Follow the Money

By Sniffles

We cats laughed out loud when we read that a McCain spokesperson claimed that it was Senator Obama, and not the Republican nominee, whose campaign was on the defensive.

Yes, cats can laugh. Who knew?

Now, we're careful not to count our chickens, and we've still got four weeks to go. But for the moment it seems that it's Obama-Biden playing offense, not McCain-Palin. (Although like most Bushies, the people running the McCain campaign think that declaring something makes it so.)

In the wake of the Wall Street bailout — which put the economy back on the political radar screen where it belonged — the media have started covering Senator Obama's expanding electoral map and Senator McCain's shrinking one. Yes, it's because of the economy, and the debates, and the fact that people are truly starting to focus one month out. But also behind it all: Proper allocation of finite resources over time. Senator Obama has done this much better than Senator McCain.

Take the recent Republican retreat from Michigan. We don't just suspect that it's delicious commentary on Governor Romney's lack of enthusiasm for delivering his native state to his hated rival from the primaries. (After all, what's in it for Mitt? Surely he wants to run again in 2012.) We've also been reminded that Senator McCain spent $8 million there — and this by a publicly funded campaign and a national party committee that's strapped trying to defend a boatload of House and Senate seats. Eight million is a ton of money.

But here's a question — how much did McCain spend in Florida over the summer? Zero. And now he's trailing Obama-Biden there, too. What if he'd poured all that Michigan money into the Sunshine State instead? These are the questions that Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis must be asking themselves today.

Again, we're not counting chickens. We're too superstitious for that. But winning the Electoral College is a zero-sum game. And so far, with decisions like these, the McCain campaign is looking like a big fat zero.