Word: missourie
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...Even Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush's victory in 2004, now says Obama has enough Electoral College votes to win the White House. According to Rove's reading of state polls, just seven states are toss-ups at this point - Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida - all of which Bush won in 2004. "If the election were held today, Obama would win every state John Kerry won in 2004, while adding New Mexico, Iowa and Colorado to his coalition," Rove announced on his blog Sunday...
Republicans in Missouri used to chuckle over the boasts of Barack Obama's grass-roots campaign, most notably the official claim to have 40 field offices, some covering the reddest and most rural regions of the state, and the unofficial whispers about having as many as 150 paid staffers. As the summer settled in and John McCain opened up what looked like a solid 5-to-7-point lead, Obama's investment of time and resources had Republicans and even some skeptical Democrats asking, Who are all these Obama staffers anyhow, and aren't they just wasting their time...
...More recently, though, Obama's big bet on Missouri doesn't seem like such a joke. The latest St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll has Obama pulling within 1 point of McCain, and a new TIME/CNN poll has the Democratic nominee actually leading his Republican rival by 1 point among likely voters. The increasing tightness of the race - even if it's part of a national wave spurred by a focus on the faltering economy - shows why every doorbell, and every person ringing them, can make a world of difference in an election...
...strategists have long believed that a stronger ground game could turn narrow Democratic losses of recent years into wins. They note that Al Gore never would have needed Florida if he had instead built an organization to turn out an average of 15 additional votes per precinct in Missouri. Team Obama is also vowing to register 75,000 new voters in Missouri - and voter rolls are indeed swelling, up by 200,000 so far, though the secretary of state's office doesn't keep track of how many are Democrats or Republicans...
...have some 2,000 "team leaders" covering every neighborhood of the state. They have been busy for weeks already, knocking on doors and dialing phones in search of those 15 additional voters. On the first weekend of September, according to the Obama campaign, this network visited 30,000 Missouri homes. They finished the month with an even more massive effort, pulling in volunteers from a six-state region with a goal of knocking on 100,000 doors in a single weekend...