The Audacity Of Hope? (aka Fug You Florida & Ohio?)

You cannot stop the AP's Phil Elliott, you cannot even hope to contain him.

Elliott, in Washington the other day for about 38 seconds, manages to sniff out a story (along with Nedra Pickler) about Team Obama seeing a path to the presidency even without wins in Florida and Ohio.

The first three graphs:

Barack Obama's campaign envisions a path to the presidency that could include Virginia, Georgia and several Rocky Mountain states, but not necessarily the pair of battlegrounds that decided the last two elections — Florida and Ohio.

In a private pitch late last week to donors and former supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe outlined several alternatives to reaching the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House that runs counter to the conventional wisdom of recent elections.

At a fundraiser held at a Washington brewery Friday, Plouffe told a largely young crowd that the electoral map would be fundamentally different from the one in 2004. Wins in Ohio and Florida would guarantee Obama the presidency if he holds onto the states won by Democrat John Kerry, Plouffe said, but those two battlegrounds aren't required for victory.

We'll let "real" electoral strategists debate the realities of Plouffe's remarks.

But we do know two things: First, GOP FL/GOP OH are going to have a field day with this story. And should.

Second, how does Team Obama let these remarks leak? We can almost hear the screaming in Chicago now. 

Politico's Mike Allen (he has more readers than us) Thinks That The AP's Phil Elliott Is A "Rising Star" Too

From Allen's Playbook today:

THE BIG IDEA – AP rising star Philip Elliott from outside Columbus, Ohio – “Dems send aid into traditionally GOP exurbs”: “Democrats are venturing out [to spreading exurbs], giving the party hope it can win battleground states by at least diluting these local Republican strongholds they know they can't win outright. …National Democrats, sensing an opportunity, have started sending campaign workers into these fast-developing areas, where Democrats got blown out in 2004. … Reliably red Indiana added a Democratic spokesman to challenge the Republicans who control the governor's office and the state House. In Kentucky, a state President Bush carried by 20 percentage points in 2004, the Democratic National Committee funded three staffers' salaries.”

Now how can GMP1 compete with that?

The AP's Phil Elliott Wants His MTV

And he will get it!

When Elliott co-moderates "Closing Arguments: A Presidential Super Dialogue" this Saturday on MTV.

From the release:

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK – January 31, 2008 – MySpace, the world’s most popular social network, and MTV, the leading global youth brand, along with the Associated Press, today announced that Dr. Ron Paul (www.mysapce.com/ronpaul2008) will join Senator Hillary Clinton (www.myspace.com/hillaryclinton) and Governor Mike Huckabee (www.myspace.com/mikehuckabeeforpresident) for “Closing Arguments: A Presidential Super Dialogue.” The event will offer candidates a final opportunity to actively engage the highly-coveted youth voting bloc just before Super Tuesday, when more than 20 states will hold their primaries and caucuses. “Closing Arguments” is the next installment of MySpace and MTV’s ground-breaking Presidential Dialogue Series (www.myspace.com/election2008) and will take place live Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 6 PM ET and offer audiences an unprecedented number of options, including on-air, online, radio and mobile, to tune-in and put their candid, unfiltered questions forth to front running candidates. The Associated Press will distribute a live feed and on-demand highlights of the Dialogue to the 1,800 media sites in its Online Video Network; nearly 600 of which are local TV, newspaper or radio sites in states with Super Tuesday primaries.

WashingtonPost.com political reporter Chris Cillizza and MTV News Correspondents Gideon Yago and Sway Calloway will be joined by Associated Press Writer Philip Elliott as moderators.

It looks to us like our friend from New Hampshire is a rising star in the Gang of 500.

So all you budding political operatives should get to know him (but just remember that he "hates everybody", which keeps him fair).

And please don't hold his friendship with us against him.

Because that's not fair.

Congratulations my friend!