Clinton's "Big State" Strategy

Hillary Clinton's emphasis on "big states" carries on the 'Fortress Democratic" strategy of her husband. The plan basically is to hunker down in strongly Democratic states, treat certain states with Democratic majorities as "swing" states and all but abandon the "red states" with Republican majorities.

The big problem with this defensive posture is that basically Democrats are continually placed on the defensive allowing those red states to become even redder.

Although the strategy worked in the short term for Bill Clinton, things began to unravel even during his tenure when the Republicans took over Congress. Then we had many years of Republicans controlling not only the White House and Congress, but the vast majority of governorships throughout the country.

When you don't compete, when you don't have candidates to rally behind in any state, you can not expect anything positive to happen. People are not going to get motivated registering Democrats between elections. They get fired up and ready to go when they have a candidate that they believe in.

Now, when Howard Dean took over the Democratic Party apparatus, he instituted a proactive policy in all states. Centralized resources would be dispersed to good candidates even in red states. That set up a situation where we now see Democratic governors and senators in what are still considered red states e.g., Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Ben Nelson in Nebraska.

The Obama campaign is redrawing this red state, blue state map by activating and organizing people in all states for the general election.