Apologies for the short diary. A couple articles following McCain's pulling out of MI that I just had to spread the word about...
Michael Tomasky writes in The Guardian that McCain's retreat out of MI is the big story, not the VP debate. He compares the election to a chess game - and points out that of the nine remaining battleground states totaling 111 EVs, only the smallest - NH - is a Kerry state (link/quotes below the fold). A couple Kerry states are close-ish, he says, but in neither is McCain poised to win.
More interesting, is a Hill article that says McCain was forced out of MI due to his acceptance of public funding. (Wait, wasn't the RNC supposed to back him up?) Here's Thaddeus McCotter's explanation:
“We’ve had a very tough economy under Bush and Granholm,” he said in reference to Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D). “In Michigan, the 3rd term of Bush had more resonance than in other states.”
[emphasis added]
Get that? A Republican representative (almost?) admitting that McCain is Bush-3... :-)
From Tomasky's article:
The [battleground] list is roughly as follows: Florida (27 electoral votes), Ohio (20), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Indiana (11), Colorado (nine), Iowa (seven), New Mexico (five) and New Hampshire (four).
...
This means that the battle is taking place on what used to be almost entirely red territory but is now up for grabs.
By contrast, aside from New Hampshire, there isn't a single Kerry state where McCain currently has more-or-less even footing in the polls. A few are close-ish - a margin for Barack Obama of five points or fewer - notably Pennsylvania (21) and Minnesota (10). But in none would you say today that McCain is poised to capture it.
In other words, Obama's pawns and knights are advancing across the board. That he will no longer have to fight over Michigan means he can redeploy the troops to, say, Indiana. If he can pick off that state, which hasn't voted Democratic since 1964: checkmate.