Obama Plans To Stretch McCain Across The Country

Posted by Ashish on 06.05.2008

Smart strategy may further limit McCain's already limited resources and prove Howard Dean's vision right...

Obama campaign stratagist David Axelrod is making no attempt to hide the fact that Obama is planning to stretch John McCain all over the country in the general election. Obama is expected to have a HUGE financial advantage, something Al Gore and John Kerry never came close to having (George W. Bush raised more money than both of them). With that money, Obama is planning to sink resources into several red states that Republicans probably never expected to have to compete in this year. The point isn't to win all these states (though obviously an upset here or there would be nice), it's to force McCain to take his money, which he is already going to be light on, and have him spend it in states like Georgia, Mississippi, and even Texas, thus further handicapping him in the real battleground states like Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, etc.

Obama did basically the same thing in Pennsylvania against Hillary Clinton. He didn't win the state, but he forced her to spend herself into debt.

McCain raised $21.5 million last month making it one of his best months thus far. But it's worth noting that during the month, he was not sharing the fundraising pool with another Republican nominee and his battle with Obama started becoming news. Obama has raised MUCH more than that every month this year while splitting the fundraising pool with Hillary Clinton. Virtually all of Clinton's big name donors are now going to shift to Obama, opening up a huge new source of fundraising in addition to the 1.5 million donors he already has (McCain has, at most, a few hundred thousand donars). Not to mention the fact that Obama still has millions of dollars sitting in his primary warchest, money he will have to spend before the convention in August. The money advantage in this election is going to be a very real problem for McCain and is something the Republicans haven't had to deal with in a very long time. It just doesn't appear as if the Republicans were ready for a 50-state race this year. Give Howard Dean credit, he saw this years ago and despite being blasted by many for "wasting money," his work combined with the infastructure Obama has now built in every single state and the money he has to spend, has the party ready to compete in places they otherwise would have ignored.