Obama Camp Again Dissing Ohio
June 16, 2008
This is not the first time that we have heard from a member of the Obama camp about how it can garner 270 electoral votes and not win Ohio. More recently according to the Dispatch, Obama adviser David Plouffe secretly told a crowd how they can win this thing without Ohio’s help.
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.
Now it is no secret that Obama was not my choice for the democratic candidate for president, but he is the nominee and I think he is an intelligent man. I don’t understand why his surrogates keep suggesting that Obama doesn’t need Ohio to win. Many Ohioans want change, even if it isn’t Clinton and will happily vote for him. But they also like to be told how important their vote is to this process and to the eventual ascension of the winning candidate to the office of president. He really needs to get a hold of his advisers and quiet them down.
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As I said on CNN yesterday, It would be more logical to take the state where Kerry lost by only a few hundred thousand then to pay to go after several states that he lost by 3-7 points
Thanks
Robert Barga
http://whalertly.blogspot.com/
Well, if the Obama Campaign believes it can win without Ohio, then all of us progressive grassroots and netroots activists should lay down and let them do it all by their lonesome selves… no donations… no volunteers… no blogging.
Ohio progressive grassroots groups were almost wiped out because of the ODP and Kerry Campaign’s inept handling of the 2004 election and neglect of the recount. Now, it looks like the ODP Obama will drive another nail into the coffin of Ohio’s progressive grassroots groups and netroots bloggers by completely ignoring their importance.
The StrickFern machine will be all smiles as they witness the death of progressive grassroots/netroots activist groups and bloggers. After all, every progressive activist candidate, who is bold enough to run in a primary, gets viciously axed by Dem Party moderates’ unjustified endorsement elimination procedures.
It is obvious that the StrickFern machine has its eye on how to expand its act regarding the myth that so-called nonprofits of Progress Ohio and America Votes Ohio actually organize progressive activists instead of illegally coordinating with the moderate establishment Democrats who unjustly control StrickFern’s Ohio Democratic Party.
The real issue is not how well Obama or McCain might do in the closely divided battleground states, but that we shouldn’t have battleground states and spectator states in the first place. Every vote in every state should be politically relevant in a presidential election. And, every vote should be equal. We should have a national popular vote for President in which the White House goes to the candidate who gets the most popular votes in all 50 states.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral vote — that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The major shortcoming of the current system of electing the President is that presidential candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the voter concerns in states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. The reason for this is the winner-take-all rule which awards all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state. Because of this rule, candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of closely divided “battleground” states. Two-thirds of the visits and money are focused in just six states; 88% on 9 states, and 99% of the money goes to just 16 states. Two-thirds of the states and people are merely spectators to the presidential election.
Another shortcoming of the current system is that a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide.
The National Popular Vote bill has been approved by 18 legislative chambers (one house in Colorado, Arkansas, Maine, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Washington, and two houses in Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, California, and Vermont). It has been enacted into law in Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These states have 50 (19%) of the 270 electoral votes needed to bring this legislation into effect.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
Possible for Obama to win w/o Ohio? yes. Probable? Not so much.
[...] Obama Camp Again Dissing Ohio This is not the first time that we have heard from a member of the Obama camp about how it can garner 270 electoral votes and not win Ohio. More recently according to the Dispatch, Obama adviser David Plouffe secretly told a crowd how … [...]
Susan:
I can see two problems with direct popular voting. First, it can lead to serious confusion, and possibly fraud, in close Presidential elections. I am thinking of the ballots that were allegedly impounded in Florida in 2000 and in Illinois in 1960, both “battleground states” in their respective elections. Election by popular vote would intensify this trend, not reduce it.
Secondly, and more important to those of us who cherish the Constitutional form of government, is that it would eliminate the last vestige of State influence on the Federal government. In other words, it would accelerate a trend toward making the States mere administrative subdivisions of the Feds. A free society needs _less_ centralization of authority, not more; as I hope the experience of the last seven years would suggest.
Harold