Republicans are having a hard time finding candidates to run for the seat being abandoned by Rep. Vito “Families Guy” Fossella (R-NY). That’s what former congressman and Staten Island GOP heavyweight Guy Molinari tells TPM Election Central.

As TPM Election Central first reported a week ago, Obama is on a purple Western state campaign swing this week, targeting New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado.

TPM Reader BC makes an interesting point:

I think there’s a bit more than meets the eye to Obama’s swing through New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada this week. Of course, he wants to start wooing swing states for the general election. But I suspect he began with these three because he also wants to start shifting the media narrative about where he needs to win in November to capture a majority of electoral votes.

One of the subtle advantages Hillary has had in making her “I do better in the swing states” argument is that her potential path to electoral victory looks much more like the traditional Democratic map. Above all it hinges on Ohio and Florida, which have been seared into traumatized Democrats’ minds as ground zero for narrow defeats (or stolen victories). The press, always eager for a simple, dramatic narrative, has happily indulged Clinton’s emphasis on these states, and will likely continue to do so when the focus shifts to Obama vs. McCain.

Obama’s challenge is that he has an equally legitimate path to victory, but it runs through states that neither the media nor the Democratic base readily conceive of as pivotal. Together, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada offer 19 electoral votes — only one less than Ohio. Add in Iowa, where Obama also shows unusual strength, and you get up to 26 — one less than Florida.

Obama can afford to lose one of those “traditional” swing states if he makes it up in these states where he seems to have unique appeal. But if the campaign press corps decides to go spend the next six months camped out in Ohio and Florida filing hand-wringing stories about his struggles with “white working class” voters or elderly Jews, he never gets to make that case, the narrative about his campaign’s chances will be much more dour, and some of that pessimism may sink in with the electorate.

Campaign tours like this one — not to mention last Tuesday’s primary night victory speech in Iowa — are a subtle way to start putting these “Obama swing states” on reporters’ radar screens and prime them to tell a different electoral story.

If BC is right, then the Obama camp is aiming its meta-message at people like me. I look at the Obama electoral map and just scratch my head. Can a Dem really win the White House while losing Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida? Or winning only one of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania?

As SurveyUSA found in a state-by-state electoral college breakdown back in March, Obama could pull it off, at least in theory. But it’s not a tried and true path to the Presidency for a Democrat. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen. But it is a high stakes gamble, the kind that looks brilliant if it works and, well, probably pretty idiotic if it doesn’t. Not that Bill or Hillary would ever say I told you so.

Late Update: Dissent, from readers.

TPM Reader JE:

You badly misrepresent the Obama electoral map strategy. He’s not visiting western purple states and ignoring Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Before this western state trip he went to Florida and had what, by all accounts, was a enormously successful set of events, impressing several audiences he supposedly will have trouble impressing. Obama isn’t gambling anything, and he will run hard in Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio. But he will not cede a number of other states that Democratic candidates haven’t taken seriously in recent elections. His strategy is to increase the number of states that can reasonably be called competitive. By labeling this a “gamble,” you miss the bigger point and play right into a silly MSM talking point.

TPM Reader SR:

David, I don’t know why you’re “scratching your head.” The simple fact is that what you’re calling “the tried and true path to the presidency for a Democrat” has never actually worked! Ever! Carter won in 76 by carrying the South. Johnson won in 64 by carrying everywhere. Kennedy? Well take at look at his map, it’s like some alternate universe. http://www.presidentelect.org/e1960.html

“The only time your “tried and true” path more or less worked was in ’92 and ’96 and, in both case, it only worked because of Ross Perot, the most successful third party candidate in history. Both times, Bill failed to win an electoral majority in many of the key states on the “tried and true path” by a wide margin.

Obama’s electoral map is not about brilliant or stupid. Its about how doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of stupidity, not insanity. (The definition of insanity is making up your own facts, or your own math, and insisting they’re as good as anyone else’s facts/math.)

Likewise, TPM Reader CN:

Would Obama’s pursuit of electoral-college victory based on non-traditional swing states really be a “high-stakes gamble”? High stakes, sure; it’s a presidential election so the stakes are always high. But I don’t see the gamble: each state produces a known quantity of electoral votes, and I have heard nothing to suggest that voters in NM or CO are less persuadable than voters in FL and OH. If the polls show that Obama’s clearest path to victory is through a “new” electoral map, wouldn’t the real gamble be to ignore his unique strengths and try to win through the “traditional” map? Sounds like that meta-message to the press is needed.

Remember that Obama also used a non-traditional path to victory in the primary: organize every state, relentlessly organize the caucus states, and prepare for the long haul. Hillary put all her money on the “traditional” path to the nomination, believing it was the only winning path. She was surprised, to say the least. Will McCain also discount Obama’s strategy?

Forget Jack Abramoff and parasailing in the Marina Islands. Colorado GOP Senate candidate Bob Schaffer has another problem on his hands.

