Ben Smith offers a great take on why a 50-State Strategy is so essential:
...the widened battlefield may also force McCain to spend scarce resources defending turf he could otherwise take for granted. Obama can, for instance, run a real campaign in places like Texas and Arizona -- states that an occasional poll suggests he could win but where few observers give him much of a shot. Then McCain has to decide whether to simply ignore it, and risk an upset; or to spend money on television and organization keeping up, money that then can't be spent in Ohio.
A smart colleague pointed out to me yesterday that Obama will try to do to McCain what he did to Clinton in Pennsylvania: Even as he lost the state, he ruined her by forcing her to keep up with his massive spending.
That's the part far too many people misunderstand. You can't judge the strategy by simple wins and losses. That's one important metric, but it isn't the only one. If by forcing your opponent to compete everywhere, you can stretch their resources to the breaking point, you will inevitably pick up some seats that you would have otherwise lost. It's not as simple as more-resources-in-Texas = more-seats-in-Texas, or more-resources-in-Idaho = more-sears-in-Idaho. You have to look much bigger than that.
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