The Obama Rapture Arrives

On March 4 the Buckeye State will once again play a potentially pivotal role in the national election. Even while national polls continue to suggest that Hillary Clinton has a solid lead among likely Ohio voters there are some signs that Obama-Mania(TM) has come to this corner of America.

This breathless post from 'Buckeye State Blog' (HT Bizzyblog) paints a picture of an overflowing organizational meeting for Obama that took place yesterday in Cincinnati:

In all my years of political activism and volunteerism, I'd never seen anything like it. We weren't coming to a rally, and we weren't coming to vote. We were coming to offer our time and our support. And to do that, just that one simple act of participation, we sat in a traffic jam on a miserable February day, we slid across treacherous ice, and ruined our best work shoes in the grey city snow. And we did this, with less than 24 hour notice, in the most incredible numbers I've ever seen for a primary election. A primary! And in Cincinnati, the Republican bastion of the state! I've never even seen a crowd half its size for the first volunteer meeting for a general election!

Deep breaths there, fella. I'm sure it was tremendously exciting - and I'm willing to concede that we're looking at a powerful new force in presidential politics, one which threatens to swamp the Clinton machine.

One quibble, though. You and many other Democrats and Lefties continue to insist that Cincinnati is the GOP "bastion" of the state. I realize it's been the currency of conversation for many years - boring old normal Cincinnati with it's 19th century morals. And Republicans did own the city electorate as recently as 10 years ago.

But now the city proper is a boring old behind-the-times Democrat town. All of the Republicans moved out to Butler and Warren counties.

This is not a trivial point, and it's one that will haunt you if you get it wrong on the basis of facile assumptions. The John Kerry campaign weighted the map incorrectly in 2004 when it came to demographic shifts, and put to much GOTV effort into the wrong counties. You are free to make that mistake again at your own peril.

The Obama campaign, one hopes, has a better map - and will send people out knocking on doors in areas that do not plan to vote for him already.