NB: This map is a SurveyUSA projection from a few weeks back; I included it here because Thomas Schaller mentioned it in our interview. Based on current polling, Obama is unlikely to lose either Pennsylvania or New Jersey in a general-election battle against John McCain. He currently leads by an average of six points in the former and nine points in the latter, and trails in Virginia by one. Apologies for any confusion.

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

The next--and last--contests on the Democratic primary calendar are Puerto Rico on Sunday and South Dakota and Montana next Tuesday, but you'd hardly know it from tracking Barack Obama's recent travel schedule. Instead of stumping in Sioux Falls and backslapping in Billings, Obama spent Monday hunting for military votes in Las Cruces, N.M. and Tuesday talking about the mortgage crisis in Las Vegas, Nev.; today he lands in Denver and Thornton, Colo. to raise money and tout his education plan. Meanwhile, McCain made all the same stops: Monday in New Mexico, Tuesday in Denver and today in Las Vegas. Welcome to the brewing battle over the Southwest. McCain, an Arizonan, arrives with an edge--but Obama's early swing suggests that he hopes to put at least three of the region's four Republican-leaning states in play. Can he win here? To find out, Stumper talked with Thomas Schaller, the author of 2006's "Whistling Past Dixie," who has argued for years that Democrats should skip the South and turn their attention westward instead. Seems like someone is finally listening. Excerpts:

STUMPER: This week, Obama is stumping in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. How important is the Southwest to his general-election strategy? Does he need to win there? Can he win there?
SCHALLER: The three states you hit on are obviously the most important and the most likely states. They're among the three fastest growing states in the union: Arizona's first and Colorado and Nevada are right behind it. So long-term, they're important states for the Democratic coalition. Short-term, if you can put together the three non-Arizona Southwestern states--Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico--that's 19 electoral votes. Add them to Kerry's 252 electoral votes and you're over 270 [the amount required to win]. That's Obama right there.

There are five ways that Obama can get from Kerry's 252 over the top, and that's one of them. Florida is obviously one. Ohio is one. Then there are what I call the "36th Parallel" strategies: Virginia and West Virginia, or Missouri and Kentucky, both of which are unlikely. I think of all five, Ohio is the most probable--but the Southwest troika is Obama's second most likely path to the White House.

That seems unusual. We usually hear more about Florida and Ohio.
It's interesting that as Obama began to move after North Carolina to a more general-election posture, you'll notice that he started traveling to places that weren't on the upcoming calendar. That included Florida and Michigan for obvious reasons. But he's also been, as you know, recently in Colorado and Nevada. So one of the things that I learned when I was writing the book is that neither Gore nor Kerry spent enough time out there, and Democrats in those states I talked to complained vociferously about that. Kerry did some whistle stops on his train ride out there, but largely he wrote both those states off.  That turned out to be a major mistake, especially in a state like Colorado where he did a lot better than Gore.

Why didn't Kerry make a bigger investment in the West?
I think the problem for Kerry is that he knew he'd have to win all three, because 252 plus 19 gets you 271--which is basically the same as if you only got Ohio instead. So I think they just decided to roll the dice on Ohio. That's not necessarily a bad strategy if you have to make a choice over scarce resources--to one-shot Ohio. You know, the economic situation there is better, in theory, for Dems. But I think the thing that's different this year is that Obama will be loaded for bear, and he's not going to have to make that choice. Obviously, time is a fixed commodity. Every day you spend in one state is a day you can't spend in another. But in terms of resources and campaign staff, field and money, Obama will have no problem going after the Southwest. He has field staff in these states that he more or less left there after the primaries.

So this interminable nominating contest has helped him after all.
Right. And the difference in resources compared with Kerry is going to be very, very dramatic. Not to mention the technical integration, the online stuff.

People have probably forgotten, but the margins in these states were really close in 2004--five points in Colorado, three in Nevada, one in New Mexico.
That's right. There were only twelve states decided by five points or fewer, and eight of them were in the Midwest or Southwest alone, including the three states we just talked about. Now, Arizona is obviously out of play because of McCain and his home court advantage there. What's interesting is if you go back to... remember about seven weeks ago SurveyUSA released head-to-head match-ups of Clinton vs. McCain and Obama vs. McCain [see map above]? They both had enough electoral votes to beat McCain, but their coalitions were different. [NB: Versus McCain, Obama still performs better than Clinton in New Mexico and Colorado.] And the once place that was strikingly different was that Hillary Clinton was losing those states out west to McCain, with the exception of New Mexico, and Obama was winning them. He was winning Colorado and Nevada. What's ironic here is that those were the states she carried in the primaries, except for Colorado. She carried Nevada, she carried New Mexico and she carried Arizona on the strength of the Hispanic vote.

What does that tell you?
Well, the conclusion I draw is that even though she's stronger among Hispanics, for the most part they'll come home to him, relatively uniformly. Perhaps he'll have slightly lower support among Hispanics who are immigrants. But he does much better among independents compared to McCain than she would do in these states, and that more than makes up for the fact that she's stronger among Hispanics in the primary. That's why he's more competitive in the southwest.

Do you think Obama can win these three states--Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada?
I don't know that he'll win all three, but I think he's going to win two. I think he'll win New Mexico; the Hispanic vote is so big there, and it's trending back toward the Democrats. Bush did pretty well among Hispanics in 2004, about 40 percent, but Republicans fell right back to 29 percent by 2006. Congressional cycles are a little different than presidential cycles, but I suspect that Democratic support for Obama in New Mexico will be at least 65 percent. You get to that threshold and it's at your fingertips. In Colorado, there's Obama's strong showing in the caucuses; there's the changing nature of the population; there's the fact that the Rev. James Dobson early on said that he'd never support McCain. Given Dobson's clout in that state and the fact that Colorado Springs is very powerful there, if you get a little slippage or stay-at-home rate, that'll help give Colorado to Obama. It's a different coalition in Colorado, more driven by Independents in Colorado than New Mexico, which is driven by Latinos. But I think Obama can win both states. Now, that's not enough for him. It gives him 14. It puts him very close. So he's going to need to flip an Iowa or a Missouri or a Kentucky.

