McCain Campaign Manager Offers Winning Scenario

Elizabeth Holmes reports from Tampa, Fla., on the presidential race. John McCain ’s campaign manager laid out a come-from-behind-victory scenario late Sunday evening as the campaign prepared for a seven-state, 18-hour cross-country swing. Although a number of national polls, including the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, give Barack Obama a sizable lead, Rick Davis , a longtime McCain confidante who carried him through the primaries, told reporters that the campaign has many routes on the electoral map to the magic number of 270 electoral college votes. Davis dismissed scenarios that rested on winning a specific state, like Virginia or Florida, and said that recent polling in the West, which shows Obama’s double-digit leads shrinking, has given the campaign considerable hope. “If we can win Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, all of the sudden we’ve got a whole new pathway to victory,” Davis said. “Those weren’t even on the list three weeks ago,” he said. The linchpin ... (link)