McCain's Now Playing Defense; Obama Bracing For Counterattacks

The Politico reports this afternoon that the McCain campaign has canceled their television ads and direct mail program in Michigan, and plans instead to fortify McCain's defensive positions in states won by President Bush in 2004.

A McCain adviser confirmed the news but noted that the Republican National Committee's independent expenditure arm is still running ads there, and that McCain will keep most of his staff in-state. McCain officials and Michigan Republican Party officials declined to comment. Weirdly, McCain's staff scheduled a surrogate conference call with Mitt Romney for this afternoon, perhaps assuming that their shift in advertising would not be noticed or reported. The McCain move was disclosed one day after auto manufacturers based in the state reported record revenue declines. Previously, McCain has argued that Obama's intention to raise taxes on the rich would further deepen Michigan's worst-in-the-nation recession.

The move away from Michigan reflects the abandonment of any pretense that McCain can spend freely to expand the map for Republicans this year, and it's a sign that the campaign recognizes how the past two weeks have erased nearly all of McCain's gains since August.  Instead, McCain's playing defense in states like Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, although his advisers do not consider the latter state as close as public polling suggests.

Despite being down by double digits in virtually every recent public poll, McCain has a sizable staff presence in Iowa; despite strategists' privately conceding that Obama is comfortably ahead in New Mexico, the campaign has open and active field offices there, too.
Of the states John Kerry won in 2004, McCain continues to advertise in Minnesota and Wisconsin, both of which had tightened since the convention, although Obama has re-opened statistically significant leads since the advent of the economic crisis.  McCain is also on the air in New Hampshire, where his favorability ratings remain high.  Pennsylvania, too, remains close in both campaigns' internal polling.

Assuming all the Kerry states are safe for Obama and Iowa and New Mexico have shifted to his column, winning just one more state -- Colorado, for example -- will put him over the top.

For their part, Obama aides declined to characterize McCain's electoral strategy. They fear that Obama's numbers are artificially high, and that the race will tighten somewhat before November 4.  They also worry that McCain, who's been running a mix of positive and negative television ads, will dump his money into an entirely negative campaign in October, one that would question  Obama's fitness, patriotism and identity.