Campaign '08 Will Redefine Election Tactics

From The Wall Street Journal:

"Change" may be the most overused word of this U.S. election season, but here's one instance where it definitely applies: Campaign 2008 will change in a fundamental way how American campaigns will be conducted in the future.

The system for financing campaigns in place for a generation has been shattered as a result of this year's race and will have to be replaced. The notion of which states are battlegrounds has been altered. What's loosely called "the press" has become a different and more polarized force.

And the Democratic and Republican parties' very definitions of themselves figure to change, with the emergence of more upscale Democrats and more downscale "Wal-Mart Republicans" altering the way both parties see themselves.

For their part, Democrats have shown they are attracting a sizable number of high-income voters who once seemed more drawn to the Republican lower-taxes message. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, for example, shows the ticket of Sen. Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, winning 51% of the vote among those earning more than $75,000 a year.

In addition, Democrats have begun making inroads with another traditionally Republican audience: evangelical Christians.

At the same time, uncertainty about Sen. Obama and excitement about the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin, have fueled a rise in the prominence of working-class voters within the Republican Party's coalition.

The Journal/NBC News poll shows the McCain/Palin ticket actually doing better among blue-collar workers -- winning 49% of them -- than it does among either white-collar workers or professionals and managers, categories where it wins 37% and 41%, respectively. Those working-class supporters are drawn to Republicans in large measure by cultural issues, and some young conservatives argue they are the future of the party.

The Obama campaign used the Internet to do what three decades of attempts at campaign-finance overhauls failed to accomplish: use millions of dollars in small donations from average voters to fuel much of a presidential effort. All told, Sen. Obama has raised a startling $639 million through last week, roughly double the amount Sen. McCain has raised, and double the previous record, according to statistics compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign money.

But the step Sen. Obama took that really changed the rules of the game came when he decided he would decline the $84 million the federal government offers presidential candidates for their fall general-election campaigns. Instead, he is simply paying for the effort on his own. That virtually guarantees no future candidate will accept the more-limited federal funds, and so represents the last nail in the coffin of the presidential campaign-finance system put in place in 1974 following the Watergate scandal.