Posted on 04/19/2008 3:08:59 AM PDT by kingattax
ARLINGTON, Va. — Senator John McCain’s political advisers said Friday that they believed his potential appeal to independents could make him competitive in up to two dozen tossup states, twice as many as Republicans seriously contested in the 2004 presidential race.
The campaign is working to expand Mr. McCain’s electoral map by employing an unusual, decentralized structure in which it will dispatch 11 regional campaign managers across the country, assigning some to traditional closely fought states like Ohio and Florida, others to states they hope to pick up, like Minnesota, and a couple to some less common targets for Republicans, including New Jersey.
The McCain campaign, which won the primaries on a shoestring budget, is staffing up now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee. It has around 150 people on its payroll, up from less than 100 last month, and has beefed up its communications division, added a speech writer and brought on board a team of pollsters. And it is working to overcome its fund-raising disadvantage by working in tandem with the better-financed Republican National Committee.
Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, said the campaign was aware of the “significant environmental hurdles” it faced from the bad economy to the low approval ratings of President Bush. But Mr. Davis said the campaign was heartened by polls showing that while an unnamed Republican would lose to an unnamed Democrat by more than 15 percentage points, Mr. McCain remained competitive with the Democrats in polling.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I kind of dropped out of this race, but you have to wonder, what if he had money? Who knows what kind of victory he could accomplish.
My concern is the down ticket.
Well, McCain’s campaign mgr. here in OH is . . . Mike DeWine. I thought only the Dems tabbed losers for important jobs.
My two yellow-dog democrat friends that I've known for decades have no objection to McCain's stance on Iraq. Their biggest complaint with him is that he's pro-life but they plan to vote for him.
McCain could well win the biggest victory in many years, and it will have almost nothing to do with him. Just as Obama is on the verge of winning the nomination, the protective veil held over him by the MSM has begun to fall away. So the Dems. will likely have very damaged goods as their candidate.
With Obama’s fall from the pedestal he never belonged on, and some number who won’t vote for the black guy, the Dems. could have their weakest candidate since Dukakis. Then, if he wins a sizable victory, McCain will attribute it all to his “humane” stance on illegal aliens and his willingness to reach across the aisle.
Kinda like how we beat Carter?
The old folks will go with McCain and the old folks vote. The yutes vote when they get excited. The excitment may be gone by November. Let two national polls show McCain with a lead and the Obama bubble will pop.
“McCain Camp Planning to Widen the Battlefield
Senator John McCain’s political advisers said Friday that they believed his potential appeal to independents could make him competitive in up to two dozen tossup states, twice as many as Republicans seriously contested in the 2004 presidential race.”
IOW hold on to your backs, he’s moving left.
He will have to move left to try to pick up enough votes from the middle to offset the votes he will lose from the right.
That seems to be the GOP strategy now, PO the evangelical right by nominating a "moderate" and then cater to the mushy middle voters to make up for the loss. I don't think it will work, and even if it does what's the point of electing someone who isn't substantially different from the left on so many issues?
I would rather have McCain in office than any Democrat I can name just on the national defense issue alone, but on many social issues he's more in sync with liberal Democrats than he is with me. At some point between now and November I have to decide whether to vote for McCain or a 3rd party, and right now it's still a tossup. The thought of either Democrat in that office is scary, but if we elect McCain it may mean that in all future primaries we go back to the pre- Reagan years when moderate RINOs were all we had to choose from.
For me, if he picks a hardline conservative...I vote for the ticket and hope for the best.
If he does what Juan usually does and chooses the liberal side then I am voting LP or CP and won’t feel bad at all watching that backstabbing creep lose.
My thoughts also. It's not much but he had better throw us a bone, otherwise he's on his own.
The moderates and solid support from the democrat base might be enough to get McCain elected.
Ahhhhh... This is excellent strategy.
McCain can "go moderate" in blue states with pandering crap about "global warming" and closing Gitmo, etc., and "talk tough" in red states about tax cuts and the war on terror, etc. - - and the blue states will never know what was said in the red states and vice versa.
Ingenious.
A yellow dog I know is emailing Obama jokes.
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