I think the Obama campaign made a serious mistake by not going to WV and campaigning there (it won't cost us the primary at all since the primaries are almost over). WV is a low-dollar media market. Running TV or radio ads is very cheap. Since he was going to lose that state anyway, he could have gone there and test-run new messages crafted directly for the working class folks. That would have allowed his campaign to have some serious fresh data whose analysis would have indicated  what they should focus on and where and how. I also think that he could have run post-election day focus groups to see how those messages have worked and if not why. This would have allowed his campaign to sharpen those messages at low cost and then take them to another state and try them again. By mid-summer and prior to the convention, the campaign would have had a series of well-articulated, well-crafted and well-balanced messages ready to be propagated on the national level.

I think we can learn more from a defeat than a victory and this defeat could have allowed the campaign to gather valuable data. Of course they can run some focus groups now and try some new messages, but they will not have the benefit of knowing how those messages would have worked in real life scenario since they would not have post-election polls as a frame of reference. Moreover, it is always better to try and test new message on skeptical groups than on those who are already ready to vote for you.

Furthermore, i think Senator Obama has been using the same message of Hope and Change for about 12 or 16 months now. I think that message has lost its newfangledness and shinning appeal. I believe that he needs to add to that message a serious layer of economic solutions that shows that he understands the problems of most Americans and that he relates to them at the gut level. This is what Senator Clinton has been able to do recently and this is why, i think, she has become a better candidate than 2 or 3 months ago. Adding a new and fresh economic message would in fact enhance his message of Hope and Change rather than diminishing it.

I think this is the failure of Senator Obama recently. Since Texas and the Rev. Wright crap, he started to look a bit aloof to me and he is running way too confident. Not going to WV almost showed that he does not care about those folks. Quite frankly, if you do not ask people for their vote, they won't give it to you (i don't want to say it but it was borderline disrespectful to them). His campaign needs to correct this quickly before the cement hardens.

As old timers would say, the American people don't expect the president to solve all their problems; they know that he can't, and they know that at the gut level. However, they expect their president to at least understand their worries, problems and to  empathize with them. No one illustrated this power of understanding the lives of normal folks better than FDR who was pure blue blood as they say and came from an aristocratic family. When FDR died in Warm Springs, GA, they put his coffin in a train to bring him back to DC. People gathered along the railroad tracks to say goodbye and the train stopped at every railroad stations. During one of those stops, a journalist traveling with  the coffin of the president noticed a well-dressed man standing tall on the railroad platform and he was crying like a baby. So the curious journalist approached him and asked him "Sir do you personally know the president?" And the man looked at the journalist and said, "No. but he knew me." If an aristocrat like FDR could have related to normal folks to make them feel like he knew them personally, i think Senator Obama could achieve the same thing with working class folks with a little more hard work.

Finally, the republicans are a wounded beast and they won't go down without a nasty fight. Moreover, all macro-indicators are against them (presidential approval rating, wrong track/right track numbers, macro-economic indicators, the war and so forth), and they know that. So, their strategy is going to be as simple as possible. If Senator Obama does not correct this trend of losing rural counties in almost every state, their campaign strategy is going to keep the margin of victory of the senator small enough in the urban centers and then try to sweep the rural areas. If they are able to do that, they could win some serious states, make our task pretty darn hard and November 4th will be a long night for all of us.