McCain out of Colorado?

CNN's John King reported tonight that "...most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone."

Is this true? Quite possibly yes. The question is, did John McCain put much effort into Colorado in the first place? I think the evidence is that McCain has not focused much attention at all on the Centennial State.

Oh sure, they ran television commercials but those have dried up significantly the last few weeks. More importantly though the McCain campaigns ground presence has been essentially non-existent in the state.

From talking with people working on the ground here the reports are that there is literally no McCain ground presence in the swing counties that the progressive organizations are targeting. There are liberal interest groups canvassing 7 days a week in this state and I've yet to hear of any group that has so much as seen a single John McCain canvass team. These groups are not just working in Denver and the city of Boulder, they are knocking doors in the key swing counties and targeting not just Democrats but Republicans and unaffiliated voters. The law of averages suggests that someone, somewhere would have crossed paths with the McCain ground game but so far... nothing.

It's exceedingly odd for a Republican presidential campaign to not even bother assembling a field operation in a key swing state that has backed the GOP in 3 consecutive Presidential elections but that's exactly what the McCain campaign did.