Not for nothing, but I was looking at a map of the Confederate States of America and, it bears a striking resemblance to McCain’s electoral map.
By my count, McCain got about 50 electoral votes from places not associated with the Confederacy.
Correlation does not equal causation, but the Republican Party is currently the party of the South. Arizona likely would have gone for Obama if McCain was not from there. The interests of the Mountain West are not well aligned with the interests of the South. Unless the GOP retools pretty quickly, I would expect Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas as being ripe for Democratic incursion. On the other hand, if the GOP puts the sensibilities of the Mountain West in the forefront of its platforms, I suspect it will bounce back quickly.
At about 9 pm, Chris and I were talking while watching the TV at Perry Dem. headquarters. I looked at that blue area and proposed we give it a catchy name like “The Union”. But I think McCain lost Virginia and NC from the Old Confederacy last night. NC should be ours when all is said and done.
To answer Rev from another thread: Perry is a Democratic county. However, the ground game brought it home, since last election we went for Bush by I think four votes. The ground game was largely phone banking in the primary. I think Obama got 1/3 of the Dem vote in the primary and the entire party machine was in the Hillary camp. They came on board for the general and focused on the rest of the ticket while also being pro-Obama, but largely focusing on the state races and the Hill race and leaving Obama to the Obama team.
Meanwhile, the Obama team of volunteers pushed that race. We had a paid staffer from teh national campaign organizing this part of the state, and a motivated core of volunteers, a few of whom carried a tremendous work load. I threw in some hours after work and on weekends and knocked on more than 150 doors and made an equal number of phone calls, and many in the crew did many multiples of those numbers. After the time change, a lot of that street work was done after dark.
I dragged my last voter to the polls less than an hour before closing, and Obama carried that precinct by 3. Our final tally was 61% to 38%. Like many in the country, this campaign became our overriding obsession. Having poured over the primary results and watching the results last night, Chris and I felt by 10:30 that there was a pretty solid path to a 20,000 vote win for us, and I think Obama exceeded that. It was pretty gut-wrenching waiting for it, though (Lake County had to get all tantric, when all we wanted was to get off and get to sleep).
By as early as about 8 pm, Ian–our paid guy from the national campaign–was extremely confident that Indiana was ours.
I think I’m recalling correctly that Ian had been given the choice of Colorado or Indiana to go to. Basically the notion that Indiana could go to Obama was considered so absurd by the conventional wisdom, that he just had to be a part of it. He had a vision months ago of the possibility of it happening, and the drive to work for it. That’s the kind of people Obama had on the ground everywhere.
T, thanks for all your work. I did a smaller amount in Indy and was awed by the passion, energy, persistence and organization of the staff and volunteers.
Eh, Obama won Florida and North Carolina and Virginia, and almost won Missouri. The mountain west (as opposed to the pacific northwest) just wants government to leave them alone. Montana isn’t so much conservative (in the GOP vernacular) but populist. They are anti-corporation, pro-consumer – but only really if the corproation is from elsewhere and doing business with Montanans. They harbor suspicion toward you if you’re not from there. Seriously, my company (property insurer) is being sued by one of our policyholders – a retired California lawyer. As between him and us, it’s a tossup as to who a Montana jury will hate more. :) Also, how giddy am I that my home state went blue?