Adjust your map accordingly, readers. I will adjust mine.
Also see: What the Electoral Map Looks Like in a Fair Election
"Obama on defense in Pa. as McCain senses an opening" by Scott Helman and Sasha Issenberg, Globe Staff | October 29, 2008
CHESTER, Pa. - Obama has made big gains in his attempts to flip Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado into the Democratic column. His advisers express delight that polls have tightened in Georgia, and that the GOP is now on the defensive even in Montana, where the Republican National Committee is reportedly beginning TV advertising this week.
But for all of the offense Obama is now playing, he and his campaign are having to mount a forceful defense of a big, vote-rich, traditionally Democratic prize: Pennsylvania.
It is the one reliably "blue" state where McCain, the Republican nominee, believes he has a shot, as he looks to compensate for the unknown number of "red" states that may slip from his grasp. Obama's advisers point out that almost every public poll over the last month shows Obama with a double-digit lead; if that holds, it would give the Illinois senator a far larger margin of victory than Al Gore or Senator John F. Kerry had in Pennsylvania in the last two elections.
So McCain is SURE ACTING like he knows the FIX IS IN!!!
Still, Obama's repeated visits here - he held rallies in Chester, outside Philadelphia, yesterday, and in Pittsburgh the night before - suggest that his campaign is worried enough about the state, which he lost handily in the primary to Senator Hillary Clinton, to maintain a major presence this close to Election Day. One of Obama's top surrogates here, Governor Ed Rendell, said yesterday that McCain's heavy campaigning in the state, especially in southwestern counties around Pittsburgh, was whittling away Obama's lead.
"I never thought it was a 10-plus lead to begin with," Rendell said in an interview. "This is still not a given."
At a morning rally in Hershey with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin that drew about 10,000 to a hockey rink, McCain continued to paint Obama as an old-fashioned liberal, an argument advisers said would help win over late-deciding independents and conservative Democrats.
The NARRATIVE is being put in place, folks!
McCain strategists identify Pennsylvania as one of two states, along with New Hampshire, where they can exploit an unreconciled rift left over from the Democratic primaries, in which much of the party's establishment supported Clinton.
McCain's political director, Mike DuHaime, said that the campaign, which operates a "Democrats for McCain" headquarters in Scranton, has detected greater unease with Obama among Democrats as part of the McCain campaign's direct contact with voters - in phone calls and door knocks - than is evident in media surveys showing sizable leads for Obama.
"Like us, they see it closer than the public polls," DuHaime said of the Obama campaign. Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, a close McCain ally, added yesterday, "If they thought it was a slam-dunk, they wouldn't be spending so much time here."
Then why is McCain back-filling in Repug states?
McCain, though, faces an unfriendly electoral landscape in Pennsylvania. The Democrats, who have aggressively registered new voters this year, now have 1.2 million more people on their rolls than the Republicans; that's about double the advantage the Democrats had four years ago.
Yup, wait until HALF the ARTICLE to begin TELLING the TRUTH and not SLANTING the damn article, BG!
A win in Pennsylvania does not necessarily guarantee McCain the presidency, either. Assuming Obama wins Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, and Virginia (which the polls suggest is likely), McCain would still have to hold onto Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina.
Yesterday, on what his campaign says is his seventh trip to Pennsylvania since clinching the Democratic nomination in June, Obama pressed his case to more than 9,000 people under a cold, driving rain on the campus of Widener University in Chester. The crowd - crouching under umbrellas, wearing trash bags, stuffed inside giant parkas - chanted, "We want change! We want change!"
Oh, after McCain cancelled
"I've been standing here since 8 o'clock and I'm soaked to the core," 22-year-old Mindy James, a recent college graduate who is looking for work in communications, said around 10:30 a.m. "It's worth it, you know? It's worth it."
In Pennsylvania, McCain's strategy includes running strong on traditionally Republican turf in the state's rural center and northern tier, as well as peeling off white Democrats who supported Clinton in the state's industrialized northeast and southwest. McCain also hopes to keep Obama's margin of victory down in Philadelphia by carrying a handful of wards in white-ethnic neighborhoods where racial tensions have long influenced local politics.
Fuck you and your racist narrative, MSM press!!! Just ANOTHER LIE!!!
