Already, Obama and McCain map fall strategies

Independent voters have been critical in presidential elections as the country has become polarized along party lines. What makes this election different is the extent to which Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain have turned to independent voters for support throughout their careers.

Historically, independent voters have responded to specific issues and concerns, in particular an emphasis on government reform and an aversion to overly bitter partisan wrangling. Accordingly, Mr. McCain’s advisers said they would present him as a senator who frequently stepped across the aisle, while portraying Mr. Obama as a down-the-line Democratic voter who is ideologically out of touch with much of the country.

“We believe America is still a slightly right-of-center country, and that is what McCain is,” said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. “If you look at Obama’s base and his record, he is a pretty conventional liberal.”

Mr. Obama’s advisers, meanwhile, intend to present Mr. McCain as a product of Washington who moved closer to the Bush administration to win the Republican nomination.

The two men also have sought to build their candidacies around images of reform, unconstrained by traditional political molds. The rivals are openly discussing staging forums across the country to speak directly to voters, an idea that is by any measure unconventional for a general election campaign.

Asked about the idea on Saturday, Mr. Obama told reporters in Oregon, “If I have the opportunity to debate substantive issues before the voters with John McCain, that’s something that I’m going to welcome.”

Hiscpanics drawing attention
Hispanic voters could find themselves drawing more attention from presidential candidates than ever before. Their votes could prove critical in determining whether Democrats capture states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico and whether Republicans have any chance of being competitive in California.

Mr. McCain’s identification with legislation that would have permitted some illegal immigrants to attain citizenship, a position he moved away from in the primaries but never renounced, gives him an opportunity to compete for those voters, who except for Cubans in Florida appear to have largely settled into the Democratic camp in recent years.

Mr. Obama also supported measures that would have allowed immigrants to attain citizenship but struggled to win over Hispanic voters in his primary fight, signaling a potential problem for him in the fall campaign. Mr. Obama’s aides said the endorsement by Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, one of the nation’s most prominent Hispanic leaders, could prove more critical in the general election than in the primary.

Both sides say the states clearly in play now include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Republicans said they hoped to put New Jersey and possibly California into play; Democrats said African-Americans could make Mr. Obama competitive in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Mr. Obama’s advisers said they had a strong chance of taking Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia away from the Republican column.

Mr. Obama has a clear financial advantage. By March 31, Mr. McCain had raised about $80 million and reported about $11 million in cash on hand. Mr. Obama had raised three times as much — about $240 million — and had more than four times as much in the bank.

But the Republican National Committee, which is permitted to spend money on Mr. McCain’s behalf, has raised $31 million, compared with just $6 million by the Democratic National Committee. And Republican officials said they were not concerned about being outspent between now and the conventions.

Disadvantage in Fla., Mich.
Mr. Obama’s advisers said that as a result of the five-month series of primaries and caucuses, he had a nearly national campaign apparatus in place and had identified and registered thousands of new voters. That said, they acknowledged that they were at a disadvantage in two important states — Florida and Michigan — because those states had early primaries in defiance of the Democratic National Committee, and the candidates agreed not to campaign there.

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“Organizationally, we have now built very powerful organizations in every state but Michigan and Florida,” Mr. Plouffe said. “That is one huge silver lining to how long this nomination fight has gone on.”

Republicans will seek to portray Mr. Obama as out of touch with many voters on issues like abortion and gay rights. Some of Mr. McCain’s advisers said they also thought that Mr. Obama had displayed a number of vulnerabilities as a candidate that they would seek to exploit: they argued that he was prone to becoming irritated when tired or pressed on tough questions, that he had trouble connecting with voters in smaller settings and that he had run a campaign light on substance.

In the eyes of the Obama campaign, Mr. McCain’s chief weaknesses include continuing to embrace the Iraq war, his support for extending the administration’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (he once opposed the idea) and his suggestion that the economy had made “great progress” in the last eight years.

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Mr. Obama has said he has no intention of making age — Mr. McCain is 25 years older — an overt issue in the general election campaign. Yet in recent weeks, the Obama campaign has made a point of showing their candidate in settings, on the basketball court, as well as surrounded by his young family, that could be seen as telegraphing the message without explicitly raising the issue.

This article, Already, Obama and McCain Map fall strategies, originally appeared in The New York Times.

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