The truth of it was that Democrats won in places where Democrats hadn’t won before because they campaigned in places Democrats hadn’t campaigned hard in before: in Idaho, Kansas and South Dakota. People won’t vote for you if you don’t tell them why they should. Voters are fickle; more than that, they’re busy. You can’t wait for them to go out looking for you. You have to knock on their doors.
What’s more, failing to campaign everywhere, to contest every seat, fails voters of all political stripes. Democrats in red states deserve representation of their voices by candidates for election, just as Republicans in blue states deserve.
In the 2004 presidential election here in Illinois, you’d never have known there was even a fight, for all that we saw the candidates. When politicians abandon two dozen states to their opponents, they’re effectively saying to the voters in those states, “Don’t bother, we don’t need you.”
(They also annoy the living hell out of the residents of the remaining states. I have family in Wisconsin, and Bush and Kerry practically moved up there two years ago. The candidates’ constant presence didn’t change many minds, and between the highway shutdowns for motorcades and the barrage of campaign ads, they really got on the locals’ nerves.)
A.