Reply #40: See, that's where you're just not thinking in a modern way.

[VolcanoJen]

Ohioans don't just read the Plain Dealer and watch Ohio News Network.

They watch CNN, MSNBC, and especially Fox News. They read USA Today. They even used to read the Op/Ed page of the New York Times, when it was free online.

National attention can fire up the home base and make the election seem even more important than it is. National attention gets local voters to their own polls.

National attention BRINGS IN THE MONEY. National attention is why Paul Hackett out-raised Jean Schmidt by more than 2-1 in the final weeks of the OH-2 special.

By the way, people traipsed from Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana to help on the Hackett campaign in OH-2. I was there, and it blew my mind. Now, I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd wager that die-hard Illinois Democrats learned about Paul Hackett from watching him kick Bush's ass on "Hardball" and "This Week", and reading about him on Eschaton and MyDD.

All voting is local. Important races are national.