Saturday, September 08, 2012
A couple of post-convention thoughts. Someone in the New Yorker has quipped that the Republicans nominated Romney for the same reason that the Democrats nominated Kerry-- in the hope that other people would like him more than they do. Seems about right, and I have a hunch it will work out about the same.
More interesting is this story from New York Magazine. Apparently Mittens is targeting eight swing states: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Hampshire. For the moment Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania are being conceded. Of course things could change, but as the article points out,
The reason this looks worrisome for Romney is that he’s pursuing an electoral-college strategy that requires him nearly to run the table of competitive states. The states where Romney is not competing (and which aren’t obviously Republican, either) add up to 247 electoral votes. The eight states where Romney is competing add up to a neat 100 electoral votes, of which Romney needs 79 and Obama just 23. If you play with the electoral possibilities, you can see that this would mean Obama could win with Florida alone or Ohio plus a small state or Virginia plus a couple small states, and so on.The Democratic Convention was extremely focused on Ohio, and I'd bet a doughnut it end s up blue. Once word gets around about The Marathon Man's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system Florida will look like a reach. And they had the convention in the Tarheel State specifically to help develop a ground game there.
// posted by Bill @ 2:39 PM 
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