The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Obama ‘Grinding It Out’ in Ohio

Posted on | October 26, 2012 | 19 Comments

“Team Obama knows the campaign doesn’t have the magic it had in 2008. Crowds are enthusiastic, but not over-the-top enthusiastic. Obama’s strategy is to make up the excitement gap by just grinding it out, doing the organizational work of getting the people most likely to support the president — blacks, Latinos, women, the young — to vote early. By doing so, he hopes to build up a sufficient bank of votes to prevail over Romney on November 6. It’s the no-magic campaign.”
– Byron York, Washington Examiner

The evidently widespread faith that Team Obama can overcome any disadvantage through a superior “ground game” is the final bulwark of Hope, and we’re now 10 days from learning whether this faith will be justified. However, Republicans should not be discouraged by reports of the Democrats’ early-vote advantage.

It seems that many Republican voters are just old-fashioned and believe in voting in person on Election Day. I was in Virginia “Victory Centers” last week and heard the phone-bankers make call after call to folks who would say, yes, they support Romney, but no, they don’t want to vote early. And I remind you again what RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said last month in Ohio, when all the polls were running against Romney:

“We’re going to outspend the DNC 10-to-1 [in Ohio] for the next six weeks… We’re going to crush ‘em on the ground.”

Given the recent report that the DNC is essentially bankrupt, and that the RNC entered October with an 18-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s outfit, Priebus’s promise now seems a lot less like bragging than it did in late September when, according to Quinnipiac, Obama led by 10 points in Ohio. The latest Rasmussen poll has Ohio tied and, looking at the internals of another poll, Ed Morrissey says:

It’s a razor-close race in Ohio, but if Romney has knocked six points off of Obama’s 2008 gender gap and turned an eight-point deficit among independents into an eight-point advantage in a cycle where Democratic enthusiasm won’t come close to matching 2008, I have to think that the magic has already shifted to Romney.

We’ll see. I plan to return to Ohio next week. I’d rattle the tip jar, but with Dan Riehl in the hospital, I urge you to go hit Dan’s tip jar instead. I did.

 


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Category: Election 2012, Ohio

Comments

  • joethefatman

    Any updates on Mr. Riehl or Zilla?

  • Alan Markus

    Gosh, I haven’t been to Dan Riehl’s site in a long time. I followed the link at Instapundit. Shows why bloggers would be well advised to have a back-up plan for moderating comments in case they become incapacitated. Unless, the quality of his commenters changed that much since I was last there. I am referencing the post about the murder of Autumn Pasquale by two teenage neighbors.

  • Roxeanne de Luca

    Please do NOT use the term “grinding it out” when Obama’s campaign states that voting for him is like losing your virginity to him. Please, no.

  • http://2012.ak4mc.us/ McGehee

    Merely clicking the UP button on this one isn’t enough.

  • gloogle gloogle

    Stacy, please do a post on the latest news on Benghazi, and how Obumbles deserted the ex-Seals who were desperately fighting and calling for backup. This has GOT to be headlined as much as possible.

    We have GOT to rid ourselves of this despicable excuse for a human being.

  • ReaganiteRepublican
  • mikebuz

    I wonder if the Romney campaign isn’t consciously using Ohio to bleed the Obama campaign dry. Both candidates are throwing massive resources into the Buckeye State in terms of dollars and candidate face time (I know, I live here), but this leaves less to use in other major states, which have been left to more or less float with the national trends. But those trends are now flowing Mitt Romney’s way and Obama may not have the time or resources left to mount an effective counterattack (assuming one was available). The result is that states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are suddenly competitive or actually leaning Romney. The irony may be that Obama ends up winning Ohio but losing the election because states he had assumed were locked up fall away as he exhausts his resources in the Buckeye State.

  • http://twitter.com/BeccaJLower Becca Lower

    I totally agree with you, Mike. More likely that Romney takes MI or WI (or PA!), because the “lost” ballots are sitting in Cuyahoga county car trunks, just waitin’ for Nov. 6. Speaking of Obama, did you hear he’s coming back to Cincy? Halloween! haha

  • EsausMessage

    I live in Virginia and I gotta tell ya, it doesn’t really have early voting like Ohio and others. It has a lame procedure that requires you to apply for an absentee ballot, if you swear that you cannot vote on election day, and you can complete and submit that absentee ballot in person with the local registrar. It’s a complete pain in the butt. Might as well wait until election day. (Virginia’s governments has just no interest in moving out of the 19th century any time soon.)

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    That is the way it is supposed to be – absentee only for those who cannot physically go to the polls.

    Voting a month early, before hearing the full case each candidate makes, is not responsible exercise of the franchise.

    We should not be encouraging lazy and uninformed people to vote anyway. That’s how we got Obama.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    The DNC’s funding problem stems from OFA’s total control of the combined money raised. This is typical for incumbent Presidents in having full control, but atypical in that Obama is keeping nearly all the money raised for his own campaign.

    Remember how much he raised last month? And yet DNC is broke now?

  • Roxeanne de Luca

    Well, it also favours the candidate with the most money – the person who can flood the airwaves with ads long before the debates start and continue through the home stretch.

    Here in MA, it would also favour the incumbent: our primaries are so close to the election (seven weeks prior) that it is difficult for challengers to mount an effective campaign in that time.

    What it does not do is create a situation in which the candidates have time to make their appeals and the people take the time to inform themselves.

  • Adobe_Walls

    There’s nothing in the constituton about early voting.

  • Adobe_Walls

    Assuming Romney wins Florida, NC and Virginia which I do and assuming Stephen Greene is correct and Romney takes Colorado (which I do assume) OccupyResoluteDesk must win Ohio. If that’s the case Romney has to win either PA, Ohio or Michigan, singly or Wisconsin plus either NH or Iowa or Nevada (longer shot in my opinion).

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001424721840 Sheila Firmin

    isn’t that code for the gals who grind and then need a free abortion

  • Quartyermaster

    It does state the election day, and makes no provision for even absentee voting.

  • Bonnie_

    I live in a deep Democrat county in Colorado and I won’t vote before election day. My early or absentee vote would go into a Democrat controlled office staffed by people who are very interested in making sure the Democrats win. On election day my ballot is put in a locked ballot box and counted in front of witnesses from both parties. Vote before election day? No. Not old fashioned. Just wise.

  • EsausMessage

    Look, I have no problem with requiring everyone to vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. And I have no problem with absentee ballots making you swear to your absence on that day, before permitting you one. I just have a problem with Stacy saying that GOP voters have an early voting alternative. In practical terms, they don’t. And their response to the phone banks on this issue makes good sense.

  • JeffS

    My “vote by mail” ballot is sitting right in front of me; I plan to deposit it in the county voting office on 6 November. Just so it goes straight into a monitored box, you understand.

    It’s not that I don’t trust our county staff. It’s just that I want to be sure.