Simple Explanations to political problems

By Fester

MSNBC's First Read is asking a good question and positing a too complex of an answer:

In the past couple of election cycles, Democrats have made huge gains in the Mountain West (in Colorado and Montana, especially). And these elected officials seem to be gravitating toward Obama, not Clinton. Her numbers are not great in Colorado or Oregon; Bill Clinton was never overly popular out in the Mountain West. Could that Bill hangover be hurting Hillary? 

A pair of interrelated and much simpler answers can explain this event.  First Obama's coalition is heavily behind the notion of the 50 state strategy which means competing everywhere including deep red areas at the Presidential level in order to build up the local Democratic Party. I think 2006 was a good validation of this strategy as the Mountain West delivered a couple of Senate pick-ups and House pick-ups.  Local political organizations are staffed by activists and the activists are lining up with their self-interest of the 50 state strategy.  So elected official self-interest aligns with the activists which aligns with Obama. 

Secondly, Obama and his campaign worked their tails off in the Mountain West to organize and win the caucuses while the Clinton campaign wrote these states off as 'not important.'  The first step to getting someone's vote is to ask for it.  The Obama campaign's actions were a massive ask for support and votes.  And not surprisingly it paid off.   

Self-interest and mutual respect are better explanations of why Obama is doing well with Mountain West superdelegates than Clinton. 

Comments

[Kyle E. Moore]

You know, you touch on a real big point here with Obama's coat tails, and one of the possible reasons why he just caught up to Hillary in Congressional Super Dels... The man busts his ass working on Down ticket races.

Hell, ought six he wasn't even running for anything and he was still traveling around and campaigning for govs and leg seats...

That's what won him Virginia anyway. Tim Kaine got a big boost when Obama came down here to campaign for him.

Tim returned the favor big.