Obama's 50-state strategy
Posted: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 6:47 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC's Jim Popkin
Red State. Blue State. They’re all Obama states to David Plouffe.
Speaking for an hour today in rapid-fire bursts to a room full of reporters at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, the Obama campaign manager outlined the campaign’s “path to victory in November.”
VIDEO: A Race for the White House panel takes a look at a map of Republican states Barack Obama plans to target in his campaign for the presidency.
The Dem wunderkind tried to convince reporters that, actually, there are multiple paths to election-day success.
“We have a lot of ways to get to 270” electoral votes, Plouffe said.
Aided by a Power-Point demonstration with slides titled, “Expanding the Map: Turning Red States Blue” and “Enthusiasm Gap,” Plouffe whipped through state after state and predicted they may all be in play come November.
“We want to play a lot of offense,” Plouffe said.
His tone wasn’t cocky, but it was exceedingly confident, several reporters noted after the event.
The GOP stronghold of Alaska?
“Competitive,” Plouffe said.
Georgia?
“Dead heat.”
Florida?
“Enormously competitive…a very close race.”
Plouffe said he is counting on record voter turnout, old-fashioned enthusiasm for Obama and a grassroots “persuasion Army” of supporters in precinct after precinct to win the day.
“Time is our friend here,” he said. And he promised to place campaign staffers in all 50 states, even those they assume they will lose. “There will be some states where we will have one staff or two.”
The campaign released an e-mail copy of the Power-Point presentation to reporters, but did not include slides that forecast the states where Obama and McCain are strongest, and weakest.
