Florida Battle Ground State? Barack Obama can Soon be Saying Goodbye to the Sunshine State

Florida is close to being taken off the table as a battleground state and painted red.

Could Barack Obama being saying goodbye to Florida? With 350 paid staffers, 50 field offices and spending an estimated $8 million in campaign ads in the “Battle ground” Sunshine state, Obama may soon be saying goodbye to Florida. With all the money, assets and resources used in Florida there is little to show for Team Obama. As stated in the St. Petersburg Times, Obama is farther behind in the state than John Kerry was at this point in 2004, even though McCain began buying Florida TV ads only last week.

Florida will not be dealing with hanging chads in 2008

Presently, Real Clear Politics has McCain/Palin slightly ahead in the electoral college.

He is farther behind in the state than John Kerry was at this point in 2004, even though McCain began buying Florida TV ads only last week. By this time in 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign had spent $13-million on Florida TV. In the rolling average of Florida polls compiled by the Web site RealClearPolitics.com, Obama has never taken the lead over McCain in Florida, and the latest average shows him behind by 5 percentage points. They were tied in early August.

Four Florida polls came out this week, with one showing a tied race, the others showing McCain leading by 5 to 8 percentage points.

“They’ve had everything going for them — momentum, enthusiasm, money, a complicit national press, a stiff wind at his back for a long time, and he hasn’t been able pull ahead in Florida,” said Republican strategist Alberto Martinez of Tallahassee. “I think Florida is one of those states that’s taken off the board pretty soon, as they start focusing resources on states they can win.”

According to The Other McCain there are three main reasons for Obama’s failings in Florida … the military vote, the Cuban-American vote and the geezer vote. Of course how does one expect to attract the senior vote when Obama mocks McCain’s disability for not being able to use email. Also, as discussed at The American Spectator it is remarkable just how thrown off their game and disorientated the Obama campaign has become since McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his VP.

I’ll leave it to others to fret over Sarah Palin’s unpreparedness, and instead point out how unprepared Democrats were for Palin. The most revealing fact is that, when Team Obama listed nine GOP vice-presidential possibilities as “The Next Cheney,” Palin’s name wasn’t on the list. The reason Democrats’ initial attacks were so wildly off-target was that the Obama campaign hadn’t prepared a full oppo-research file on Palin.

The Palin effect phenomenon continues as several states where Obama had leads are all but dwindling. By no stretch of the imagination is the election in the bag for Republicans; however, the trending is in their favor and the McCain campaign is hardly going to make the inexperienced mistakes that the Obama campaign has made.