Barack Obama's strategy to attack all 50 states and win over traditionally 'red states' to 'blue states' is a recipe for disaster.
To put it simply, presidential campaigns aren't won on 'statewide' campaigns, but they're won over appealling to core consitutent issues and by winning in key zip codes. The notion that Obama is going to win over some traditionally Republican voters 'just because' they're disenchanted with President Bush's destruction of the GOP is too short-sighted.
Obama needs to focus his campaign on the issues Americans are talking about: jobs, gas prices, food costs and keeping their homes. Let's flashback to Bill Clinton's two presidential campaigns in 1992 and in 1996. The young gun Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton versus the veteran war heroes George Bush, then Bob Dole. Inexperience v. 'tried and tested'. Big ideals and lofty visions versus the GOP standby themes.
In 1992, once Clinton boiled the campaign 'to the economy, stupid', American voters began to wake up. Obama needs to find an opportunity every day to talk about how Americans are not better off than they were seven years ago - slightly borrowing from Pres. Ronald Reagan's theme, and illustrate what he'll do to make lives better. Obama needs to make pitstops in all those places Sen. Hillary Clinton defeated him soundly and reassure those voters that he's their guy: Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and California.
Once Obama's mapped out his town-by-town, city-by-city economic tour, his analysts need to do so data analysis, and dig deep into the zip codes of independents and pockets of areas that may have vulnerable Republican voters. That's how the McCain camp will be doing it. Look at how Bush won in 2004: Hundreds and thousands of more voters per district more than Sen. John Kerry. The GOP machine mobilized street teams to go door-to-door telling their story about why four more years of Bush was needed. You know McCain will be working overtime to secure his conservative base, and hope to swing just enough indies to make a difference.
Obama needs to aggressively motivate and activate his cadre of young voter support, give them some sneakers, a ton of buttons, bumper stickers and yard signs, and make his case on why his form of "change" is the right kind of change.
If Obama gets sucked into this unfocused, 50-state, broadly based strategy, he will lose momentum, and not earn the trust of critical groups of voters in neighborhoods in key states that will translate into crucial votes in the fall.
