I'm home on break from college, and since I only received two shifts at my job this week, since the rug shampooer upstairs doesn't seem to work, and since I decided to do most of my Christmas shopping tomorrow, I'm catching up on my politics. For one reason or another, many of my favorite blogs have not updated in the past few hours, so I went over to motherjones.com and stumbled on an article about Paul Hackett. Reading the article, I started to think about something that I've wondered about for a while now: where are the Democrats going to compete in 2008?
One reason why I think about this is that I'm a huge fan of "The West Wing" and watch it every chance I get, even if it's not quite up to level of greatness now that Aaron Sorkin once achieved. In the current race between Santos and Vinick, the Democrats are conceding some states, like California, and competing in others, like Texas. Another reason I think about this so much is that I once read Ruy Tuxeira's great book "The Emerging Democratic Majority," where he described how the Democrats would soon have an advantage as far as national elections go.
So anyway, let's get back to the main question: where are the Democrats going to compete in 2008? So much of it depends on things we cannot fully grasp now. Yet much of it, I imagine, also depends on where we want to compete.
On "The West Wing," in both the current election and the last one, Democrats were competing in states like Kansas and North Dakota. Now, I don't expect us to have the candidate making stops in, say, Utah and Alaska, but why shouldn't we try to make a few stops in, say, Texas?
I know so many people here are keen on the idea of a fifty-state campaign. Sadly, that's not possible, but we cannot concede half the electoral map before the campaign even begins. So once again, where are going to compete in 2008?
Part of it clearly has to do with location. It's easier, for instance, to campaign in a state that borders an already-competitive state. Another big factor is certainly money. Only so much can be spread around, and while certain things are nice in theory, very rarely does the theoretical world match up with the actual world. But another part of it has to do with overlap, by which I mean how much bang for one's buck a person can get out of each dollar spent. In other words, can a campaign poster or advertisement mention both the national and local races? Can media advertising bought in one market for one state spread into another state?
Those questions always lead me to think of the Midwest. For one reason or another, I learned a tiny bit about the way media markets in the Midwest overlap. Supposedly, what is broadcast in Chicago can travel as far as Iowa.
If that's true, why isn't that being used more to our advantage? Why aren't we picking certain spots in Ohio that overlap with spots in Kentucky? We're spending the money there anyway, and while we would probably venture into unfriendly territory in a lot of cases, I can only imagine it's going to help us in the end. And hell, with some smart advertising, some voter registration, some campaign stops, and some luck, perhaps Kentucky can become competitive.
I'd hate to think that the national party hasn't considered this, but that's the impression I have.
So, if don't mind me picking your brains for a moment, where do you think we should compete in 2008? Even if we don't stay there for the entire campaign, I'd like to make an effort to compete in places like Virginia, Texas, and Kentucky.