I am not a poll junkie. People, who know me, STILL got to explain the numbers. Not my thing. Don't like to read the FEC reports, got to get my cyber friends to break it down for me. Not my thing. for real.
But I am a ground game junkie and a MONEY junkie.
I have been writing about Barack for well over a year. In fact, it was the EENR (Edwards Evening News Roundup) that started me with the weekly, "This Week With Barack Obama" on this blog. Post it every Sunday or Monday evening.
I have raised over 10K since last August for my personal Obama Campaign fundraising page, a lot of the money came from folks who tipped my Obama Jar when I post "The Weekly". Now I am just going to be blunt.
Barack Obama wants to spend 39M for Florida alone. He has pulled out of Alaska and North Dakota. Scaled back in Georgia and Montana is a wait and see, as in poll numbers. It is now crunch time.
Crunch time meaning, most states voter registration ends on October 6, 2008. The earliest is October 4, 2006, but at least 1/2 the states end on October 6, 2008. Some states have started voting already, but it is for absentee ballot voting in person or by mail. We have 2 weeks to go for getting as many people registered. After this, it is GOTV time. Getting organized for early voting and Election Day.
All of this requires money.
During the summer, many were hand wringing and me privately, about the attack ads on Obama and the tepid response of the Obama Campaign. Again, the campaign has proven, as in the past that they know what they are doing. Now the campaign is ratcheting things up for the final push. And all this requires MONEY.
David Plouffe, Campaign Manager of Obama for America, explained this to the supporters via youtube. Let us know that Florida will cost at least 39M. Folks that is a lot of benjamins, cheddar, bucks or money for one state.
Florida is winnable. In Florida alone, 900,000 new voters became 18 in 2004, many new African-American voters. The Obama Campaign is registering voters at an alarming clip in Florida. The Florida model is ripe for picking. The Sunshine State has been hit hard with the mortgage meltdown, the insurance rates are through the roof, and the job rate is high in this state. This state with the right economic message, especially Social Security for its seniors can go to the Democrats in November. But it takes money.
Indiana has 500,000 new voters this year. Yes, this year alone. The Obama Campaign has been robust in Indiana all year. This is a state under the radar, but can go to the Democrats. Why? Indiana is a working class state. The Republicans have held onto this state, but the economics in Indiana are poor. There are many independents in this state looking at Obama and like everyone else across the board; Bush is not their favorite person. McCain is now being forced to defend Indiana, forced to spend money. We can win it, but it takes money.
We must understand something here. Obama needs to raise MINIMUM 60M a month going into the stretch. He spent over 50M alone, last month. We also must understand that McCain is running a top down campaign, not bottom up as us, thus he is relegating all the GOTV to the RNC and individual states.
McCain is following a more traditional route. He will use his allotment of public money largely for advertising and delegate to the Republican National Committee the costs of the voter turnout operations.
A look at the August FEC reports released on Saturday illustrates the challenge Obama faces as he tries to meets his own aggressive spending targets.
Overall, Obama spent $57 million in August, compared to McCain’s $48 million. That $9 million spending gap, however, is misleading. In reality it’s likely even larger because in August McCain’s campaign was simply burning through primary money that it could not spend after his official nomination at the September convention.
This is where the Palin pick was crucial for McCain. She has got the fence sitters of the GOP, who were not writing checks to McCain, to now support McCain through the RNC. This is why Palin is criss-crossing the country picking up millions for the GOP.
At the start of the general election in September, Republicans had a roughly two-to-one advantage in cash on hand. The RNC and McCain had a combined $160 million in the bank. Another $17 million was tucked away in state party coffers and McCain’s legal and accounting compliance account. Obama and the DNC combined had about $95 million in the bank.
Obama has an opportunity to widen that gap considerably since McCain is not allowed to raise any more money for his campaign coffers.
But the Arizona senator and running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin can raise cash for the RNC, which they will do aggressively. Likewise, the DNC is stepping up its fundraising efforts to try to blunt the RNC’s gains.
Still, there’s another hurdle for the Democrat: It costs money to raise it.
One Democrat estimates that Obama needs to raise between $100 and $110 million just to match McCain’s $85 million federal windfall.
WE NEED MONEY.
McCain/Palin is free to campaign and fundraise for the RNC to GOTV for individual states.
The good thing is that we are registering folks to vote at an alarming clip.
In Pennsylvania, there are 320,000 newly registered Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans have lost 60,000 registered voters there.
In Nevada, there were 5,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats four years ago. Today, Democratic voting rolls have jumped by more than 50,000.
In Florida, the Obama campaign has 50 field offices, compared to 14 opened by John Kerry in 2004. And the campaign is vigorously working the estimated 500,000 African American voters and 900,000 young voters who were already registered but didn’t bother to vote in 2004.
“We have enough base voters in Florida to win the election if we can just turn them out,” said Plouffe.
To do that, though, the campaign will need to spend millions on direct mail, radio, staff, offices, and television.
The target of $39 million “is a big number. We have robust budgets like that in all of the battlegrounds,” he said. “This just lets you know why every dollar you send us is important.”
Do what you can, donate what you can.
This will be won, vote by vote in each state. It is imperative, since we are not taking federal funding dollars, to continue to support this campaign to the END.
And while at it. Register folks to vote. Print out the voter registration forms in your state and take them with you, to work, in your car, purse, and bag. There is too much at stake, we need to get busy and every single one of us must do our part.
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