Trailhead: A campaign blog.

Opening the Blue Tide

Last night Barack Obama won in a bunch of places Democrats don't have a history of winning in the general election. Georgia, Alabama, Utah, Colorado, Alaska, Idaho, and North Dakota all favored Bush over Kerry in 2004 and Obama over Clinton last night. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, won the red states of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Of these states, only Missouri and New Mexico were swing states that went for Bush in 2004. Obama took Missouri, and Clinton took New Mexico—both very, very close races.

Democrats are going to start placing an increasing amount of attention on which Democratic candidate is the stronger general election contender. If the candidate won the primary in a swing state, the thinking goes, then he or she will be better able to rally the troops in the general election. A look at the 2008 Democratic primary results from the 2004 swing states shows an even split. Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri have gone for Barack, New Hampshire, Nevada, and New Mexico for Clinton.

The real battleground is among independents in open primary or open caucus states. If a candidate does well in open primaries, then it's reasonable to think he or she will retain independent votes in the general election. Looking at open contests over the entire primary season shows Obama has slightly more success. Sixty-seven percent of Obama's wins have come in open-contest states (10 of 15 total); 61.5 percent of his Super Tuesday wins were in open caucuses or primaries. Fifty-five percent of Clinton's wins overall and on Super Tuesday came in open contests. That margin is still slim, but it appears to fall in line with the perception that Obama courts more independents than Clinton.

With Alex Joseph

It Was Funnier When Colbert Did It

The Fringe, Part 7

This is the seventh entry in "The Fringe," a periodic look at the lesser-known candidates for president. Read the archives here.

Don't tell anybody, but John Blyth wants to become president so he can put himself out of business. Blyth, an independent candidate from Illinois, wants to make government-run health care mandatory for everybody in the country. He also owns a small insurance company. So, no privatized insurance, no business for him.

As noble as that may be, when I asked Blyth for more details about his health plan he said he couldn't tell me anything further because he thinks the mainstream candidates have been spying on his Web site and swiping his policy initiatives, Bill Belichick style.

But a look at his site makes those claims hard to believe. On many issues, Blyth hasn't made up his mind yet. On his "agenda" page, he writes in response to immigration, "When will congress act?" For gun control, he says, "In this country, what?" Gay marriage: "Non Issue, get busy congress." [sic] I didn't hear anything that sounded like that on Tuesday night.

Blyth says he deliberately kept his policy positions short on his Web site, so it would be a quick read. Perhaps, but it also makes him look rusty and unprepared. During our conversation, he said he wanted to send our troops to Africa to help fight genocide but couldn't pinpoint Sudan: "Where's all the genocide at down there? I forget the country."

Throughout the conversation, Blyth had few specifics whenever I asked for more information. Over and over again, he claimed he would let Congress decide policy—a far cry from the Bush administration—as long as they started acting more like federalists. "If you leave it up to the 50 states, you've got 50 different ways and you've got hodgepodge," he told me. To be fair, he does have some specifics. He knows he wants to begin a 15-month withdrawal from Iraq immediately, stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and veto any pork-barrel spending.

Blyth has time to refine these policy positions. Because he's running as an independent, voters won't see him on the ballot until November of 2008. That leaves ample time to look up Sudan on a map.