Wall Street Journal: McCain no help to southern GOP candidates

I am back from a brief vacation. I hopped in a car and rode to Atlanta to see the Allman Brothers Band Saturday night. I was feeling the effects last night after driving back to Mississippi. The show was worth the ride. I wore an Obama '08 shirt and was complimented all night long while enjoying the sweet sounds of Macon, Georgia's finest.

Today in the Wall Street Journal, the effectiveness of the the John McCain campaign in Dixie was examined. Not only is John McCain trailing in the "swing states", he is finding resistance in former GOP strongholds in the South. Virgina and North Carolina are now leaning to solid blue. Obama leads in Florida. Georgia looks to be trending blue. Even Mississippi is in single digits. When you look at the Senate races in these states you see how bad things really are for the GOP. In Virginia Mark Warner is enjoying a double digit cushion over the Republican candidate. Virginia has not voted Democrat but once in 60 years in the race for the White House.

Fueled by demographic shifts, rising doubts about the direction of the country, perceived missteps by Sen. McCain and a voter-registration push by the Obama campaign that has helped add a net of 310,000 new, mostly younger voters, the Democratic ticket increasingly appears positioned to win Virginia and make critical inroads across the South. A CNN/Time Inc. poll released Wednesday shows Sen. Obama has opened a nine-point lead on Sen. McCain in Virginia.

While much attention has focused on Midwestern battlegrounds such as Ohio, Sen. Obama's campaign has pressed for a deathblow below the Mason-Dixon line: In the week ended Oct. 4, Sen. Obama outspent Sen. McCain's campaign by 8-to-1 in North Carolina, 3-to-1 in Florida and 3-to-1 in Virginia.

Senator McCain does not have the resources to keep up with the Obama machine. There are rumors of a $100 million September about to be reported by the Obama camp. Obama is not only making McCain play defense in Dixie (what some thought would be impossible), he is helping bring Senatorial candidates like Kay Hagan, Ronnie Musgrove and Jim Martin to Washington with him.

During the week ended Oct. 4, Sen. Obama spent $1.2 million on North Carolina advertising, while Sen. McCain's campaign spent $148,000, according to the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which tracks political media buys around the U.S. After appearing with Gov. Palin in Virginia Beach today, Sen. McCain will visit Wilmington, N.C., this afternoon. "This is the first time a Republican candidate has visited the state this deep in the campaign since George H.W. Bush in 1988. That tells you something," said Ferrell Guillory, director of the University of North Carolina's Program for Public Life.

In Florida, a RealClear Politics average of major nonpartisan polls shows Sen. Obama has overtaken Sen. McCain in the past three weeks, for a 48.7% to 44.9% edge. The Obama campaign targeted 100,000 eligible blacks for registration, and Democratic registrations have more than doubled those of Republicans. Sen. Obama last week spent more than $2 million in TV ads there, three times as much as Sen. McCain.

Even in states where Sen. Obama's chances of outright winning remain doubtful, his decision to continue campaigning in many of them is narrowing Sen. McCain's leads and bolstering the prospects of Democrats in down-ticket races for governorships and the U.S. Senate.

In early balloting in Georgia, African-Americans made up 39% of more than 369,000 voters, despite constituting only 29% of the electorate. Partly powered by African-American votes, Jim Martin, the once long-shot Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, has pulled from 15 points behind to a dead heat in recent polling. Sen. Obama himself has closed Sen. McCain's double-digit lead in Georgia to seven points.

Former Mississippi Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove now trails just two points behind Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, who was appointed to the seat this year after Sen. Trent Lott resigned.