While Todd and Jerome were enjoying the scene in Denver, I was at home reading a piece by the Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen warning that it would be perilous for the presidential candidates to ignore rural America at their parties' nominating conventions:

I'm not talking about pandering here.  Nor am I talking about just the "farm" vote.  I'm talking about the thousands of Americans who live on the countryside and in small towns.  Some are farmers.  Most aren't.

They face many of the same problems other Americans face - jobs, health care, senior issues and drug abuse.  They are patriotic Americans - many military people come out of these areas - yet because they live in the hinterlands they often feel ignored.

Lots of Americans feel that way these days but that's especially true in rural parts of the country, many of which are losing population and vitality.

It would be politically smart for each presidential candidate and party speakers to specifically address the concerns of rural Americans in their convention addresses.  Conventions aren't the place for "farm speeches" or big policy addresses.  But they are the place where messages and themes can be stressed.   Both parties should reach out to rural voters.

Why? Look at the battleground states.  Missouri, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.  All are states with sizeable rural populations.  Yes, some have urban areas in them but the rural vote in each could prove pivotal in tipping their electoral votes.

I agree with Yepsen that rural and small-town voters are a critical swing bloc, and that was one reason I  thought John Edwards would have been a strong general election candidate. I recommend ManfromMiddletown's piece explaining why "rural voters are the key to the kingdom."

That said, it strikes me as odd to look to convention speeches for proof of whether the presidential candidates are ignoring rural America.

Let's examine what Barack Obama and John McCain are doing to reach Americans who do not live in major metropolitan areas.

There is no plan for rural America on the issues page of John McCain's website. There is only a page labeled "agricultural policies," which contains nine paragraphs about farming, trade and food policies.

Obama's website includes a comprehensive Plan to Support Rural Communities. It addresses not only agricultural policies but also economic opportunities, small business development, environmental protection, renewable energy, communications and transportation infrastructure, attracting teachers and health care providers to rural areas, and dealing with the methamphetamine crisis.

But anyone can slap a plan on a website, right? What are the candidates doing to reach out to those small-town voters who feel ignored?

Let's look at each of the battleground states Yepsen mentions in his column.

Obama had about 40 field offices before the Iowa caucuses and has established 30 offices in Iowa for the general election. His campaign has also organized canvassing in dozens of Iowa towns this summer (see here and here). In August, surrogates for Obama are holding
numerous "rural roundtables" across Iowa to focus on issues affecting small-town and rural residents.

John McCain has six field offices in Iowa, none of them in small towns. I haven't heard of a lot of campaign activity on his behalf in small towns either.

Obama has already opened 31 field offices in Missouri, which isn't even one of his campaign's top red state targets. McCain has six campaign offices in that state.

Let's turn to Ohio, a state McCain must hold if he is to have any chance of winning 270 electoral votes. McCain has nine campaign offices in Ohio (although there's no phone or e-mail contact information for these offices on the McCain Ohio website). Obama will have 56 offices supporting his field operation in Ohio, and 44 of those offices are already open.

I don't consider Minnesota much of a battleground state in light of recent polling. But since Yepsen mentioned it, and McCain may select Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty as his running mate, where do the candidates stand? Obama has 11 field offices in Minnesota, while McCain has seven.

It's more lopsided in Wisconsin: Obama has 31 field offices, while McCain has six.

Obama built a large campaign organization in Pennsylvania leading up to that state's primary and has opened 18 field offices there for the general election. The Pennsylvania page of McCain's website lists a "Pennsylvania & Ohio Regional Office" in Columbus, Ohio and just one local office in Harrisburg. Looks like McCain hardly plans any outreach in that state.

I could go on about Obama's 35 field offices in Virginia, 22 offices in North Carolina, 26 offices in Indiana and four offices in North Dakota, one of the most rural states.

But you get my point. Not only does Obama have a plan for rural America, he has a campaign presence in dozens of small towns where McCain does not. His staff and volunteers are making contact with thousands of voters who will only hear from McCain through their television sets.

I don't know how much Obama plans to speak about rural issues on Thursday night, but he certainly can't be accused of ignoring the concerns of voters outside cities and suburbs.

