Razing Arizona

I guess Quinnipiac put out some polls today showing McCain having a good month and Obama slipping. Electoral Vote still has it pretty lopsided, however, the national polls continue to show a 5-6 point lead for Obama, and with McCain polling at only 44% in the state where he's known the best, and having to plow resources into it, I think we're looking at a very tough road for the Arizona Senator.

As a general rule, Senator John McCain does not alert the news media when he eats breakfast in Arizona.

But on a Monday morning this month, Mr. McCain campaigned in a local diner, after a Sunday stop at his campaign office here, where he urged volunteers to “make sure we get our voters registered, to make sure we are organized." [...]

The number of independent voters in Arizona has risen 12 percent since 2004, and those voters have helped send a Democrat to the governor’s mansion and given the party four of the state’s eight Congressional seats — including two in 2006, one in a historically Republican district.

At the same time, Arizona Democrats, like many of their counterparts around the country, have outpaced Republicans in voter registration, adding almost 20,000 voters to the rolls since March, compared with the Republican majority’s 8,600 new voters. The second-term Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano , remains wildly popular.

Last month, the McCain campaign startlingly added Arizona to its list of 24 “battleground states,” a fact that state Democrats have clung to like sprinkles on a soft-serve ice cream cone.

Obama has actually outraised McCain in Arizona, and while he's outraised the GOP nominee everywhere, to have a fundraising advantage in McCain's own backyard is notable. Doesn't he have a backlog of donors there from previous campaigns?

If McCain blows it in Arizona, he's going to go down in flames. And if this week is any judge, I don't see him turning it around, though the media certainly has a bias toward making everyone think it's close.