Obama makes bid in 7 longtime Republican states

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080803/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_new_battlegrounds

Alaska is young. Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia have growing populations and many black voters. Montana has seen recent Democratic inroads, and North Dakota has sent only Democrats to Congress since 1986. Indiana borders Barack Obama's home state.

The Democratic presidential candidate is putting money and manpower in all seven of these states — at levels unmatched by Republican rival John McCain.

For decades, these states have almost exclusively voted for Republican presidential candidates and have rarely seen any campaign action. Now, thanks in part to demographic and political shifts, they are emerging as new battlegrounds.

"We have the organizational ability and the financial ability to compete there," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said recently. "There is not a head fake among them."

The democratic primaries here showed huge potential for get out the vote. Especially now that Cisneros is behind Obama.

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It's my home state. It's not as Blue as people say it is trending. Conrad Burns practically had to murder babies to barely get beat by Jon Tester a few years ago. Max Baucus is an institution, he's been around so long, he came in when he had the weight of a guy like Mike Mansfield behind him. And Baucus would have had a serious battle if the GOP congressman, Denny Rehberg, challenged him. Brian Schweitzer is almost like a Clinton or Obama in the sense that his force of personality willed him into the governorship and he did so after a disastous 4 years under Judy Martz.

And Obama will do fine there, he might win, but part of it is because Obama is Obama. That doesn't necessarily mean Dems can look forward to having a Blue Montana in their column from now on. For example, after Schweitzer the bench is pretty limited for Dems in MT. He has a GOP LT Governor and an extremely hostile legislature where one House went Red again. If the state legislature goes totally Red this year, it'll be rough, they really have it out for Brian amd the rest of the party, but it will insure that he will have no Dem successor and he doesn't really have an obvious choice now.

So Montana does have positive signs, and I think Obama will win there, Schweitzer gets reelected easy, and Tester and Baucus aren't going anywhere for a while, it will remain largely GOP in the future for presidential elections, and probably with the state legislature.

But it is a funny state like that. Lots of little weird things going on, tough to define.