Maybe. Monday afternoon, ABC moved both from “safe Obama to “lean Obama.”
With one week to go, states that were once considered Obama strongholds now look less solid. Republican groups are putting resources into Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Team Obama brushes off these incursions as wishful thinking by Republicans, but noticeably they are putting money and muscle into both states. Minnesota has been added to Bill Clinton’s schedule. And, Obama campaign officials admitted that they will once again start running ads in Pennsylvania.
VP Joe Biden is spending time in Pennsylvania this week as well, and the Obama campaign is going up with ads there.
Of the two, I would rate PA as the better GOP pickup opportunity. Senate candidate Tom Smith is running a strong race there against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey. History suggests that Smith can win, and Pennsylvania has been trending red: Republicans now control most major state offices and a heavy majority of the state’s counties. Obama has tended to run weaker there than most blue states, and ObamaCare, for which Casey voted, is not popular in the Keystone State. A Smith win or strong showing can help the top of the GOP ticket.
MN, meanwhile, last voted Republican at the top of the ticket in 1972. The fact that it’s shaking even a little bit loose from Obama suggests that he is in major trouble and that his firewall is on fire. The Obama campaign has previously claimed that four states are safe, which are no longer safe: Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.
Together, PA and MN represent 30 electoral votes. They’re worth the Republicans taking a shot at, if only to force the Obama campaign into spending more time and money to keep them.
Update: The Obama campaign just threw an additional $650,000 at keeping “safe” Pennsylvania.
And considering the reports that donations to the Obama campaign have been drying up while those for Romney/Ryan have been increasing, it doesn’t look good for the Obamaster.
I am surprised Romney isn’t making a move in MI. There was a report not so long ago that the gap was not that large and being a “local son” carried some advantage. That would be at least one more lever in the visegrip.
Tom Smith, who worked as a coal miner and eventually owned mines himself (you didn’t dig that!), is hitting Casey hard on the Administration’s “war on coal”.
Maybe the Obama campaign is showing they don’t have much hope to win PA by sending the Gaffemeister there and sending Bill Clinton to shore up the electorate in Minnesota.
Obama is such a coward he doesn’t go where he is losing, he sends Biden or BJ Clinton. The pattern for Biden visits usually indicates the next state that gets shifted to Romney.
By the end of the week this trend may show NY shifted out of the ‘safe D’ category.
The need to prop up Obama in Intrade and the NYT, Politico, and nationally corrupt media is more about downticket races at this point. When Yahoo is saying ‘ignore the polls’ and Reuters saying ‘Ohio doesn’t matter’, you can bet your bippy that The Won is toast. They’re simply trying to save the Senate at this point.
(The Governorships are going R three out of four. There’s coattails there, too.)
Minnesota has been on my list of possible upsets for a while. The solidly Democrat northeast corner of the state relies on mining and logging for high paid jobs while many Democrats in Minneapolis see those occupations as being an affront to sacred Gaia. There are plans to mine copper in NE Minnesota that are pending government approvals. Whose administration is more likely to approve? Historically Minnesota Democrats face grief when the socially conservative blue collar northeast rebels against the dominance of the politically correct Twin Cities. Last week the Duluth papers endorsed Romney.
For the record, native son Walter Mondale was on the Democrat ticket in 1976, 1980 and 1984. Mondale carried Minnesota in 1984 by something like 3,600 votes statewide or under 0.2%. Old timers don’t think it was an honest count but that the fix was in to save the the local Democrats (The DFL) the embarrassment of not carrying the nominee’s home state.
– Selena Zito’s daily reports.