From the WSJ via Salon:
In Thursday's Wall Street Journal, the "architect" of George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns writes that the chief battlegrounds between Barack Obama and John McCain this fall will be Colorado, Virginia, Michigan and... Ohio. Rove says:
To win, Mr. Obama needs to pick up 18 electoral votes more than John Kerry received, meaning Mr. Obama must carry Colorado or Virginia and add another small state to his column. If Mr. McCain carries Michigan as well as Ohio, it would make Mr. Obama's Electoral College math very difficult. And if Mr. McCain can limit GOP losses to one or two small states from those won by the GOP in 2004, he'll be America's 44th president.If there's one state Rove knows well, it's Ohio, which clinched Bush's reelection four years ago; if Kerry had managed 120,000 more votes there, he would be president now. Rove sees friendly territory in the Buckeye State for McCain, especially in the Appalachian regions where Hillary Clinton blew Obama out in the Democratic primary. "Obama was wiped out in the primary among the blue-collar Reagan Democrats of southeastern Ohio," Rove writes.
As the only Ohio resident on this blog I'll say this much: Ohio is in desperate condition and if Obama can't pull out a solid victory there then that does not bode well for him overall.
3 Comments:
If Obama can't win Ohio, I believe it will have more to do with Diebold than public opinion.
I second Tegan's comment. And as long as Rove can't sneak gay marriage on the ballot there, we may have a better shot than four years ago.
Aside from that, and no offense Joel, I'm beyond pissed off at Ohio. Or maybe I'm just heartbroken that the Buckeye State never comes through when we need it to.
This article, in particular, which I read on my BlackBerry while cruising through New Mexico last month, sums up my frustration. And I'm not saying this kind of ignorance only occurs in Ohio, but given Ohio's problems, you'd think people would smarten up and quit taking internet rumors as truth.
My favorite: When Obama gets elected, he's going to illegally bring his entire GAY FAMILY here from Africa. Come on...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901871_pf.html
I doubt Ohio is unrepresentative of ignorance in this country. We just happen to have the spotlight on us -- and no one looks good under such harsh lighting.
In fact, I think Ohio is representative of giant swaths of this country, which is why it's often both a battleground and microcosm of the general electorate. I think Obama must carry Ohio and if he doesn't my bet is that it will have more to do with his campaign(ing) than with any other single factor.
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