Obama’s coattails

One of the reasons that Dems are hoping for a landslide next week is the structural shift that followed their lengthy primary.

Democrats were already scrambling to register more voters, but Barack Obama’s campaign kicked it into high gear, signing up tens of thousands of new voters.

Because the endless primary was fought on non-traditional ground (for Democrats), that meant Obama had to build an infrastructure in places where none existed before.

That means hundreds of new campaign offices, voter registration drives, mailing lists — all the nuts and bolts of winning ground-game elections.

Obama’s effort linked up more or less seamlessly with the “50-state” campaign launched by Howard Dean four years ago.

And it meshed with the Democratic Congressional Committee’s efforts to recruit more “red-state friendly” candidates.

In many of those same districts, Republicans had become complacent. They were so used to winning handily that they allowed their own political infrastructure was in disrepair.

If Obama’s numbers are strong on Tuesday, it could be all over for dozens of Republicans — especially in states that allow “straight-party” voting. This from The Hill newspaper:

[V]oters are allowed to save time and vote for every Democrat (or Republican) on the ballot with a single mark of the ballot. Straight-party voting is allowed in several states where Obama has poured in money and campaign workers: Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Some pundits are stretching to imagine that as many as 40 Republicans could lose their seats.

If that happens — and if Dems reach a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate — Barack Obama will have more power on Day One than any other president in the last century.

We’ll see on Tuesday if his coattails are that long.