( – promoted by Clark)
Over on Daily Kos there is a diary by RenaRF describing her efforts with the Obama campaign in Virginia, a state that Obama carried, and one of the important states that helped him to his national victory. Virginia, as most of us know, was one of those states Obama or any Democratic nominee wasn’t supposed to win, but win it he did, by 5 points.
There are a lot of us that have been completely vexed about Obama’s apparent loss in Missouri. We all knew it would be a close race, but I don’t think any of us were expecting a loss. Granted, the state hasn’t been called, because not all the ballots have been counted, but the trends do not look good for a win. But I think instead of looking at it as a defeat, we can look at it as a win, not just nationally, but for Missouri. Why is that? Read on.
First, there is the organization that the Obama campaign brought into Missouri. According to FiveThirtyEight.com, Obama had 40 field offices in the state, to McCain’s 15 (and a number of those McCain field offices were shared with county or local Republican party offices). When I looked at the Missouri map, I was astonished to see offices in places like Kirksville, Louisiana, Rolla, and Malden, just to name a few. It probably isn’t too off-base to say that places like these had never seen a presence from a national campaign, Republican or Democrat, and the fact that Obama did office in these areas meant that his ideas and vision–a Democratic Party vision–was carried to the residents of these areas, in a way that may not have been done before. While not all the seeds took root this time, they may take root in the 2010 midterms or the 2012 re-election campaign, if we do the work to cultivate them.
Second, because the Obama campaign went all-in to win Missouri, the McCain campaign was compelled to hire staff to man those offices, schedule the candidates into the state, and spend money on advertisements. Given the limited funds the McCain campaign had to work with, it makes sense to me that by tying his resources down in Missouri, his campaign would have had less staff to spread around, less money to spend, and less time to visit places like Indiana or North Carolina or Virginia–states that all went to Obama in the election.
Third, had Missouri gone to Obama, it would have maintained Missouri’s reputation as a bellwether state, and, in a sense, that would have been interesting news, but not in comparison to the aforementioned other states that were reliable Republican votes. The fact that North Carolina,
Virginia, and Indiana voted for Obama is much bigger news, and has the potential to be game-changing for Democrats, both in those states and nationally, more so than a Missouri victory would have done. Look at all the buzz that surrounded those states going to Obama–if that isn’t an argument for the Fifty State Strategy, I don’t know what is.
In the end, I think we can all be proud of what we accomplished. I still would have liked for all of our hard work to have resulted in a win, but in this case, maybe a paraphrase of the Olympic Creed is in order:
“The most important thing [in this election] is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”
We fought well, folks. We made them work and we made them sweat this state. Now let’s quit with the moral victories and win more elections here next time!
Andy
Alton IL
But there are other reasons to be disappointed in the election results.
but you know what? A loss is still a loss. And he lost in Missouri. You can make lemonaide out of the lemons, but when you really wanted chocolate cake it just doesn’t taste the same.
in Missouri. I still adore living in St. Louis City, but I will not be proud to identify myself as a resident of the state. I am not a native but lived most of my life in the Deep South like Alabama and Tennessee. When I moved to Missouri six years ago, I thought I had really come to real civilization from the “limberlost”. And now I see my state wallowing in “Red” with the states to our south, while “Blue” civilization floats tantalizingly above. Maybe the state needs to put more money into public education…a lot more.