Campaign Notes

The candidates are making a final push this weekend, with Obama going through the West including southern Nevada, while McCain makes a pitch in Virginia, which for some reason is seen as a battleground state.

Obama better hope the AP poll is accurate, for his campaign hasn't done shit in the last week getting surrogates up here in northern Nevada on his behalf. Kerry did it last time, and he lost the state by just a couple of percentage points. The Kerry campaign worked its ass off here. Obama seems to think that because of the uptick for Democrats in registrations, he can just rest on his laurels. However, I suspect Nevada isn't as competitive as the Obama campaign tries to pretend.

In the fall of 2004, ALL of the candidates and their spouses campaigned in Washoe County. ALL of them. There were many, many surrogates who came to town from both parties, as I documented on this blog four years ago. Kerry had surrogates coming through the final weekend, which included the late Ann Richards, Wesley Clark, and Madeleine Albright. Dick and Lynne Cheney came to Sparks just hours before Election Day. Thanks to the work of the Kerry and Edwards campaign, the Republican margin of victory was very, very slim statewide, and the margin of victory in Washoe County was cut in half from 2000.

This is not the case this year, though there have been candidates and surrogates here. It's just not like four years ago. It was the primary and caucus campaign where the "celebrities" came in droves.
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