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What Barack Obama Needs to Win

(As inspired by Mark Halperin).

– To speak to a national television audience at least once a week through a variety of venues.

– To speak to age 18-30 voters on a regular basis, through mechanicsms such as online chats that you host at your website.

– To develop a 30-second soundbyte answer to the question of high gas prices that everybody can recite by rote.

– To embody some of Bill Clinton, let your guard down, and speak to people’s economic pain every day.

– To embody some of Hillary Clinton, develop more than one gear, and keep the McCain team off-balance.

– To speak to the importance of your role as a father, and to use it to highlight the moral imperative that we face in keeping the environment safe for our children.

– To pick some quick-and-dirty populist pieces of legislation that appeal to particular swing constituencies, such as the Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights.

– To determine whether Hillary Clinton is able and willing to be a high-profile surrogate for you and, if so, to deploy her on the trail immediately.

– To get some better advertising people, and run more ads less often rather than fewer ads more often.

– To quit being so deferential to John McCain.

– To let the press in all the way, except FOX NEWS.

– To avoid the temptation to pick a Vice President by focus group.

– To make some high-profile admission of an error in judgment that you made, and to get your self-effacing sense of humor back.

– To highlight an issue like your support for gays in the military that polls better than the Republicans realize, and attempt to lure them into re-fighting the culture wars.

– To continue going after uncharted ground like Montana, North Dakota and Indiana where the McCain campaign can’t spend resources without losing face.

– To poll the hell out of the cellphone problem and determine if it gives you an advantage, and if so, in which states.

– To quit acting like you have a 10-point lead. You don’t.

Note: This is analysis, not advice.

Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.

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