Campaign Diaries

With 13 days left before Election Day, John McCain cannot afford a single misstep, but he just had a bad night that augurs badly for his campaign’s confidence, polling trend lines and financial viability.

It is not good for McCain that the coverage he is receiving is increasingly devoted to strategic questions: can he come-back, what will he do to soften up Obama, where does he have a chance, and where is he spending his money? This makes it that much more difficult for McCain to unleash a new attack without being labeled desperate or for him to travel to any red state without a wave of stories being written about why he feels the need to campaign in that state in the first place. In nowhere is this more true than in Pennsylvania - witness this devastating lead in a New York Times article: “People are scratching their heads: Why is Senator John McCain here?”

That said, the McCain campaign’s strategic and financial decisions are necessarily scrutinized more closely because he is playing catch-up in the electoral college and because he has so few resources compared to his opponent that he needs to make more tough (sometimes very tough) calls. And the latest round of expenditures decisions is bound to be very consequential.

The McCain campaign is not pulling out of any new state, but it is reassessing its priorities and it is shifting some money out of five states, where the advertisement money that was supposed to be spend over one week will now be spread out over two weeks - all the way to Election Day. The five states are New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota (all blue states) and… Colorado.

Yes, red Colorado, whose 9 electoral votes combined with Obama’s base of blue states, Iowa and New Mexico is enough to make Obama president. Now, it is important to not overstate this news: The McCain campaign is still spending in the state and the RNC’s independent expenditure division is up on air. But the McCain campaign’s decision is certainly a sign that Republicans are worried the state is too far gone for McCain to still have a shot.

The resources that McCain is pulling out of those five states will go instead to Indiana and to the Miami media market - one of the most expensive in the country. The RNC was already airing ads in Indiana - but not the McCain campaign, yet another sign that the Hoosier state is a highly competitive battleground state. Who would have thought a Republican candidate would have to spend its resources in Indiana instead of Wisconsin and New Hampshire in the final weeks of a presidential campaign? That fact alone summarizes how precarious McCain’s position.

Where does all of this leave McCain? How can he possibly win the White House if he does not capture Colorado (and we aren’t even speaking of other highly vulnerable red states)? He would then be betting everything on Pennsylvania, the one blue state McCain is still fully investing in, and its 21 electoral votes, with which McCain can even afford to lose Virginia.

Trouble is, Pennsylvania polls are atrocious for McCain - and not just over the past five weeks, in which Obama has led by double digits in almost every single public poll. Sure, McCain significantly closed the gap in mid-September, but the last time McCain has led in a poll from the state was in April, just two days after the state’s divisive Democratic primary.

So the McCain campaign appears to have largely come down to the improbable quest for a stunning Pennsylvania comeback. This is a testament to the high odds the campaign faces, but it is not a particularly dumb a move considering McCain’s current situation. The Arizona Senator has his back against the wall and too little money to defend all the red states he needs to win in a sweep that looks increasingly unlikely; he has to make some choices and take a stand in some places but not in others.

Choosing to keep up a large effort in Pennsylvania allows McCain to keep a focused effort in a large state in case he tightens the race nationally in the final 13 days. Furthermore, if there is one state that could see suggestions of racialized voting and perhaps some Bradley effect, it could be Pennsylvania. The state has a history of Democratic voting on the strength of culturally conservative Democrats - and it is that constituency that might be the most prone to pulling away from Obama because of race. Rep. Murtha alluded to this last week by calling his own district “racist,” and Governor Ed Rendell was just revealed to have written two memos to the Obama campaign expressing his “nervousness” about the state and pleading for the nominee to return to campaign in the state.

(I also suggested this morning that one factor behind McCain privileging Pennsylvania to Colorado could be that the former, unlike the latter, does not have early voting so Obama is not able to build on his current momentum and lock in any votes.)

Furthermore, as is typical of any struggling campaign, McCain is being hurt by a slow drip of blind quotes, tactical second-guessing and staff infighting spilling in the media. Mark Salter’s rant yesterday or the New York Times magazine cover story that is coming out on Sunday are the mark of angry aides that are increasingly unwilling to wait until November 5th to voice their frustration. As Hillary Clinton learned in the first few months of the primary, an undisciplined campaign quickly becomes a great distraction.

But perhaps no distraction will be as great in the coming days as Politico’s bombshell revelation that the RNC spent $150,000 “to clothe and accessorize” Sarah Palin and her family over the past seven weeks. This is obviously a huge amount, and one that could land the McCain campaign in legal trouble “under the Federal Election Commission’s long-standing advisory opinions on using campaign cash to purchase items for personal use.”

At the very least, this is a highly embarrassing revelation that surpasses in scope any parallel story that comes to mind (starting with John Edwards’s $400 haircut, which so many Republicans like Mike Huckabee mocked mercilessly). Not only does it come at a particularly inopportune time given the GOP’s effort to not look out-of-touch in times of economic crisis, it also seems like the kind of story that will spark yet another round of intra-GOP fighting - as if the Palin pick had not already caused enough divisions among conservatives.

Overall, then, this is not the type of coverage McCain wants to receive. At this point, every news cycle passed without his landing a major blow on Barack Obama is a news cycle wasted - and there aren’t many news cycles left.