What, exactly, in on-the-ground, day-to-day,
dollar-for-dollar terms would the reported, record-shattering, anticipated $500 million
dollar Obama War Chest mean?  Glad you
asked.  Here’s how I would break it
down if it actually comes about. 

Level 1: National media ad buys: The Obama campaign (seasoned, not weakened, by the repulsed Clinton assault) will seize the national media with the sharpest hidden persuaders available defining Senator Obama, the issues and, most deadly, Senator McCain.  Obama will not just control the debate, Obama will be the debate, ultimately attempting to frame the election until the only question left will be “Why not vote for Obama”?

Level 2: Saturation ad buys: The swing states, which Level 1 will help to multiply in number, will receive a campaign onslaught like none seen from a Democrat before.  Take it to the bank (so to speak) that many voters will be persuaded.

Level 3: Attacking the “safe” turf: Barack Obama will not win the electoral votes of Idaho, Kansas, Utah, Mississippi and many other states, but there will be enough media placement that the McCain campaign will have to use its scarce resources to defend its own backyards in the South, Southwest and the Rocky Mountain states.

Level 4: Core campaign: Researchers, analysts and pollsters working all the way down to local levels, fund raising experts, truth squads, travel, office space, telecom, tech support, internet strategists, all will be available in abundance to Senator Obama to an extent that John McCain can’t even imagine – in fact, the Obama campaign will be doing things McCain can’t imagine much less pull off (meet-ups, “mystery bloggers” and other things we cannot speak of).

Level 5: Boots on the ground: We’ve already seen the Obama campaign dispatch top-flight organizers to places like Florida and Virginia, the “new” swing states (see Levels 1 and 2).  In the battlegrounds, Obamanites will organize at the precinct level, sending in carpools, vans and buses to register voters and get those same voters to the polls later.  Obama can easily multiply himself through surrogates.  Need an appearance before an important women’s group in Vermont?  No problem – Gov. Napolitano will be on a plane tomorrow.  A speech to a military town in South Carolina?  Hello, Gen. Clark.  And on and on it goes.   

Level 6: Clintonistas: Paying off Hillary’s $20 to $30 million campaign debt ensures the filial alliance of what remains a powerful political camp.  ‘Nuff said.

Level 7: Collateral damage: Money will be left over for other Democratic candidates, not just to boost their fortunes but to harass state GOP committees and make the Republican Party, the only GOP organ fairly well off, spend to supplement the depleted coffers of its congressional committees.  Seeing the writing on the wall, corporations, which care mainly about access not ideology, will plug their money hoses into the Obama machine, sapping another source of reliable Republican money and giving Democrats an unaccustomed boost. 

Don’t mistake this as over-confidence.  I've legitimately tried to make the case for McCain, both substantively and strategically.  Substantively, he has nothing to say on domestic issues and his foreign policy is a cul-de-sac: if Iraq gets better, why stay, and if Iraq gets worse, why stay?  Strategically, being outspent by 3- 4- or 5-1 with probably no better than equal “soft money” money support and an electorate worn out on Republican lies and incompetence, I can only see a hemmed-in, defensive, drowned-out campaign.  If I could make the case for McCain, I would, and I invite those of greater acumen to try.

If it works (and that’s still an “if”) out this way, with sizeable Democratic majorities in Congress, a Democrat in the White House, state legislatures continuing a push toward the Democrats, more than 30 governorships in elections in 2010 with a chance to swing the balance blue, and then the Democrats taking their turn at redistricting, it is almost certain that we are seeing the “last throes” of the Reagan Revolution, which was sired by Nixon’s silent majority which was the progeny of the Wallace Democrats.  It is also very possible that we will see a radical diminishing of the GOP on the national stage for at least a generation.

This could be bigger than FDR but never forget the cost: Billions in wealth lost, millions of humans displaced, dispossessed, disabled or dead, two towers down, and a city drowned.  We have to make this worth all of that, somehow.

That’s where we get to the hard part.