I am, of course, tickled to death to read these sorts of reports, but I hope that what the Obama campaign really takes away from this sort of thing is that we should put a real effort into Texas. There are some "solid" red states that are up for grabs this time around, and there is no red state on the map that is a more tempting target than Texas. Even if we do not win it this go around, a hard fought campaign there can pay dividends in the future.

I've always been kind of amazed that ND managed to send pretty-decent Byron Dorgan to Washington.

I guess SD is similar - it's said that SD likes to send Republicans to the statehouse and Democrats to DC (setting aside the travesty of Thune unseating Daschle).

Anyway, great news.

"Deep-red" North Dakota hasn't elected a Republican U. S. Senator since 1980. And, as this post notes, hasn't voted Democratic for President since 1964. I have always wondered why this unusual phenomenon exists.

Also this unrelated one - I live in Portland OR. North Dakota has about 0.2% of the total U. S. population but for some reason it's not at all unusual to see 2 or 3 native North Dakotans in the daily newspaper obituaries. I don't understand that one either.

wow and hearing what gramm said this will probably hurt mcsame in other states..............

Barack Obama has the money, the resources and the ground game that's a recipe for a win in ND. The 50 state (Dean) strategy works.

I don't see anything particularly inconsistent about Rasmussen's polling this year.

Obama is a Midwesterner and appeals to a moderate, LaFollette-type Progressivism that has legs all over the Plains states in a way that no recent Democratic nominee has touched. The last Midwestern nominee, Mondale, was from the other wing of the party; the machine-labor one. This kind of thing puts IA, WI and MN in the bag for us, and makes us competitive in ND, MT, IN and so on.

At the same time, the machine-labor wing still isn't fully nailed down (hence the weakish numbers in New Jersey, and also in MO and MI where the Democratic base is labor union industrial), and in Illinois, Downstaters are deeply suspicious of anything and everything carrying the label, "Chicago Democrat", especially when so many prominent Chicago Democrats are complete and total buttheads (Governor Blagojevich and Senate President Emil Jones indisputably, House Speaker Mike Madigan at least to some people, Jones' right-hand man Sen. Rickey Hendon, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger and so on). And Jones, one of the buttheads-in-chief, was Obama's mentor in the state senate, and Stroger, the most incompetent of the whole bunch, was endorsed by Obama in his election bid. The fact that Obama was a very good state senator who probably did more reform work in a day than his mentor Jones has done in his entire career doesn't really register with a lot of suburban and rural folk here; again, all they see is "Chicago Democrat."

Look for those Illinois numbers to remain underwhelming if, as I expect, the governor and state legislature continues to deadlock over everything and our federal matching funds for transportation get released to other states.

Yeah, Howard Dean is a really good strategist. That's why he lost like 48 states in the primaries when he ran in 2004.

Obama should contest ND, MT, and AK though as it will force McCain to spend money defending what should be automatic GOP states.