The States of Play
Why Obama is targeting Appalachia, while McCain visits Brooklyn.
Barack Obama has never gone hunting and isn't planning to. But his campaign last week reached out to the hunters and anglers of Appalachia, touting his professorial faith in the Constitution—and, by extension, the Second Amendment. With Pennsylvania's primary in the offing, his short-term aim was to win votes in Deer Hunter Country, which is most everything west of Philly. In San Francisco, meanwhile, he undercut that message with a condescending one: that bitterness over job losses and disillusionment with government was forcing small-town America to "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
Obama's long-term goal remains: to prepare to compete, if he locks up the nomination, in states that haven't been on his party's fall target list for eons. One is Virginia, where voters also tend to love their guns. The last Democrat to win there was LBJ in 1964, "but now it has become a true swing state," says Charlie Black, a top strategist for John McCain.
While the public focuses on Pennsylvania and other last-ditch primary states, strategists in Washington are zeroing in on the higher math of the Electoral College. It's more complex than usual, with unproved equations all over the blackboard. There's the war; economic fears; candidates with precedent-shattering attributes of race, gender and age, and a young generation of voters who communicate in new ways.
The new math is producing some odd sights as campaigns test foreign ground and, perhaps, hip-fake each other. McCain campaigned in Brooklyn last week. Is he serious about trying to win New York? A new Marist College poll shows him running even there with Obama—and Hillary Clinton. "We tend to forget that this is a state that used to elect moderate Republicans, and that is how McCain will try to run here," says New York pollster John Zogby. For the same reason, McCain's inner circle is talking big—at least for now—about California and, says Black, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maine and Vermont. Hillary's map is fairly traditional, but Democrats blue sky it with Obama. With him as the nominee, and a big turnout among African-Americans, the party could win Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, contends Steve Hildebrand, Obama's deputy campaign manager. "It's a different world," he says.
The new math is likely to depend on about 10 states—most moving into, but a few moving out of, the "swing" category. Although Obama would face a McCain challenge among Hispanic voters, both parties' nominees would target New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. (Only McCain's Arizona would be off the Southwest list.) In the Midwest, Democrats think they can take Iowa, but they're worried about independents in Minnesota and Wisconsin and conservative Democrats in Michigan. In New England, McCain is popular in New Hampshire—but antiwar sentiment there may be too much to overcome. Florida, as usual, is a world unto itself, and one Democrats aren't sure they can win. In 2004, says party polltaker Mark Mellman, he ran millions of computer simulations to rank John Kerry's campaign priorities. Florida came out on top. But local polling was off, and Florida was more Republican than they thought. Ohio, Mellman ruefully recalls, was the real No. 1.
It's likely to be again this year—with Pennsylvania, West Virginia and, yes, Virginia not far behind. There are many deer in those states and many members of what Virginia Sen. Jim Webb calls a "warrior culture" of the Scots-Irish. The Democrats don't have to win them all, or even many of them. But they have to win some, which is why hunting season already has begun.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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