If you are planning to volunteer for Obama in a small town, take some time to become familiar with the Plan to Support Rural Communities. AlanF has good advice for canvassers in this diary, and Pete Mohanty lays out the reasons that canvassing is an effective campaign tool in this research paper.  

cross-posted at Bleeding Heartland

I wouldn't say my four-year-old son was following the presidential race closely last year, but he was paying enough attention to understand that his parents were voting for John Edwards. Having been in the car a few times when I delivered yard signs, he also understood that an Edwards sign in front of someone's house meant that person was also voting for Edwards.

In March of this year, my son (by then five years old) asked me whether we were still voting for John Edwards. I explained that not enough people had voted for Edwards, so he couldn't be the president. We would vote for someone else, probably Barack Obama. He found that a little confusing, but over time it clicked with him that we were supporting Obama for president.

Last night we had a baby-sitter over for a couple of hours. While she was here, I was getting the kids a snack, and my older son asked her who she was voting for. She said, "McCain."

He followed up with, "But who are you voting for for president?" She said, "McCain."

Pause. He turns to me: "Mommy, are we voting for Obama?"

"Yes, we're voting for Obama, but [baby-sitter] is voting for McCain."

"Oh." And he went back to eating pretzels.

The case for Joe Biden as Barack Obama's running mate is simple: he's got a lot of experience at the federal level, particularly in foreign policy. That will reassure voters who may be concerned about Obama's resume and blunt a major line of attack from John McCain (whose ads have been questioning whether Obama is "ready to lead").  

But plenty of people in Washington have served in Congress for 20 or 30 years. What makes Biden better than most of them as a running mate? Media scripts about the "gaffe machine" notwithstanding, I submit that Biden's campaigning ability will be a huge asset to Obama.

I know the stories about Biden putting his foot in his mouth, and I am old enough to remember the Clarence Thomas hearings, when Biden talked too much and didn't put Thomas on the spot enough.

But he is a much better campaigner than people give him credit for.

Of all the presidential candidates, Biden got the best word of mouth from Iowans who attended his events last year. I don't think I ever talked to anyone who went to hear him and walked away unimpressed. I wrote about this last summer and again right before the Iowa caucuses.

If you don't believe me, read accounts by other people who listened to Biden take questions for an hour or more from voters, sometimes just about Iraq and foreign policy but more often about any topic Iowans felt like bringing up.

Biden is not going to need a crash course in federal policy to prepare for the vice-presidential debate, because he knows this stuff inside-out. And despite his reputation for long-windedness, he is able to answer questions in 30 to 60 seconds. In the Democratic candidates' debates last year, Biden did extremely well despite consistently getting 30 percent to 50 percent less time to speak than the front-runners. He often had the most memorable one-liners from those debates too.

Speaking about the news media's blackout of long-shot Democratic contenders, Elizabeth Edwards wrote in this op-ed for the New York Times:

And it's not as if people didn't want this information. In focus groups that I attended or followed after debates, Joe Biden would regularly be the object of praise and interest: "I want to know more about Senator Biden," participants would say.

Biden's speaking style is more aggressive than Obama's, which will help him be the attack dog Obama will need.

I also agree with Jonathan Singer's point that Biden's relative lack of wealth will reinforce the message that the Democratic candidates can relate to ordinary Americans on bread-and-butter economic issues.

Finally, Steve Clemons is absolutely right: Americans are going to love Jill Biden.

Biden wasn't my number one choice for Obama's vice president, but he is going to bring a lot to the table.

I don't see much evidence that Barack Obama has a problem with women voters. He leads among women by more than Al Gore or John Kerry did at the same time during their own presidential campaigns. The most recent Iowa poll shows Obama leading by six overall but by 12 among Iowa women.

Among purveyors of conventional wisdom, however, there is still a perception that Obama has work to do among women voters, and particularly the women who preferred Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

The Obama campaign has been scheduling women's outreach events to address this issue. Today Governor Kathleen Sebelius is campaigning around central Iowa, and one of her appearances is a lunch in Des Moines specifically geared toward women.

Last Friday I attended a different women's event featuring Dana Singiser. She served as Director of Women's Outreach for Clinton's presidential campaign before joining the Obama campaign as Senior Adviser for the Women's Vote.

Singiser wrote the Obama campaign memo on John McCain's "woman problem," released earlier this week.

Join me after the jump for more.

I am glad John Edwards is not the Democratic nominee.

A few more thoughts on this story are after the jump.

