According to Hotline, Democrats are seeking to build an electoral college fortress in Ohio.
An ODP [Ohio Democratic Party] document notes that the importance of the state to the Electoral College grows even more critical after this year’s census: “Projections suggest that Democratic stronghold states will lose as many as 8 electoral votes to growing Sunbelt-area states, giving the GOP nominee another Kentucky or a second South Carolina just from the reapportionment of the Electoral College.” It further predicts the party is unlikely to hold FL, IN, NC or VA in the next pres. cycle, and that Obama would have to carry nearly all of the remaining states he flipped in ’08, if not Ohio, to win re-election, given these projections.
As in so many things, contemporary politicians are using RN’s playbook. In Quest for the Presidency 1984, Peter Goldman and Tony Fuller recount Nixon’s September 1984 meeting with Ed Rollins and Lee Atwater. The three discussed how to build Reagan’s own fortress.
Nixon warmed to the prospect and, as he often did in his consultations with Reagan’s men, took it one geopolitical giant step farther. Why not pick just one of Mondale’s big northern “must” states and carpet-bomb it — saturate it with mail, media, surrogates, and presidential visits as if Reagan were campaigning for governor instead of president? Mondale had to win everything in the industrial crescent along the Great Lakes. If they took a single high-yield state away from him, he was finished …. Ohio was twenty-three electoral votes, as Nixon knew without having to look it up. Ohio could be the ball game.