Missouri Finally Called For John McCain

As was expected, John McCain was finally declared the winner in Missouri by CNN, although the final vote count has not been made official by the Secretary Of State of Missouri. McCain leads with 1,445,812 votes or 50% of the vote to Obama's 1,442,180 votes or 49% of the vote. But the truly interesting fact here is that Barack Obama has become the first Democrat in American history ever elected president who did not win Missouri.

Missouri is also the only "red" state that the Obama Campaign made a very serious effort to win that fell a little short. In all the "red" states such as Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Indiana, Nevada and Florida, the Obama Campaign succeeded in their efforts to rewrite the political map and to appeal to both strong Democratic turnout, new voter registration as well as Republican swing voters who desired change. In recent years, most Democratic campaigns have only made concentrated efforts to appeal to their core of states that Al Gore won in 2000, as well as Ohio and Florida, which was a very narrow electoral strategy. In 2004, John Kerry lost the election with such a narrowly focused electoral strategy where Kerry had hoped to win the election by winning Ohio, even while narrowly losing the popular vote as well as swing states of Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada.

In some years such as 1988, the losing electoral map of the Democrats looked much like a few broken pieces of a disjointed electoral strategy, that Democrat Bill Clinton's masterful campaign organization was able to reverse twice with big wins in 1992 and 1996, but could not deliver for Al Gore in 2000. Gore also became the first Democrat in U.S. history to win the popular vote but lost the election by failing to win his home state of Tennessee as much as most like to blame Florida instead.

For many years, Democrats had hopes of a breakthrough in Colorado, and finally in 2008, they were able to get a handsome win that state with the superior sort of organization and planning that was really required to turn this "red" state in their direction.

But the biggest surprise in recent years has to be that the socially conservative Democrats in West Virginia now seem to be so solidly behind the GOP despite serious poverty and low wages in the state. Despite some of the worst of living conditions in the entire United States, where Christian feeding organizations such as Feed The Children find that some of the poor of West Virginia even trap and eat rats for food, many of these voters seem to be firmly behind the GOP since the 2000 election and this state has drifted far from past Democratic hopes. This is very surprising because this state even supported Democrat Michael Dukakis' losing effort in 1988, and used to be one of the most dependable of Democratic states.

But one big shift in alliances is the big turnout of Hispanics for the Democrats in 2008, and if the Democrats can hold onto this big majority in the near future, then they should be able to expect to keep some states such as New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and maybe even Florida in their column for many elections to come.

The political map was indeed rewritten in 2008. And the masterful Obama Campaign led by brilliant strategists like David Axelrod have proven themselves to even outdo past efforts Karl Rove, the brilliant Republican strategist so responsible for two wins by George Bush in 2000 and 2004.