Memo to Mccain: focus on 8 key states

With all that's going on in the Democratic primary -- the negative attacks, superdelegate infighting, and flatout uncertainty on what lay ahead -- you'd think that John McCain would be running the tables right now to frame the message and his candidacy.  But he's not.  In fact, it's hard to tell what he's been up to because the coverage has been sporadic and his campaign seems to lack focus. 

Undoubtedly he's spending quite a bit of time raising money -- he needs to make up for loss time and replenish the coffers.  But beyond that, what else has he been up to, exactly?  There have been events here and there -- he spent a day in Memphis atoning for his failure to support the MLK national holiday -- but there's no discernible strategy, at least from my vantage point.

McCain's camp should use this time to do something the Democrats cannot:  stump aggressively in the battleground states.  Mccain has shown, time and again, that he's at his best when practicing retail politics.  It worked twice for him in New Hampshire, and in South Carolina and Florida where he spent large chunks of time.  The more voters get to know him up close, the more they like him.

He should spend the next couple of months living in the key battleground states that he needs to keep -- Florida and Ohio in particular, but also Missouri and Indiana -- as well as ones that he can steal from the Dems -- New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Minnesota.   That's not a ton of states: eight, maybe a few more if you throw in California, Washington and Oregon.   He should be spending weeks at a time in these states: holding town hall meetings, visiting local establishments, doing local media and buying advertising.   He could build up a commanding lead come the fall and put the Democrats at a huge disadvantage.  

Footnote:  Ben Smith at ThePolitico.com reports that many of the Democratic affiliate organizations that had committed to spending huge sums of money to negatively define McCain have fallen way short of their fundraising goal.  In fact, they've barely spent anything and have mostly given up the cause.  In 1996, third party organizations, the DNC, and the Clinton campaign itself spent tens of millions of dollars against Bob Dole during the spring and early summer while he was broke and unable to respond.  Looks like McCain had dodged a bullet.