Like President Bush, the high command of Barack Obama's presidential campaign claims to pay no attention to unfavorable national polls, asserting that what counts is its aggressive "ground game" in 18 key battleground states.
Key Obama advisers say that they hope to match or exceed the "tremendous" Bush field operation of 2004, which increased Republican turnout by 12 million votes over 2000, beating Democrats' 8 million increase.
As an example, Obama advisers say they've identified 600,000 African-Americans who did not vote in Florida in 2004 and hope to score big among 900,000 young people who did not vote. Bush beat Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in Florida by 381,000 votes in 2004.
And in Pennsylvania, where Kerry won by 145,000, Obama aides said Democrats have registered 360,000 new voters, while Republicans have lost 60,000, for a net shift of 420,000 in the Democrats' direction.
"I never read the Gallup daily tracking poll," one Obama adviser said, concentrating instead on trends in voter enthusiasm and the preferences of independent women, regarded by both sides as a key swing group this year.
On the other hand, a high-ranking official of John McCain's campaign told me that the Gallup track -- showing a McCain lead of two points for the first
time on Tuesday -- was evidence that Obama was losing support, even during his own national convention.
Some GOP pros acknowledge that Obama's well-organized and superbly led campaign has a two-month head start on McCain in field organization, although a top McCain staffer said "we learned in 2002 and 2004 how to micro-target, reach out to voters and get them to the polls, and there's no evidence that the Democrats know how to do it as well as we can."
The McCain chieftain also recounted with some glee how continuing friction between the Obama and Clinton campaigns is sapping Democratic unity and how some key state polls are moving in McCain's direction.
Indeed, on Tuesday, even as top Obama and Clinton officials were denying any discord, Bill Clinton told foreign diplomats that voters might well prefer an unnamed "Candidate Y" with whom they partially disagreed -- but who could "deliver" -- to a "Candidate X" with whom they fully agreed but couldn't deliver.
He denied this hypothetical had anything to do with the Obama-McCain race, but practically no one believed him -- especially because close associates of his were loudly complaining that the Obama campaign was "dissing" the ex-president by not allowing him to speak in prime time on Wednesday.
|
