In a LA Times piece, we get the following insight in to Team McCain's Buckeye State strategery and it ain't pretty:In Ohio, McCain will target blue-collar workers outside Cleveland and Youngstown, and in the state’s Appalachian counties in the southeast, who turned their backs on Obama in his primary contest with Hillary Rodham Clinton.The key is southeastern Ohio and that is where McCain should focus his energies, but he also has to energize the base in the traditionally and historically Republican areas of the state. That ain't Cleveland and Youngstown.
Ken Blackwell thought he could build on the Bush/Cheney coalition by focusing on areas like Cleveland and Youngstown and it failed. Miserably. Granted, McCain isn't Blackwell; but I think the lesson ought to be clear... If McCain is incapable of easing the minds of conservatives in southwestern and northwestern Ohio he can go ahead and write off the presidency right now because without those two areas there is no way he is changing his address to 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue. None. Zilch. Nada. No chance.
I thought that the OhioGOP had learned this lesson...
