Campaign Diaries

Ever since a wave of springtime Michigan polls showed John McCain with a narrow lead, it has been clear that this state will be central to the presidential race, more so than it was in the past two elections. With Pennsylvania and Florida looking more solidly blue and red than they did four years ago, Michigan has joined Ohio as the biggest toss-up of the electoral map, and its importance is only heightened by the fact that Obama is pursuing more of a small state strategy.

Iowa and New Mexico are currently leaning towards Obama, leaving him 5 electoral votes short of a tie if a keeps all the Kerry states - and no state is as vulnerable for take-over than Michigan. This shows how crucial that state is: If Obama keeps Michigan, he will be in a great position as he can get those 5 remaining electoral votes via many states he is actively contesting (NV, VA, CO, OH, MT, NC). If McCain picks up Michigan, it would become very difficult for Obama to tally up 269 electoral votes.

If anyone has any doubts that Michigan is generating Ohio-like focus, the two camps are now exchanging Michigan-specific ads that start airing this week. As far as I know, Ohio is the only other state in which McCain and Obama are engaged in a state-specific ad wars up until now.

First came the RNC’s “Recovery spot,” which laments Michigan’s economic plight before blaming Obama for opposing offshore drilling. As pictures of congressional leaders cycle next to Obama’s (and I explained yesterday why I was confused by that strategy), the ad says he will be responsible for higher gas prices: “No oil, no recovery” says the spot, somehow thinking it useful to associate that slogan to the face of nationally unknown Chris Dodd:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvEt3KPh2yI"]

Another version of this ad is airing in Ohio, relying on clips from Ohio papers like the Columbus Dispatch rather than Michigan papers. I am puzzled by the decision to highlight the bad state of the economy in Ohio given that voters associate the country’s direction with the Republican Party, but Michigan is one place where that might be an exception. Michigan is in particularly bad condition economically, and part of the blame has gone to the Democratic Party which controls the state-level government, starting with the governorship. Gov. Granholm, once heralded as a Democratic star, has seen her approval rating plummet.

This ad also confirms what we saw throughout the summer: Republicans are confident that energy and their call for drilling will allow them to escape the taint of the Bush Administration’s economic record and will make them look like the proactive country looking for change. Sarah Palin’s selection only eases that argument, and the main policy discussion in her speech last night was devoted to energy questions.

Last night, the DNC’s independent expenditure branch launched a response ad, once again targeting only Michigan. The ad uses footage of McCain’s statement that the “fundamentals of the American economy are strong” - a statement Democrats have been trying to popularize over the past few months. But this spot does something new which I believe makes the message that much more effective: It unearths footage of Bush essentially saying the same thing and then superposes and then superposes the two Republicans’ voices.

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdXaE-mMXTg"]

All in all, viewers hear Bush or McCain say that the fundamentals of our economy are strong five times in 30 seconds. Talk about repetition. This is a message that can certainly resonate in Michigan more that most places. It is meant to make McCain look out-of-touch and get voters (especially blue-collar white voters whom the McCain campaign is so eager to attract) angry.

Obama got more good news this morning when Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick announced that he woudl plead guilty to charges of obstruction of justice and resign. The Kilpatrick saga - the Mayor spent a night in jail last month - was becoming a major threat to Obama’s chances in Michigan. For one, it might have been confirming prejudices about black politicians to white voters outside of Detroit. The taint was also threatening to tarnish Obama, who has embraced Kilpatrick in the past. And it was surely going to disrupt Obama’s crucial ground game in Detroit.

The importance of Obama building up huge margins in Detroit cannot be overstated, and a big-city mayor obviously plays a large role in helping a presidential candidate by mobilizing his own machine. But with Kilpatrick in office, the acting mayor was distracted, could not be used as a surrogate and was even angry at Obama for distancing himself. At the very least, Obama can now travel to Michigan without having to answer a deluge of questions about whether he will meet with or still stands by Kilpatrick.