What if there’s a "Georgia affect"?

Okay, this is sheer speculation, thinking out loud kind of stuff.

What if Barack Obama turns out to be sort of a Red State surfer.

By that I mean he pushes the Democratic Party’s numbers and gets CLOSE in a bunch of traditionally Republican states.

Call it the “Georgia” affect.

We could see him come within a few thousand votes of beating John McCain in states such as Colorado, Georgia, Montana, North Carolina, and Virginia — while falling short in all or most of them.

It would be a case of moving the needles dramatically — just not enough to matter.

If it happened, Obama would draw a lot of fire for pushing for a mandate, a big win, rather than focusing his campaign’s efforts on one or two easier pick-ups.

Frankly, this is a long, long shot. The polls suggest that John McCain needs a major surge to turn this hypothetical into a reality.

He’s down 11% in Iowa and 7% in Colorado and Virginia.

But the Republican still has four days to convince red-state voters that they should give the race one more look.