Campaign Trail

Keeping Virginia red

• Matthew Price
• 13 Oct 08, 03:50 AM GMT

VIRGINIA BEACH: If there's anywhere you would have assumed John McCain would do well it's Virginia Beach.

This is home to the biggest naval yard in the world, so there will be hearty support for the former navy aviator here.

Not that everyone in the military supports him of course - at the Democratic convention I interviewed one former US Navy rear admiral campaigning for Obama.

But many in the military do see John McCain as their man.

Even in Virginia Beach though, there are concerns about Senator McCain's campaign. The state's Republican leadership is worried that he's not getting his message across.

This is a little old but gets the message across.

The polls suggest an Obama victory here - in a state that last voted a Democrat for president way back in 1964.

If McCain can't win here, he's not going to win the White House.

On Monday he turns up at the convention centre, just outside my hotel window, to try and persuade the faithful and not so faithful.

It might be easier here than in northern Virginia where population changes over the years have brought in a more Democratic-leaning crowd.

He needs their support here though.

One measure of that might be whether there's a good response to this message on the campaign's Virginia website, asking people to turn up at the rally: "Show your support by wearing RED to remind everyone to keep Virginia Red this November!"

I'll get back to you on how many are wearing Republican red in a few hours.

In the meantime, McCain has to work out how he runs the rest of his campaign.

Does he continue the (some say racist) attacks on Barack Obama's character that have characterized the last week or so in an attempt - as one advisor put it - to shift the focus off the economy?

If he does, he risks further angering the growing voices who - like that veteran of the civil rights movement, John Lewis - accuse him of "sowing hatred".

McCain has never struck me as someone particularly happy with such a style of politics. Remember Karl Rove's smears about him during the 2000 primary contest against George W Bush?

The dilemma McCain faces of course, as his poll numbers slide, is whether such attacks - awkward as he might feel about them - might be his best chance of winning this election?

As one colleague put it to me, this is McCain's dilemma, it is "the battle for his soul".