The thing that won the 2000 and 2004 elections for Bush, more than anything else, was a really strong get-out-the-vote effort in critical swing states. So seeing the McCain campaign decide to spend its last several million dollars on ad buys instead of GOTV efforts strikes me as a big mistake. And I’m not the only one — Patrick Ruffini, for instance, applies the word “crackpipe” as an adjective to describe this decision. I don’t think he was being complimentary.
