Michigan No More

This is yesterday’s news, but I have to say that I was so surprised by the announcement that the McCain campaign is abandoning Michigan that I was initially inclined to believe it was some kind of fake-out. But it seems to be real enough. As a strategy, though, it’s a bit odd in my opinion. It’s true, of course, that currently McCain’s odds in Michigan are pretty long. But that reflects his currently poor national performance. Unless he does better overall, shifting resources around can’t save him. You have to ask about which states would be competitive if the national popular vote was about even and Michigan is a solid enough candidate. What’s more, it’s a state (unlike Colorado or Virginia or the 2nd Congressional District of Maine) with a history of tensions between a big city African-American political machine and the surrounding white majority — the sort of thing the McCain campaign could put to good use.

At any rate, Nate Silver has the provocative suggestion that McCain’s real problem is with his intertemporal resource allocation:

McCain’s problems ultimately stem back to the early summer, when his campaign decided to throw a ton of money into negative advertising rather than to build a robust field operation. That decision might have “worked” in the near term, as McCain chipped Obama’s lead down from about 5 points in mid-June to a virtual tie heading into the conventions. But, as with many McCain campaign decisions, it may have been one more engineered to win the battle rather than the war, as Obama’s position has bounced back with surprising vigor in the past two weeks, and the Britney Spears ads now seem like a distant and irrelevant memory.

Ultimately I don’t see much logic at all in investing heavily in early paid media. Until the conventions, gyrations in public opinion are basically meaningless and you might as well focus your time and energy on acquiring money and volunteers and building out your staff and field operations. The candidates can’t really control whether or not events in the real world set the stage for a close campaign in the fall, but they can control how well-prepared they are to win in the fall if the election turns out to be close.