Schmidt: McCain 'within striking distance'

John McCain’s chief strategist Steve Schmidt said Monday that the campaign is “well within striking distance” of Barack Obama.

“We are running in a very difficult political environment, that’s not a secret to anybody that’s out there,” Schmidt said during an interview on National Public Radio. “I believe in this race we are approximately six points behind. There’s a lot of the media right now that is writing Senator McCain off for the third or fourth time this year. That means we have ‘em just where we want ‘em in this race.”

“We have an ability to close that distance in the final weeks of the campaign and we’ll be working hard to do that,” Schmidt added. “We feel good about the possibilities of winning the race.”

Schmidt blamed the financial crisis for the campaign’s current state, pointing out that before the crisis McCain was running ahead of Obama.

“We understand that the day of the beginning of the financial crisis we were ahead in this race. With the financial crisis we have fallen slightly behind in the race and we have some ground to make up,” Schmidt said.

 

But while the financial crisis likely won’t recede from the headlines by Election Day, Schmidt still believes the campaign has a path to victory if McCain wins in Florida and Ohio.

“We need to win Florida, we need to win Ohio. We feel great about our chances to do that,” Schmidt said. “We feel good about our chances to win North Carolina, our chances to win Virginia. We look out across the Midwest at a number of blue states that we need to pick up and we feel that we’re competitive in those states.”

The McCain strategist expressed optimism over Obama’s “history of closing weakly in his campaigns,” while claiming that McCain historically closes strong in the final weeks.