When Barack Obama launched his first advertisement of the general election campaign this week, it was notable where his strategists decided to air it — and more to the point in this supposedly purple state, where they opted not to.

The Democratic Party’s likely presidential nominee is running the ad in a dozen battleground states, but also in six that lean heavily Republican: Montana, North Dakota, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia and Alaska. Conspicuously missing from the list of battlegrounds are such presumed battlegrounds of Minnesota, Washington and Oregon.

And it’s notable that Minnesota was on the list of states where John McCain targeted his first ad last week. All of which raises a couple of (at this point unanswerable) questions: Does the Obama team assume Minnesota’s in the bag? Does McCain’s really, truly think the state is going to be competitive in November?

In any case, here’s the ad, a soft and fuzzy paen to America, American values and Obama’s American roots.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Democrats, Main, Presidential, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.