blogger interrupted

From the NY Times.

And for the final encounter with Mr. McCain, the Obama campaign selected the Toledo area.

His visit on Shrewsbury Street clearly took some residents by surprise, including Sue Sekel, 43, who was cleaning her house when the presidential candidate rang the doorbell.

“The one day I come home to clean ceiling fans and look like crap, and then this happens,” said Ms. Sekel, who pulled out her cell phone to snap a photograph with Mr. Obama. She told him that she had already voted early, but declined to tell a small group of pool reporters who she supported.

But Mr. Obama seemed to give away the secret, saying: “I appreciate that,” before moving to the next house on the block. 

On July 4, I wrote my original wish list on how to schedule a Barack win in Ohio, including NW Ohio.  Specifically Findlay.

1.  Findlay.  

Findlay has never had a Democratic presidential campaign visit in my lifetime.  When I was NW Ohio field director in 1992, Hancock County stood out on my map as the black hole of Republican-dom.   Now, Findlay is national news for the email smears and rumors story.  I think it’d be a great national media hit for Barack to go to College Street, in Findlay, and meet these smears head on, as the Findlay mayor has invited him to do.  

The smear story is back in the news – would it be too much to ask him to visit College Street this week?  This past week, Barack did the Appalachia, southern Ohio tour.  Again, my July 4…ahem….scheduling memo.

4. Steubenville, Ohio River Appalachia tour

Barack was in Zanesville this week, and that’s the perfect place for him to be now – i.e. persuading those Appalachians.  Ted Strickland needs to be by his side touring the length and breadth of that vast swath of Ohio which Strickland represented in Congress.  Marietta, Steubenville, East Liverpool….there are a lot of Italians down there who need to see the guy up close.  Maybe tie it into a big rally in Athens, on Ohio University’s campus, to energize those college kids to bust their asses for Barack.

This schedule is designed for one thing – total victory in Ohio.  It isn’t designed to eek out a win, with the nation awaiting slow-counted votes from Cuyahoga County.  It is designed to destroy John McCain utterly.  These people, in these areas, absent a visit from Barack himself, would NEVER vote for Barack.  But the campaign seems to be betting that Barack’s sustained presence in the area, repeatedly, will get these folks….who Paul Hackett once apologetically described as “hard-scrabble”….to vote Democratic.

I must say, I wasn’t expecting the Obama campaign to step it up this much in these areas, but it is a VERY good sign.  

And by the way – I cannot wait for the Cleveland GOTV visit in the last week.  That rally will be something to behold.