Obama camp sees possible win without Ohio, Fla.
FLINT, Mich. (AP) - June 16, 2008 In a private pitch late last week to donors and former
supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama campaign manager David
Plouffe outlined several alternatives to reaching the 270 electoral
votes needed to win the White House that runs counter to the
conventional wisdom of recent elections.
At a fundraiser held at a Washington brewery Friday, Plouffe
told a largely young crowd that the electoral map would be
fundamentally different from the one in 2004. Wins in Ohio and
Florida would guarantee Obama the presidency if he holds onto the
states won by Democrat John Kerry, Plouffe said, but those two
battlegrounds aren't required for victory.
Florida, which has 27 electoral votes this year, gave the
presidency to George W. Bush in the disputed election of 2000.
Ohio, with its 20 electoral votes, ensured Bush of re-election in
2004 in his race against Kerry. Neither state was hospitable to
Obama this year. Clinton handily won in Ohio and she prevailed in
Florida although the national party had punished the state and the
candidates didn't campaign there.
The presumed Democratic nominee's electoral math counts on
holding onto the states Kerry won, among them Michigan (17
electoral votes), where Obama campaigns on Monday and Tuesday.
Plouffe said most of the Kerry states should be reliable for Obama,
but three currently look relatively competitive with Republican
rival John McCain - Pennsylvania, Michigan and particularly New
Hampshire.
Asked about his remarks, Plouffe said Ohio and Florida start out
very competitive - but he stressed that they are not tougher than
other swing states and said Obama will play "extremely hard" for
both. But he said the strategy is not reliant on one or two states.
"You have a lot of ways to get to 270," Plouffe said. "Our
goal is not to be reliant on one state on November 4th."
Plouffe has been pitching such a new approach to the electoral
map in calls and meetings, according to several people who
discussed the conversations on the condition of anonymity because
they were meant to be private. Plouffe confirmed the descriptions
in the interview.
Plouffe and his aides are weighing where to contest, and where
chances are too slim to marshal a large effort. A win in Virginia
(13 electoral votes) or Georgia (15 votes) could give Obama a shot
if he, like Kerry, loses Ohio or Florida.
Plouffe also has been touting Obama's appeal in once
Republican-leaning states where Democrats have made gains in recent
gubernatorial and congressional races, such as Colorado, Nevada,
New Mexico, Montana, Alaska and North Dakota.
Obama's campaign has spent heavily on time and money in
Virginia, where a Democratic presidential candidate hasn't won
since 1964. In recent elections, however, high-profile Republicans
have lost there. And in a sign of how serious Obama is taking the
state, Plouffe dispatched to Virginia many aides who helped Obama
stage his upset win in the Iowa caucuses Jan. 3.
The key, Plouffe told supporters, will be to register new black
voters and new young voters in Virginia.
Likewise, Georgia has many unregistered black voters who could
turn out in record numbers to support the first major-party nominee
who is black, he argued. Plouffe said the campaign also will keep
an eye on Mississippi and Louisiana as the race moves into the fall
to see if new black voters could put them within reach.
In a telling bit of scheduling, Obama declared himself within
reach of the nomination at the statehouse in Iowa, yet another
state he hopes to put in play.
Plouffe is warning Democrats that McCain is an appealing
candidate who has proved he can take votes from the middle before
and could do so again. McCain won New Hampshire as a GOP candidate
in 2000 and 2008, thanks in large part to the state's high number
of independent voters.
Clinton won Michigan's renegade primary after the national party
stripped the state of its delegates for moving its contest to
January. Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot. Clinton handily
won the Pennsylvania primary in April, gaining strong support from
white, working-class voters.
Plouffe argues that McCain squandered his opportunity to reach
independent voters in the past three months.
McCain's aides acknowledge frustration among fellow Republicans
for the slow-to-start campaign. Even though McCain clinched his
party's nomination in early March, his supporters didn't name
operatives to run the must-win states, let alone open offices in
key states. While Democrats hammered each other in their marathon
contest, McCain left aides from his primary states sitting still,
waiting for orders. It took more than two months for McCain's
national headquarters to approve budgets for the battleground
states.
The task, Plouffe said, is to define McCain as tied to Bush on
the economy, the war and abortion rights. He said the campaign will
go on offense against McCain, besides playing aggressive defense
when criticized.
That promise was also given by Obama, who said Friday night,
"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." Critics
have questioned why a candidate who promotes a new kind of politics
planned such bare-knuckles tactics.
Among independent voters, McCain and Obama are about tied in
favorability ratings in recent polls.
Plouffe in recent days has been making his pitch aggressively -
part cheerleading, part sales job. Many of Clinton's supporters
remain frustrated with how national Democrats resolved the issue of
Michigan's delegates, agreeing to seat all of them at the
nominating convention but penalizing them by half for violating the
calendar, and Plouffe has tried to quell that frustration.
He wraps up the pitches by asking Democrats to imagine Obama
taking the oath of office. On Friday at the Capitol City Brewery,
about a block from where that would happen, Plouffe pointed toward
the Capitol steps to reinforce the visual.
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Associated Press writer Philip Elliott reported from Columbus,
Ohio.