The president of a foundation for which Schaffer served on the board of directors is currently on trial (the jury is deliberating) on criminal charges for defrauding the government out of some $2 million. The treasurer for the group, who ran some of Schaffer’s earlier political campaigns, has already pleaded guilty.

As Andrew Tilghman explains at TPMmuckraker, the case arises from a earmark secured back in 2000 for the National Alternative Fuels Foundation, whose board Schaffer served on from October 2004 until March 2005, after he had left Congress. His tenure on the board overlapped with some of the alleged criminal conduct by the foundation executive director, Bill Orr.

Orr had a for-profit business seeking to develop alternative fuels, and he set up the nonprofit foundation to receive the earmarked funds. Although Schaffer was in Congress at the time, it’s not clear at this point which member of Congress arranged the earmark.

Schaffer himself has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But he is on a witness list in the case, as is Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, himself a former congressman.

You may have seen this already. Americans cut back on driving in March, compared to the previous March, more than in any single month since such record-keeping began in 1942. It was a 4.3 percent drop in miles driven, a reduction of 11 billion miles.

I was doing a little more reading on this and came across this piece from Time, circa 1947:

The average U.S. citizen completely ignores the regularity with which the automobile kills him, maims him, embroils him with the law and provides mobile shelter for rakes intent on seducing his daughters. He takes it into his garage as fondly as an Arab leading a prize mare into his tent. He woos it with Simoniz, Prestone, Ethyl and rich lubricants–and goes broke trading it in on something flashier an hour after he has made the last payment on the old one. …

By last week, this peculiar state of mind had not only sucked thousands of American oil wells dry, stripped the rubber groves of Malaya, produced the world’s most inhuman industry and its most recalcitrant labor union, but had filled U.S. streets with so many automobiles that it was almost impossible to drive one. In some big cities, vast traffic jams never really got untangled from dawn to midnight; the bray of horns, the stink of exhaust fumes, and the crunch of crumpling metal eddied up from them as insistently as the vaporous roar of Niagara.

Except for the occasional dated turn of phrase, the perspective is remarkably contemporary.

Daniel Levy wonders if corruption-tainted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is nevertheless going out on a high note.

You know the cognitive dissonance you feel when someone you admire and respect turns out to be chummy with someone you’re not particularly fond of? That’s how I felt reading Hendrick Hertzberg’s ode to Chris Matthews. Still, it’s worth a read.

We had so much fun with Scott McClellan. And to think now he’s turned around and written a scathing, tell-all Bush White House memoir.

Didn’t see that coming.

If John Hagee is too big a whacko for John McCain, why is Joe Lieberman headlining Hagee’s annual shindig in July?

For months, John McCain has been bragging on the fact that he’s got fmr. Sen. Phil Gramm as his key economics advisor. That’s scary enough as it is, if you’re familiar with Gramm’s policy predilections and legislative history. But now it turns out that Gramm, who advised McCain on his mortgage relief policy and speech, was also a registered lobbyist for the Swiss bank UBS, which is obviously heavily concerned with the mortgage crisis. According to MSNBC, which has just broken the story, UBS only deregistered Gramm on April 18th of this year, which I’m pretty certain was after McCain rolled out the policy that Gramm had a hand in crafting.

Below I noted MSNBC’s story tonight about how fmr. Sen. Phil Gramm (McCain’s economics advisor) was advising him on his subprime mortgage bailout policy while Gramm was also a registered lobbyist for the Swiss bank UBS.

Now, it’s clear from the report that UBS had some exposure on the subprime front. But I wasn’t aware of the true extent of it. TPM Reader KB sends in articles Businessweek and Forbes that show just how big a player UBS was. Forbes says that UBS is among the banks worst hit by the global credit crisis, particularly in their direct exposure to the US subprime market. According to Forbes, UBS has some $37 billion in write-downs on assets tied to bad US mortgages. In other words, the bank’s very life appears to be on the line in how the US government chooses to handle the matter.

As MSNBC reported, UBS deregistered Gramm as a lobbyist for the company on April 18th, though he continues to serve as a vice chairman of the bank. But that was fully a month after McCain’s speech outlining his own approach to the crisis.

Many of the lobbying connections the press has dug up on McCain have been embarassing. But I’m not sure any have really had teeth until this one. After all, how much does the average voter care that Charlie Black represented a lot of foreign dictators? A stench, yes? But finding out that McCain had a major subprime lender bank lobbyist whispering in his ear when McCain told the public that it was basically tough luck if they lost their houses?

(ed.note: Let me clarify one point. UBS was not a bank lending people money for home loans. Their very high level of exposure came from buying paper instruments backed by iffy mortgages. The way this works is that lender company X lends a bunch of people money to buy homes. Then company X packages all that together and sells it to a company like UBS — which bought quite a lot. There are many more levels of complexity, as I’m sure our banking industry readers will point out. But this is the basic point — they are heavily exposed to the fallout from the subprime crisis without having been a first order lender themselves.)