The Bush campaign strategy is puzzling: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Colorado... all states he has no shot of winning or where he should be winning. There are two explainations:
- Bushco is arrogant and believe their own SCLM talking points that they are ahead in the polls and they are doing a "victory lap".
- They know they are going to lose and they are shoring up the base, making sure they keep at least the House.
I believe #2 is more likely...
More...
Any reasonable person can look at the collection of polls and see that Bush is at 47 or below in a significant number of states, and at 48-49 (borderline depending on third parties) in many more. There is simply now way to make up that deficit.
So... they run up the base (running ads in Texas), help where they can.
I believe this is part of their "if we lose" strategy:
- If we lose the electoral, maybe we win the popular vote. If we win the popular vote, we'll challenge even if Kerry is clearly the electoral winner and even if we won that way last time.
- If we lose both the EV and PV then we will challenge every close state- pick the 5-6 closest and cast an air of illegitimacy, even if Kerry is eventually named President.
- If we lose by a large margin in the EV (blogger jgkojak is predicting Kerry winning with 316EVS) and we can't challenge, then we will challenge anyway, make it look like the Dems won suspiciously.
- Oh, and if we lose we're removing all the 'J' 'F' and 'K' keys from White House computers.
They want to make it impossible for Kerry to govern, even if Kerry wins. The only way IMHO Kerry could win without a challenge is in a 400+ vote landslide (and 404 EVs is all I can see Kerry receiving MAXIMUM).