Farmers for Obama

The front lines of the political battlegrounds have shifted west this year, and Indiana right in the middle. Traditionally conservative and cautious about change, the stakes are high enough, and the choices important enough, that Hoosiers are taking notice and about evenly divided, so writes The Economist.

Jay McCann, a professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, argues that Democratic presidential candidates simply haven’t spent the money to make the state competitive, giving priority to nearby Ohio and Wisconsin instead.

Not so Barack Obama, who has gone on the offensive in Indiana. His first stop after the debate on October 7th was at the fairgrounds in Indianapolis. Even there, he couldn’t avoid Indiana’s conservatives. “Stop the new world order!” a few shouted as Mr Obama talked about fixing the financial crisis. The crowd booed them. “People are fed up,” says Brian Willsey, who usually votes Republican. Hoosiers “want to risk something different”.

I hasten to point out that every Presidential candidate is a risk. Plans can sound great on paper, but it’s important to consider whether or not they have the organizational skills to follow-through and produce results. For all the Republicans’ mocking of Barack Obama as a community organizer, this experience has actually served him very well in creating a campaign organization that is disciplined, on-message, efficient, quick on the pivot, and very responsive to changing conditions on the ground. McCain’s campaign, in contrast has performed pretty poorly on all these counts. So from a pragmatic standpoint, Obama is a much less risky choice than John McCain.

Nothing is ever certain in an election year,

But with Indiana’s unemployment rate running higher than the national figure, and with Hoosiers about to get their battered quarterly retirement account statements, Mr Obama may find just enough who want some change this year.