And If You Don't Think Obama Is A Party Machinist...

...then why is he spending 4.5 times as much as McCain on people, twice as much on rent, and 25 times as much on broadcast advertising? (HT: Here and here)

Why does he have 700 employees in 19 States, while McCain has around 100 in a few states? Why is his burn rate - the rate of expenditures to incoming money - at 114%?

What is also interesting is the differing state of finances: McCain has $31.5mn and Obama has $46.5mn, but the RNC has $53.6mn and the DNC has a mere $4.4mn, meaning that the Republicans right now have over $85mn, while the Democrats have not quite $51mn. That's a huge difference at this stage of the campaign, and more importantly, this also means that Obama's got a huge amount of fundraising to do.

Or, vastly more likely, Obama is expecting the 527s to do a lot of work for him. The problem there is that the 527s can't come out and say "Vote for Obama" without having the FEC come down on them like a ton of bricks: hence expect the 527s to be strictly attack dogs (which, considering who they are, is exactly what their role will be).

The error that the Democrats are making is that their base, fired up as it might be, isn't the electorate. The electorate is that great spread in the middle, far from either the left or the right. The 527s will produce lovely attack ads that basically do nothing but attack someone who isn't even running, and who will ultimately alienate the middle with their negativeness. That's gonna make a lot of BDS sufferers very, very happy, but will lose them the general election if that is the case.

What McCain has to do is to gain the Clinton Democrats and take the center. This is where the greatest conservative criticism of McCain - that he's far too centrist - is really his advantage.

At this point, I think it'll be McCain by 10% or less in the popular vote and around 30% in the electoral college (over Obama, of course). Obama will be his own worst enemy, the Democratic machine will devour itself before the campaign is over, and McCain will not so much win by being the obviously better candidate, but rather by failing to make nearly the number of plain and stupid errors that Obama will make.

Why do I say this? Because, fundamentally, Obama is now, for the very first time, going to face a true political opponent that has not just talked the talk, but has walked the walk. As my grandmother would say: Obama sure does talk pretty.

Obama will have to explain his political shift from extreme liberal (for the US) to moderate to an electorate who has consistently rejected Presidential candidates who have done so in the past (George McGovern, John Kerry): McCain doesn't have to do that. He is who he is, and he's not running as someone else.


That makes the difference.