Democratic officials in Pennsylvania have chafed at what they see as the Obama campaign's refusal to engage its parochial political culture, pointing to its decision to name a state director, Craig Schirmer, who has never worked in the state, and the reluctance to pay election-day workers, a common practice in Philadelphia. Obama recently dispatched a key aide, Michael Strautmanis, to soothe relations with elected officials and labor leaders.
So expect Pennsylvania to turn RED this year, folks!
"When is this campaign going to start respecting local people?" J. Whyatt Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP, asked when Obama visited the city earlier this month.
So this guy is going to vote McCain because of this? Then HE DESERVES HIM!!!
One consequence of Obama's plan to compete in as many states as possible, Rendell said, is that it limits the time he can spend to protect a place like Pennsylvania. "This disadvantage of contending in so many states," he said, "is it spreads you around a lot thinner." --more--"
Un-frikkin-real!!
Yeah, because Obama is COMPETITIVE in MORE STATES it is a NEGATIVE!!
Of course, it is EASIER to pull an INSIDE STRAIGHT like what McCain needs, right, Ed?
Rendell must still be working for the Clintons!!
Hitlery got her eye on 2012, huh, Eddie?
Now, on to New Hampshire!
"N.H. McCain backers will fight on; Redoubling efforts in face of poll results" by Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | October 29, 2008
FRANKLIN, N.H. - Less than a week before Election Day, polls show McCain struggling - even here, in the state that first fell in love with him nearly a decade ago and twice rescued his presidential ambitions from oblivion. Exasperated and fearing a Democratic landslide, Republicans across the country have lashed out at McCain's campaign as too timid or too erratic.
In New Hampshire, there is some discontent, too. A top campaign official publicly objected when the national campaign made phone calls attacking Democrat Barack Obama in the state, and former governor and longtime McCain supporter Walter Peterson said he fears the campaign's top brass has alienated too many New Hampshire independents by catering to social conservatives.
McCain loyalists in New Hampshire cite other frustrations as well: the mainstream media, which seems to them terribly biased toward Obama; the impersonal nature of a general election campaign, which features none of the town hall meetings and personal contact that helped voters get to know McCain so well; the young people who appear to them to value talk more than action.
They are NOT reading the SAME PAPERS I AM!!!!
Talk about BITING the HAND that FEEDS THEM!!!
But they are a long way from giving up. "Fighting to the end is the best thing," Peterson said.
They vow to outwork Obama supporters, even if they are outnumbered. Many refuse to believe the polls, particularly the ones in New Hampshire that show their candidate as many as 15 percentage points behind Obama. There is a reason, after all, they are called "McCainiacs."
Because they are insane like their boss?
"He's going to be so happy when he sees all of his hard work here paying off," said Patsy Petit, a 58-year-old Latin teacher, with a conspiratorial smile as she took a break at the campaign's state headquarters in Manchester the other night.
Oh, a "conspiratorial" smile, 'eh, Globe? Yes, the FIX is IN, isn't it?
Around her, about a dozen other volunteers quietly went about their phone calls. The campaign's state headquarters, in a cavernous loft space in a renovated mill building, looked shipshape. At the entrance, a spare couch sat next to a row of flags. Even the candy was neatly contained in two large bowls.
But it lacked the happy buzz in the air at the Obama headquarters a few blocks away, where several dozen staff and volunteers chattered busily in a sprawling suite of offices that resembled messy dorm rooms. Homemade treats were piled on one table, while a cluster of middle-aged women painted signs around another. Someone had written "YAY!" in masking tape on the floor.
ENTHUSIASM FACTOR: OBAMA!!! Another reason he wins in a FAIR ELECTION!
The McCainiacs are more dogged than joyful. Monday afternoon, Jim McConaha, cochairman of "Citizens for McCain" in the state, dropped campaign literature in Penacook, a village on the north side of Concord and home to many moderate Republicans, Reagan Democrats, and independents. Nobody was home, but McConaha checked off each house on his list, careful not to skip a single one.
"If signs mean anything, there's a real balance here," he said. A white clapboard house with black shutters had a McCain sign, as did a ranch-style house with a dozen or so antennas. --more--"
Yeah, and IF SIGNS MEANT ANYTHING then RON PAUL WON the PRIMARY!!
I KNOW because I LIVE HERE and I DROVE THROUGH NEW HAMPSHIRE ALL LAST YEAR!!!!!
Also see:
Stolen Elections: 2004
Stolen Elections: 2006
How to Rig the 2008 Presidential Election
Election Poll Update
AP Prepares Election Theft Narrative
