U.S. Fiscal Crisis Seems to Have Altered Political Map

Sen. Barack Obama speaks at a rally in Newport News. Polls indicate Virginia, known as a red state, tilting toward him. (By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)
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GOP strategists outside the McCain campaign say the heavier burden is on the Republican nominee. "The big electoral map story is that they are caught playing defense in states they ought to be in good shape in," said Mike Murphy, a GOP consultant who previously worked for McCain. "They are having to fight to hold onto North Carolina, Virginia, quite possibly Florida, and their offensive campaign appears limited to Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania."

Obama also enjoys an advantage in money. Because he chose not to take public funds -- after saying that he would pursue an agreement with the GOP nominee to do so -- he can spend as much as he can raise. McCain is limited to the federal money and what the Republican National Committee can provide his campaign, and the Michigan decision was seen as an acknowledgment that he needs to concentrate his money where it counts most.

McCain advisers insisted that their decision to leave Michigan does not reflect broader problems, and said that they are challenging Obama on numerous fronts. On a conference call with reporters, strategist Greg Strimple said that McCain is tied or ahead in enough states to deliver 260 electoral votes, just shy of putting him over the top.

"We are currently competing aggressively in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire and New Mexico," Strimple said. "The combination of any of those states, we have to get 10 more electoral votes in order to be successful and have Mr. McCain as the next president of the United States."

But Democrats -- and public polls -- show problems for McCain in Iowa, New Mexico and, increasingly, in Minnesota.

Pennsylvania offers an especially enticing opportunity for McCain, with its 21 electoral votes and large swaths of white, working-class voters who favored Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primary contest.

McCain and Palin have visited the state repeatedly, making an aggressive play for votes in the Democratically inclined suburbs of Philadelphia, where Obama did not do as well as expected in the primary, and in the more traditionally conservative areas farther west.

Recent polls showed Obama forging a clear lead in the state, and Obama advisers think they will benefit from the surge in Democratic registration there this year. There are now about 1.1 million more Democrats registered in the state than Republicans.

In the hope of continuing that trend before the new registration deadline on Monday, the Obama campaign enlisted Bruce Springsteen to give a free concert in Philadelphia this weekend so that volunteers could track down new, unregistered voters in time for them to be added to the rolls.

Still, Obama advisers are wary about the state because of its older population, the relatively high percentage of Roman Catholic voters and what advisers see as racially based resistance to Obama's candidacy. "I don't think we can take that at all for granted," one Obama adviser said.

The travel schedule his campaign has devised for the candidate, as well as his wife, Michelle, and running mate Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. -- with frequent trips to Republican areas and states such as Virginia, where both Obama and Biden are this weekend -- reflects a growing sense of confidence that Obama is on the right course since briefly stalling after the Republican convention.

"We've had a good few weeks," Axelrod said in an interview on Friday. "The debates have gone well for us. Obama has handled the economic issues well. McCain, I think, has not. So I think we've made progress, and that's reflected in myriad public polls. But we expect a pitched battle from now to November 4th, and we're not intoxicated by these polls any more than we were depressed by negative polls when we've seen them before."