Barack Obama's campaign chief of staff, Jim Messina, had some interesting comments today. He spoke to the Iowa delegation, as did Speaker Pelosi. Messina was talking about some electoral strategy, and suggested the Obama campaign is going to contest Arizona. Look how he put it:
"If Senator McCain continues to be the schmuck he’s being, we’re going to play there, you know, and go tell some truth."
Wooooooo boy. The "schmuck" part is pretty interesting, but I'm even more interested in the "go tell some truth" remark. Erik the Red had a diary earlier today in which he mentions McCain's pal G. Gordon Liddy. Are they going to talk about this? Are there plans in place to start smacking him around over Charles Keating?
Them's fightin' words.
And you thought Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com was doing some serious math? Consider this piece of information from Messina:
"We actually have four phD statisticians on our staff in Chicago that do nothing all day but crunch numbers."
Still grinding your teeth over these stupid ass daily tracking polls? Worried that Obama's only +1 in today's Gallup? Behold:
"The national polls don't matter to us. We don't look at them in Chicago. We focus on the 18 states we have to have to win this election."
If they don't care about tracking polls, then what DO they care about? Well, there's been a lot of talk here lately about turnout. Getting out the youth vote, getting out the African American vote.... things that Democrats have talked about doing in previous elections, but haven't had the kind of success we need in order to take back the White House. But you can't help noticing the historic registration and turnout numbers in this primaries, and with voter registration drives taking place all over America, it appears the Obama campaign is taking this stuff very seriously. I'd go so far as to say they're betting their campaign on it:
"We care more about the enthusiasm gap in the campaign in the daily polling than we do the head-to-head."
Ahhhhhh, I feel better. You know the stuff about Democrats being fired up and ready to go and Republicans simply settling on McCain? That could be the difference this year.
When have these guys ever NOT done what they needed to do? They needed to raise a lot of money in the first half of 2007 to show they were serious... they needed to win Iowa... they needed to win South Carolina... they needed a decent showing on Super Tuesday... they needed to run the table in February... you get my point. As I listen to Barack Obama receive the Democratic nomination on the TV behind me, I urge my fellow Democrats to place their faith and trust in the Obama campaign to do what they need to do in order to win this election.
Jim Messina has told us today that the Obama campaign is prepared to bare its teeth, ripping John McCain to shreds. They've shown incredible timing and patience, and we should know that all the hard work we're doing (donating, phone banking, canvassing) will pay off.