| All apologies for the light posting today. As it turns out, the first year of law school is not especially designed with blogging and election years in mind, even for a slacker like myself.
Time's online outfit takes a look at Indiana's development into a hotbed for presidential politics, and although it won't be anything new to any of you, I'd recommend it for anyone who hasn't been playing particularly close attention for the last few months. That being said, their descriptions of the two campaigns is a useful reminder of the fundamental difference between Barack Obama's approach to this election year and that of the rusted, outdated Republican machine. The Obama campaign has opened 44 offices across Indiana, including two in Elkhart County, a historically Republican-leaning county just to the north of here. "Two years ago, I would have told you that'd be crazy," says Shari Mellin, the county's Democratic Party chair. Now Obama-Biden signs have become fixtures along two-lane country roads abutting cornfields. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has been credited with registering many of Indiana's new would-be voters. Already, some 410,000 Indianans have cast votes. Indiana's secretary of state, Ted Rokita, projects some 65% of the state's 4.5 million voters will participate in this election - the highest since 1992.
[...]
McCain's campaign here, by contrast, is notably weak, a sign of how the GOP has long taken Indiana for granted. It hasn't opened a single campaign office, and the Indiana Republican Party's local offices are managing McCain's outreach efforts. The problem with McCain's supposed reliance upon the local GOP machine is the simple fact that although Mitch Daniels supports him privately, he long ago cashed in the national Republican narrative and bought himself a rhetorical ticket to the "change" party. The strategy was as bizarre as it has been effective, and I find it incredibly difficult to believe that Mitch's targeted Election Day constituency is even all that similar to McCain's at this point.
Luckily for him, he hasn't had to push all that hard to get out the vote. In a lot of ways, a more competitive Democratic candidate would have placed pressure on Mitch to choose sides in the national back-and-forth, but his ability to disengage entirely has allowed him to keep his conservative credentials without touching the plague that is McCain/Palin '08. |
