Oct 14 2008
Debate Tomorrow Election’s Last Major Showdown
The latest polls continue to show that Sen. Barack Obama has a several-point lead nationally over Sen. John McCain. Additionally, Obama has nearly 270 electoral votes safely kept in states he’s probably going to win.
McCain has a task that’s both easy to understand and nearly impossible to accomplish: hold eight states that George W. Bush won twice: Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. If he does so, he’ll win the election.
On the one hand, all those states usually–if not always–have gone red for at least two generations. On the other hand, 2008 is not a Republican year. Obama has all-but-cinched the states that he needs to defend, the typical blue states Al Gore and John Kerry won this decade. Obama can now attack McCain’s base, knowing that claiming just a portion of the remaining states means victory.
It’s a bit like a chess game where one player has most of the pieces. Unless Obama makes a serious error, he’ll win. He just needs to bide his time and eliminate McCain’s options. Eventually, McCain will have to take some risks. The status quo isn’t good enough for him.
Wednesday’s debate is McCain’s best chance to rally. McCain has nothing to lose and he’ll likely take that stance. Obama knows if he manages to survive 90 minutes at the table with his opponent and with moderator Bob Schieffer, he’ll checkmate McCain within three weeks.
If Obama can go without declaring Poland a free nation not under the Soviet Union’s thumb, like Gerald Ford did while debating Jimmy Carter in 1976, or some similar gaffe–the Illinois senator is nearly home free.
I really hope Obama can kick in some spice in this round and win it!
While the major network electoral maps show Sen. Obama at 264 EVs, every other outlet that isn’t keeping the race close for ratings purposes show him with at least 277 EVs, some as high as 320.
North Dakota is now a swing state, as is West Virginia. Georgia, once solidly red, is now leaning McCain, and so is Montana. That essentially means that in order to lock the leaning states up, McCain must pull resources from swing states, and will most likely have to concede either Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Minnesota(why he hast pulled out of Iowa is beyond me) in order to fund his efforts in states with tighter races.
An interesting note, there are no Kerry states in play. Every state that is “up for grabs” are all Bush states, putting the GOP on defense every where they go.