Wampum

Two out of three of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania determines everything. At least that's what we've been saying here. The Obama campaign's electoral college narrative is Colorado and π is an integer.

The current Public Policy Polling (Dem) numbers are 45/45, with Obama -3 from July and McCain +5. The July Quinnipiac (Ind) had Obama 2 points over McCain. The June Quinnipiac had Obama 6 points over McCain. Rasmussen (Ind) gave McCain a 8 point lead (10 points with leaners) last month, after showing the race tied in June.

Tomorrow the Obama Campaign will open its North Columbus field office, a little bit more than a month late. This is the office that does the north half of the city, and they simply have to over-perform, here at the top of the teens-and-twenties tree and its feeders, to overcome the balance of state. That's a month late on filling the phone banks doing dial canvas, a month late on attacking the change of residence re-registration numbers, a month late on new voter reg, a month late on the two-week window to register 100% of the OSU zip code that has, as usual, been 100% purged, a month late on staffing the field op billets and attacking the constituencies and localities, a month late on cleaning the existing VAN data and adding new data to the VAN, a month late on the famous "new model" houseparties, and a month late on events planning, that is, on free media.

The DNC is supplementing, attempting to fill the gap, contracting with Grassroots Campaigns (GCI), basically the sweat-shop of the tawdry left, to do door-to-door fundraising, an easy match to the GC business model -- a PIRG-like cult of overworked, underpaid drones -- and voter registration and voter ID. They don't coordinate with the down-ticket races, so they don't do voter ID for congressional Dems, or Ohio Senate and House Dems, or the ODP, just Obama, but not "officially".

They're using volunteers for canvas, Obama volunteers, so the quality of the voter ID data for the down-ticket races, for congressional Dems, the Ohio Senate and House Dems, is only as good as Obama volunteers care to make it, if they can keep themselves from falling into persuasion -- and arguing with voters who've not drunk the koolaid.

The money saved is already pre-spent for paid media, for an ad impression density in the media markets on voters that no one, not Obama, not a surrogate, not a down-ticket candidate, not a field operative, not a local party activist, not even a ever-ready-to-share-the-spell Obama volunteer, has correctly ID and executed persuasion, has bothered to meet and greet.

The PPP writers had the humor to write:

The Democrats neglecting to choose Obama are disproportionately white, female, and
middle aged ...

So if Senator McCain picks Governor Ridge, who is a reasonably competent executive (overlooking the colored chart nonsense, not everyone is gifted at signage), its a three-fur.

And π is not an integer.