Obamessiah Planning on a Landslide

The UK Telegraph gives the details:

US elections: Barack Obama's team believes he can win by a landslide

Barack Obama's senior aides believe he is on course for a landslide election victory over John McCain and will comfortably exceed most current predictions in the race for the White House.

By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 8:18PM BST 27 Sep 2008

Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states.

Insiders say that Mr Obama's apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength among first time voters in several key states has been underestimated, both by the media and by the Republican Party.

Mr Obama has come under fire from within Democratic ranks over his message and his tactics. Critics say he has failed to connect with the blue-collar workers seen as crucial to winning the election, and too reluctant to make direct attacks on Mr McCain.

But his aides are convinced that he has a strong chance of winning no fewer than nine states won by George W.Bush in the closely contested 2000 election, including former Republican strongholds like North Carolina, Virginia and even Indiana, which have not voted Democrat for a generation.

There's always a danger in counting on "new voters" or the "youth vote" to make a big difference. Neither group has a history of reliability when it comes to voting, as opposed to older voters who tend to turn out quite reliably every election.

That being said, the conditions in the country today should almost guarantee Obama a landslide and the fact he hasn't been doing better reflects a basic weakness in the campaign and the candidate. People still don't think they know who he is, and that's going to be a problem right through election day. It doesn't take much of a distraction to keep those new and youthful voters at home, and many of those voters signed up to vote for a guy that's no longer running. They were planning to vote for Mr. Postracial Unity, not Mr. Chicago Machine Street Thug Politician.