s associates he has figured out that all he has to do is either denounce or reject them and then it’s okay. Sometimes he just doesn’t discuss them at all.

    He had a coworker that was a domestic terrorist, William Ayers. Obama laughed and avoided the issue,when asked about his involvement.

    Barack Hussein Obama is a fast talker that knows Chicago politics. He will do anything and destroy anyone to win this election. When the heat is on, he avoids debates, changes his mind, defends his thinking with speeches and runs from the press.

    Obama will speak few words without a script. He is poor, at best, in debates and he knows that an open speech might divulge his true character.

    The icing on the cake was to change his mind on public financing.
    Barack Obama has worked on the issue of political reform for years.
    On Larry King in Jan. 2007, he told Mr. King that the public-financing system works.

    He challenged the Republicans since Feb 2007 to limit their spending. He vowed to do so along with them if he were the Democratic nominee. In fact, a majority of his career was spent talking about how much he believed in public financing.

    He speaks so calmly but Obama has the “king or prince” title in mind. Obama’s ambition is to win, cheat and lie if he has to. This is democracy?

    Senator Obama will say whatever he has to in order to convince the public and the Democratic Party that he’s the nominee of “change”, a uniter, a man of the future. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    A naïve politician? We think not.

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