Reconsidering McCain's Strategy

After attacking McCain's campaign strategy in a recent post, I have reconsidered. It turns out that Palin was not, in fact, going to campaign in West Virginia, which would have been a ridiculous decision, because if he might lose West Virginia, he's certainly lost the election. She was just landing in WV and then campaigning in Ohio, which makes much more sense.

But it also does make sense for McCain to campaign in states like Iowa. As it stands now, McCain is going to get crushed. Just utterly obliterated. He'll make Bob Dole look like Samuel Tilden. There is not nearly enough time before Election Day for McCain to fight back to a tie state-by-state. It's going to take a huge event, like Obama calling McCain a cracker tomorrow night or an al Qaeda attack, for McCain to get close to reversing the 8 point deficit he faces right now; campaigning in Iowa instead of North Carolina or vice versa isn't going to win him the election. But if every states moves 6 or 7 points to the GOP, then it's states like PA, VA, and IA which are going to decide the election. There is absolutely no scenario in which North Carolina is going to be where the election is won or lost, because if North Carolina is close, McCain's lost Ohio, Virginia, and a bunch of other battleground states that are more blue than North Carolina.