Mike Glover of the Associated Press bureau in Des Moines wrote a piece this week on the huge money advantage that Senator Tom Harkin and Iowa's five U.S. House incumbents have over their opponents.

I'll have more to say on this topic in future posts, but for now I want to note one thing: although nearly all incumbents are able to outspend their opponents, that is not always enough to overcome a national tidal wave toward the other party.

Bruce Braley (D, IA-01), Dave Loebsack (D, IA-02) and Leonard Boswell (D, IA-03) all represent districts with a Democratic tilt (of varying degrees) in what is likely to be a very big Democratic year.

The odds-makers might favor Tom Latham (R, IA-04) and Steve King (R, IA-05) now, but in a big year for the challenger's party, money and the other advantages of incumbency are not always enough to win.

Just ask Neal Smith, who was an 18-term incumbent and had more clout in 1994 than any Iowan currently serving in the U.S. House. I can't find campaign finance statistics going back that far, but I would bet that he spent more trying to keep his seat (IA-04) than Republican Greg Ganske spent in taking him down.

Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley spent "what aides say may total $1.5 million to $2 million, a staggering amount for a House race" in 1994, but he still lost to George Nethercutt in Washington's fifth district.

Chris Bowers had the most accurate final House forecast in 2006. But following several states' primaries in September of that year, he wrote:

NH-01 drops off the board since upset winner Shea-Porter has only 3% of her opponent's cash

And in his final House update, published on November 6, 2006, Bowers still had Shea-Porter's race in the "likely Republican" category, commenting, "If she wins, Carol Shea-Porter will become a legend."

Her shocking victory in New Hampshire's first district over an entrenched Republican incumbent was indeed legendary.

Obviously, it's better for a challenger to have as much money to spend as possible, which is why I've been encouraging Democrats to donate to our good Democratic candidates like Rob Hubler, who is taking on King in IA-05, and Becky Greenwald, who is running against Latham in IA-04.

Also, I would like to see another "Use it or lose it" campaign to encourage our ultra-safe Democratic incumbents giving more to the DCCC and DSCC. That would help reduce the money disparity faced by our challengers in many districts.

But I strongly disagree with the contention that a big lead in cash on hand makes Latham and King as safe as Iowa's Democratic incumbents this year.

On Saturday a fundraising solicitation arrived in the mail from Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. It asked me to confirm delivery of the enclosed "supporter card" within ten days, and also to "help keep my 2008 re-election campaign on the road to victory" with a special contribution.

Funny, I wasn't aware that Harkin needed any extra help. Everyone in the election forecasting business has labeled this seat safe for him. The available polling shows Harkin with a comfortable lead.

According to Open Secrets, Harkin had $4.1 million cash on hand at the end of the second quarter. His little-known Republican opponent, Christopher Reed, has raised a total of $11,765 for his Senate campaign and had $292 (two hundred and ninety-two dollars) on hand as of June 30.

Harkin's letter got me thinking that we need a "Use It Or Lose It" campaign for 2008.

In 2006, MyDD and MoveOn.org launched a "Use It Or Lose It" campaign to contact "ultra-safe Democratic House Representatives and ask them to help fully fund all of our competitive challengers this cycle." The project spurred at least $2.3 million in additional major donations from House incumbents (click the link to read details).

A similar project targeted at safe incumbents in the House and Senate has the potential to raise even more money this year.

The Democratic House and Senate campaign committees have been crushing their Republican counterparts in fundraising. At the end of the second quarter, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had about $46.2 million cash on hand, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had $54.7 million cash on hand. As of June 30, the DSCC had about twice the cash on hand as the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the DCCC had six times the cash on hand as the National Republican Congressional Committee.

But we should be able to outspend the Republicans even more if our Democrats in safe seats donate more to the relevant committees.

Everyone agrees that the Democrats have an unusually large number of solid pickup opportunities. Here's the Swing State Project list of competitive Senate races. All them are Republican-held but one (Louisiana), and that one is "lean Democratic." Only one Democratic-held seat (New Jersey) is even on the "races to watch" list.

Look at the most recent Senate forecast by Chris Bowers. He's projecting a pickup of six seats. He also lists ten "Democratic held, uncompetitive locks":

Arkansas (Pryor), Delaware (Biden), Illinois (Durbin), Iowa (Harkin), Massachusetts (Kerry), Michigan (Levin), Montana (Baucus), Rhode Island (Reed), South Dakota (Johnson), West Virginia (Rockefeller)

I haven't added up the cash on hand numbers for all those incumbents from the latest FEC filings, but it must total many millions of dollars.

