The red and the blue, two Americas -- 538.com EV projections

And it's not pretty

Unless you like red.

McCain/Palin has unified the center and south, with Florida, Nevada and North Dakota holding out, Ohio slipping away.

The highest return on investment state is far and away CO, followed by NH and NV.

Lower are MI, VA, NM, OH, ND, DE, OR, with SD, WV, IO, FL and ME all below 1.0.

It's time to make the calls to talk to the voters in the states most likely to tip with the highest return on investment, who are willing to give ear to Obama's policies and the arguments for why a vote for McCain/Palin and the Republicans is a vote against their own interests.

It's that simple.

Make Calls.

Visit family in swing states and find out what the campaign is doing there and help out for a weekend.

Write letters to the editor of the cities and towns McCain visits right afterward to correct the record. For a list of the nation's newspapers, click here. Prepare one letter for each issue, group of issues or argument about why a vote for McCain is a vote against our own best interests, citing the central issues of

• the economy
  
• jobs creation
  
• health care -- 47 million Americans without healthcare and costs rising without control and CEO's of private insurers and health groups becoming billionaires is not American. Health care is the central economic issue and has been for years.
  
• the mortgage crisis and the disastrous results of deregulation of the financial markets, taking down banks -- Silver State Bank, on the board of which McCain's sonn sat until July 26, was just closed by the state and federal authorities -- and leading to abuses of oil speculation on the commodities markets.
  
• the truth about taxes; even Snopes says that Obama's tax plan will reduce taqxes for 86% of Americans, not the 95% he claims, but still pretty darn good.
• the war in Iraq and rish of further wars
  

I will be posting samples on the issues that we develop on the mybo boards and sending them along, in case you don't have time to make your own.

There are really only a couple of weeks and the debates to turn this around. It appears that McCain's bounce is leveling out and the campaign will return to the issues on which we can win it. Let's help it to do that so we can get a little decent legislation, protection of the constitution and institutions of the government and economic markets, stability in world affairs, bring our soldiers home as quickly as the ground situation in Iraq permits and work to steer Russia and ourselves clear of another cold war over oil, NATO membership and Russian isolation. Let cooler heads prevail.

This is the urgency of now.

Please contribute, if you can, to the Obama/Biden 08 campaign by clicking here and making your online contribution. It will be credited to you.

It will be put to good use. We need to get the message out there before they do and set the debate ourselves. It isn't going to be a Republican disaster. There is still a red America and a blue America.

Look at the two Americas. This is about who Americans trust, and they don't use the same criteria.

The idealists and intellectuals live in the blue America and are mocked by those who cannot see that those who rule America laugh at them for making it so easy for them to grab and hold power, making them proud to have no health coverage and worry about their job and their mortgage payments, because struggling is American.

I wish everyone could live here and then look back at The United States. It makes no sense. We shake our heads. We'd feel sorry if we didn't feel so sad and scared at what Red America can do.
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