The shrinking Obama map

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - At the beginning of this campaign, Barack Obama promised Democrats a 50-state strategy. Three months later, Obama’s campaign map has shrunk considerably. Instead of flipping the South and attacking in the interior West, Team Obama has gone back to the traditional focus on perennial battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio:

A few months ago, the rhetoric coming out of the Obama camp was that the Democratic presidential nominee’s victory could be sweeping, coming from flipping deep Republican states in the West or the South. But after the Democratic convention, Sen. Obama made a beeline for the traditional swing state he may need most, Pennsylvania, before quickly moving on to Ohio and Michigan.

Winning two of these three states isn’t only key to Sen. Obama’s strategy, but also critical for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain. “I think that what you’re going to see settling in is that the race is going to be very close in most of the battleground states, which is really what matters,” Sen. Obama told reporters Tuesday.

Tightening voter polls, a more competitive money race than originally envisioned and a McCain campaign invigorated by his unconventional vice-presidential pick are prompting a return to the old political map — and a grudging concession by some Obama campaign operatives that certain states once deemed winnable may be more of a long shot than once thought.

For Sen. Obama, this has prompted a change in focus: A campaign that visited nine states in mid-August has focused almost exclusively on three this month. Since closing out the convention, Sen. Obama will have held 21 campaign events through Tuesday, 18 of them in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. All three states went to either George W. Bush or John Kerry in 2004 by a margin of less than 4% — and were won in relative squeakers in 2000.