"DNC: R.I.P. 50-State Strategy?"

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Open Left's Chris Bowers recently spoke to "a source close to the transition at the DNC" who told him that the DNC is "moving away" from the 50-state strategy pioneered by ex-DNC Chair Howard Dean:

"In short, the DNC will be moving away from the long-term, decentralized, fifty-state strategy of Howard Dean's tenure, and toward serving as a short-term, centralized re-election effort for President Obama in 2012. It will continue the move away from paid media ushered in by Howard Dean, maintain or increase the amount of resource expenditures in most states, and the number of states it targets will be a broader effort than the narrow focus we saw in 2001-2004 (but more narrow than 2005-2008). However, it will return to the traditional role of the DNC as a supplement for the sitting President's re-election campaign, rather than as the long-term, localized institution building operation that is was from 2005-2008."

Moulitsas is not happy about this report: "Assuming Bowers' source is correct, the DC Democratic establishment will like this. They hated losing control of that cash and letting the states decide for themselves how to best spend it. This is a return to how the party has traditionally operated. [...] The reason that there's an inherent conflict with turning the DNC into Obama's 2012 reelection effort is that there's no reason for the Obama operation to have staffers in Utah. But there's a reason for the Democratic Party to have staffers in Utah -- helping Democrats get elected to important local- and state-level offices and building a bench for federal offices. If Obama's DNC wants to staff up in battleground states, then great. But the rest of the states shouldn't be discarded. We've been down that road before, and it wasn't pretty."

FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver offers his thoughts: "One can imagine a lot of scenarios in which there is a potential trade-off between enhancing Barack Obama's election chances (and/or his political capital) and those of a downballot candidate for Congress or some other office. In the special election in Georgia, for instance, Barack Obama did not want to visit the state because he evidently felt that stumping for Jim Martin would be a poor use of his political capital. That might or might not have been the 'correct' decision (in retrospect, since Martin got beaten badly, it looks wise). But the point is, there is a trade-off there: Obama's interests versus those of a congressional Democrat. And with Obama largely taking over the DNC, such trade-offs are liable to be resolved more often than not in Obama's favor."

Barack Obama