McCain Uses The Giuliani Strategy, This Time in Pennsylvania

The McCain campaign is not only stopping spending money in Colorado, but they are also stopping expenditures in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine, and New Hampshire as well. They’re not pulling out as dramatically as they did in Michigan, but expanding the current ad buy to between now and the election. In practical terms, this means Obama can swamp what little is left.

This following is telling:

Here’s what else Duhaime had to say, as passed along by Drogin:

He said the campaign is operating three dozen offices in the state and is making hundreds of thousands of phone calls every week to identify and persuade potential GOP voters. The data-mining efforts are aimed at identifying former Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters and independents who are prepared to consider McCain’s message. He said the internal data is “trending” in McCain’s direction and is showing “a lot of things” not apparent in the opinion polls.

Overall, Duhaime said, McCain has drawn strong support from what he called a “Democrats for McCain” movement in and around Scranton, in the state’s western Rust Belt region. “That gives us optimism,” he said.

McCain anticipates good news as well, he said, in the southern and central part of the state, near Harrisburg, York and Lancaster -– all cities that the candidate, his wife, Cindy, or running mate Sarah Palin have visited in the last few days.

Duhaime predicted that McCain would surprise prognosticators even in Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold where Obama is seen to hold a hammerlock. Kerry won the city by more than 400,000 votes four years ago, winning every single ward. Duhaime said that Obama wouldn’t be able to repeat that feat, however, and that McCain would garner more votes than Bush did in the city.

The McCain focus on Pennsylvania may end up paying dividends, given how easily Clinton, in April’s Democratic primary, bested Obama in areas of the state such as Scranton. But if that prediction about Philadelphia pans out, jaws will be dropping on election night.

The DuHaime mentioned here is Mike DuHaime, and if this sounds familiar, it’s because he was saying the exact same thing at the beginning of the year when he was Rudy Giuliani’s campaign manager. It’s shocking to me the McCain campaign puts Giuliani’s former campaign manager in public to defend this move.

Why Pennsylvania then? The obvious answer is it has enough electoral votes to give McCain the election even if Obama wins the above states and potentially Virginia as well. But why can he win Pennsylvania? There’s no obvious answer. Al Giordano thinks it’s a combination of a Jeremiah Wright onslaught on its way also with a desire t change the narrative about only red states being in play. Nate Silver thinks its McCain’s staff misreading their competitiveness. I’m not sure though. McCain has always thought he’d be competitive in Pennsylvania. 

It’s worth noting that the polling average in Pennsylvania has favored Obama over McCain ever since the primary there in April:

These numbers are pretty clear. I can’t imagine there’s precedent for that much of a turnaround in two weeks in a single state without major movement nationwide.