The non-"news": John King at CNN reports that the top of the McCain camp has realized that IA and NM (duh!) are off their board.
The good news: they think CO is off their board, too. If Obama has Kerry + IA, NM, & CO by admission of the McCain campaign, how do they expect to win? That's 273 for Obama, 266 for McCain.
O'er the fold we go...
John King, via The (hack) Page
http://link.brightcove.com/...
The delusion: they think they can flip PA's 21 EVs in the final two weeks.
Not so, you say! I agree.
Per 538, PA is +9.8% Obama, or "safe". Currently, it projects as a 98% win percentage for Obama.
Today, however, Sean Quinn, the other reason 538 is required reading, posted an interesting piece on the Philly suburbs, precisely where John McCain sees his opportunity to flip PA:
We were in the Philly burbs this weekend, but here's a story about Montana.
About three weeks before the 2006 Tester-Burns election, MSU-Billings put out a poll that showed Jon Tester up by 13 points. This was an especially iffy poll, one in the John Zogby category. We knew internally that the race was much, much tighter, and we also knew that our small but steady lead over the summer months would evaporate the final weekend. The race would be a tossup left to the ground game.
But when the poll came out, I began finding volunteers that much harder to convince to trade their free time for knocking and calling help in a race they erroneously felt was safe due to bad polling. Some explicitly told me, aw, Tester's gonna win, we're just figuring out where to have our Election Night watch party. As an organizer, my head nearly exploded even as I calmly smiled through it and kept at the persuasion. Jon Tester won by less than 1%, and the race wasn't called until the next day. Out of roughly 400,000 votes cast, we won by 3,562.
What we're seeing on the ground with volunteering, especially with public polls showing double digit leads in Pennsylvania, is that the "flake rate" for volunteers is higher. "Flake rate" is the term for how the percentage of people who sign up to do a canvassing or phonebanking shift, and then don't show up. It tends to happen when a candidate's supporters get complacent. And it can happen in a hurry.
From On the Road: Philadelphia Suburbs, Pennsylvania
While I don't see McCain flipping PA and I don't see Obama losing VA - and I think that Obama has an edge in FL polling and ground game with Hildebrand and Tewes and ha a real shot at NC, MO and NV, and could see big surprises like WV, ND, MT, GA, even AR (c'mon R2k poll!), my amusement and amazement at the continued delusion of the GOP at the top of the ticket, as well as in down-ticket races all across this purple country, that isn't necessarily the point here.
It's the 4th quarter (or, insert other favorite sports metaphor). Now is not the time to get complacent, to stop canvassing or getting out the vote. Now is the time to continue working as hard as you have been all year.
And for those who haven't volunteered: you have two weeks left to take physical part in the greatest movement of the last 50 years, two weeks to create the stories you can tell the next generations, two weeks to avoid waking up on 11/5 and asking yourself why you didn't just walk or drive down to the Obama office or use the great software at the Obama website to take an active part in making history, by the people, for the people.
Yes. We. (Still.) Can. Throw 'em an anvil.