In the past six weeks, the DSCC has sent out many fundraising e-mails touting "11 battleground states" (Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia).

How many more Senate races could become more competitive if the DSCC were able to put significant resources behind our candidates? Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Georgia immediately come to mind.

The netroots are already working hard to promote Democratic challengers for Republican-held seats. Daily Kos has featured 10 House and four Senate candidates in its "Orange to Blue" ActBlue page. MyDD is raising money for five Senate candidates on its "Road to 60" ActBlue page. SenateGuru even went "on strike" until readers donated enough to three of eleven candidates on SenateGuru's ActBlue page.

But it's likely that Tom Harkin alone could donate more to the DSCC than all of the donors to all of those ActBlue pages combined.

Not only that, but safe Democratic incumbents sitting on huge war chests could do a lot for legislative candidates in their home states. A few thousand dollars can go very far in a statehouse race.

I don't mean to pick on Harkin. (After all, he was the only senator to have the guts to vote against confirming Gen. David Petraeus as the new chief of U.S. Central Command last month.)

More to the point, I know Harkin is already helping other Democrats. He has reportedly donated to the Iowa Democratic Party's GOTV efforts. Over the weekend he held a joint event with Becky Greenwald, the Democratic candidate for Iowa's fourth Congressional district. Earlier this summer, he gave $2,000 each to five Iowa House and five Iowa Senate candidates, plus an extra $5,000 to two candidates who received the most votes from constituents in Harkin's "Building Blue" contest. I hear rumors that Harkin will hold fundraisers for other Democratic candidates in key Iowa statehouse races, or perhaps donate substantial amounts to the Iowa House and Senate Democratic leadership funds.

For all I know Harkin has already donated a substantial amount to the DSCC as well. I couldn't find a list of Senate incumbents who have given to that fund.

But still--Harkin had more than $4.1 million in the bank at the end of June, which is more than 14,000 times the amount his Republican challenger had in the bank. Couldn't Harkin dig a little deeper to help the DSCC get behind Scott Kleeb, Jim Slattery, Andrew Rice and other good Democrats?

While I've talked primarily about Senate races in this diary, of course a potential "Use It Or Lose It" 2008 campaign should also focus on some House incumbents. The DCCC has reserved ad time in 51 districts so far, and only 17 of those are Democratic-held. (Click here for the first wave of DCCC ad buys and here to see the 20 districts targeted in the second wave.) I take that to mean that the DCCC feels confident about holding more than 200 of our House seats.

There have to be at least 150 House Democrats who meet the "ultra safe" standard and should be putting more of their campaign funds into the DCCC pot.

Look at Swing State Project's list of competitive House races. Four Republican-held seats are in the "lean Democrat" category, another 11 are "tossups", another 17 are "lean Republican," and at least two dozen more could become competitive with more money for Democratic challengers to spend. Meanwhile, no Democratic-held seats are in the "lean R" category, and only two are even rated tossups.

How many of those Lean R or Likely R races can we break open with more money for challengers to spend? How many races not even on Swing State Project's list right now could become surprise wins for us, along the lines of NH-01 in 2006?

For instance, Swing State Project's list does not currently include the two Republican-held seats in Iowa, but in my opinion both Becky Greenwald in IA-04 and Rob Hubler in IA-05 have a chance to win in a strong Democratic year. (I explain why here and here.)

I look forward to reading your thoughts and suggestions on a possible Use It Or Lose It campaign.

Congressman Tom Latham is a conservative Republican representing Iowa's fourth district (D+0). He has a lot more money in the bank than Democratic candidate Becky Greenwald, but Iowa political observers think this race could be very competitive. The DCCC and EMILY's list are said to be watching the race closely.

Yesterday Latham opened up his war chest to start running statewide radio ads touting his advocacy of drilling for more oil on U.S. territory.

I don't have audio from this ad, but judging from this press release, it hits some of the same points John McCain raised in a television ad launched last week. That commercial blamed Barack Obama for high gas prices because Obama opposes more offshore oil drilling.

Join me after the jump for more on Latham's strategy, which may be repeated by down-ticket Republicans across the country.