I am sick and tired of everyone presuming that the Republicans have a big advantage this year because McCain is close to wrapping up the nomination and can start campaigning for the general election. This thought assumes that having Barack and Hillary fight for votes in all of the various states is a bad thing.
I suggest to you that it is inherently a good thing that our nominee is not yet decided.
First of all, when Bill Clinton won in 1992, he did not wrap up the nomination until March. But in 2004, Kerry had basically wrapped up the nomination after Super Tuesday. Kerry was able to focus on a national campaign. So, he did not campaign in the red states and focused on a swing state strategy. That worked out well for Senator Kerry.
Let's instead look at what is happening now. In every state other than Alabama, there have been more Democratic votes than Republicans. Even South Carolina had more Democrats voting. What makes this statistic so useful is that until now, the Republicans have had a contested race so that there was every reason to believe that they would come out and vote. Yet, we have done better.
Our candidates are being forced to campaign everywhere because every vote counts. Because every vote counts, Virgina and Nebraska and Louisiana and Washington will now get a lot of attention and each candidate will have to build a grassroots infrastructure in those states as a result. Maine will get attention. Wisconsin will get attention. Even Texas will get a lot of attention now. Not only will this force the candidates to build a national infrastructure, it will help the party overall by allowing the entire country to realize that our candidates is not a screaming haridan or a scary black muslim. They will see an intelligent woman with a detailed understaanding of policy and workable solutions or a rising star who inspires people and bleives in equality and working for solutions instead of demonization of others. Is there anyone who thinks that making sure everyone knows our candidates well is a bad thing?
If this year is going to be a true 1932 election (see this diary), then we will need to run a 50 state campaign strategy. This contested election by two highly qualified candidates will only help because each candidate will be able to build a base of support everywhere and be able to help our candidates running for congress and the senate.
In the meantime, What is McCain going to run on? He is going to run on the surge, which is not working and is failing as we all expected. He is going to run on tax cuts for the rich which won't work in a recession. He is gong to run on confronting Iran, which won't work after the last NIE. He will attack Hillary or Barack as too liberal, but the country trusts us more on every issue. Plus, it is harder to demonize someone after you get to know them.
Barack will no longer seem scary because all of those red state voters will have heard of him and realized that he is not a sleeper agent. He is a leader of people. Hillary will no longer seem like a hippie feminist liberal. She will seem more like a the high achieving technocrat who knows how to solve problems. IMHO, this primary season is the best thing that could have happened to the party this year. The only thing that can hurt would be a brokered convention that got personally nasty. However, I think that is unlikely to happen because both sides seem to realize that it would be counterproductive.
We are going to win this year and this contested race is going to make it a big win nationally.