You mentioned the "changing nature" of Colorado's population. What exactly do you mean, and how do these demographic shifts help Obama?
There's a lot of in-migration to Colorado. There are a lot of transplants. Those transplants have come in two waves recently: from the Rust Belt, sort of younger people coming for new economy jobs, to enjoy the open spaces. Then there's a second generation that I talk about in the book. They're called "bouncebackers." They are people who a long time ago, maybe a generation ago, moved out to California, then got a little crowded. They're not going to move back to Lansing or Columbus or Erie, so they just went back to Colorado--because Colorado is the new California. There's a joke in Colorado that goes something to the effect of, "Why aren't the having babies anymore in California? Because all the Californians are [expletive]ing in Colorado."  The point is that Californians are now migrating back east, but not all the way--they're stopping in Boulder or Denver.

So you get some California flavor there, some progressivism and Independent politics.
Right. Colorado is like a suburb of California's coastal cities now. It's like California's exurb. That growth in Jefferson County, in the suburbs of Denver, between Boulder and Denver, all of that growth there. Colorado had eight of 18 of the fastest growing counties in 1990. That's not all explained by Latinos.

What's changed in the Southwest since you published "Whistling Past Dixie" in 2006. Has the terrain gotten better for the Dems? Or has it gotten worse?
You've got a few seats that were picked up in the 2006 elections. J.D. Hayworth was big, and the Dems picked up the Arizona seat that Jim Kolbe retired from. Here's the other thing that's different. You have Udalls [members of the powerful western political clan] running in two of those states. Some have suggested--and I think this is right--that presidential elections have downballot effects with coattails from the top to the bottom. But it does help to have strong statewide candidates on the ticket, and I think that Udall brothers running in Colorado and New Mexico is another factor that helps Obama in those two states more than in Arizona or Nevada. They're seriously, as I understand it, outraising and outspending their opponents.

So you've got Republicans defending two open House seats and an open Senate seat in New Mexico, which only has five in the entire Congress, and then you've got the open seats in Colorado that they have to defend as well. That doesn't help. There's no strong incumbent with a natural machine and built in name ID spending his or her time stumping for McCain. They really have to stump for themselves. It's a difficult situation. The other thing that you have now is governors who are Democrats: there's Ritter in Colorado and Richardson in New Mexico, who has won by some of the widest margins in 50 years. They're extraordinarily population. And because they don't have to run for reelection, they're free to just go nuts. So Obama has help in statewide races downballot that will provide sort of an echo effect.

You didn't put Nevada on your list of likely Obama wins. Why will he have more trouble there than in New Mexico or Colorado?
I think he can win, but I'd rank it third behind New Mexico, then Colorado, and ahead of Arizona. Part of it is you don't have a governor there. Part of it is you don't have an open senate seat with a Republican scrambling for that. Now, if Obama has a swing election where he gets up 51, 52 percent nationally, he's going to win Nevada too. But after Arizona, it's McCain's next best bet in the Southwest.

We've been talking a lot about demographics. But what about Obama himself--his message, his personality, whatever. Does he hold any special appeal to voters in this region versus Clinton or McCain? And does he have any particular problems?
His best appeal is to political Independents. They're the ones who have a real disaffection with procedural politics, and Obama is really running a campaign that emphasizes process and how we conduct business in Washington more than a set of ideological policies. So he holds significant appeal for the Independents in the region. Obama's one problem is that he does have to mind the store on Latino voters. He has created some problems with Hispanic voters and Hispanic leaders--some of which I know about off-the-record. But there is some skepticism, in part because they're connected to Bill Clinton, but in part because Obama didn't make it clear that he was counting on them. In some ways, maybe his model showed that he didn't have to; his campaign predicted that he would lose these states in the primaries. But he does need those voters in a way he didn't need them in the primary, so I think there's some reaching out still to be done--Spanish language TV and radio, which is something that Kerry didn't do. If he can do that, the very investment is symbolic. It shows he takes them seriously.

This leads nicely into my next question. Of any Republican, McCain probably holds the greatest appeal for a) Independents and b) Latinos. How much does that complicate Obama's math in the Southwest?
I'll be the first to concede that of the 10 candidates who were running at one point, Republicans picked the best guy for holding onto the Southwest. They would've been in a lot deeper trouble with Huckabee, for example. He would've been a hard sell to independents down there, and Latinos. So McCain was clearly the best choice for the area. It's his home turf, after all, and it gives you Arizona, which is the biggest of the four states.

But still Obama can take two of the three?
Yeah. I'd say it's going to be a split--Obama in Colorado and New Mexico, McCain in Arizona and Nevada.

Then it's on to Iowa.
He'd get there with Iowa. That'd be 21 more than Kerry's 252--or 273. If he flips back the two states that Bush picked up--New Mexico and Iowa--and then flips Colorado, that's it. He's got to hold the other 19, of course. But New Mexico, Colorado and Iowa get him there. And that's the calculus as I see. Now, this scenario has a very low margin of error, so the Obama people will smartly try for Ohio--Ohio is Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado combined. You can understand Kerry's calculus.

But Obama can afford to shoot for all four, right?
Right. He's going to have less time than Kerry, because Kerry had the nomination sewn up by March at the latest. But he'll be fine on resources. And he's just got to get out there a little bit. Kerry didn't get out there hardly at all.

Which is exactly what he's doing this week.
Right. He's already off and running.