By now you've probably heard the good news that the McCain campaign has pulled all of its money, ads, and staff out of the battleground swing state of Michigan. 

They are doing this after blowing over $8 million over several months, only to arrive at a polling deficit of -7%, according to the Real Clear Politics average of the last 8 statewide polls taken.  The final two polls had them down as much as 10 and 13 points.  It's not hard to understand why they felt it was time to concede Michigan to Obama.

What is hard to understand is why they bothered to contest it in the first place.  Michigan hasn't gone for a Republican presidential candidate in 20 years.  Good lord, even John Kerry won it in 2004.  It seems that every election cycle, some brilliant young GOP strategist holds a press conference with the big announcement that Michigan is "in play", only to blow a fortune on the state and pull out in the last month of the general. 

Scanning the coverage of the retreat this morning, I came across one of the reasons the McCainiacs thought Michiganers would heart the GOP this year:

Republicans considered economically depressed Michigan ripe for plucking.

Yeah, you read that right.  In a change election year, following eight years of economic devastation wrought by the incumbent GOP administration, the McCain campaign thought the economic problems of Michigan made the state "ripe for plucking".

I hope such strategery is informing all of their battleground budgeting.  Keep it up, Steve Schmidt!

The idea behind the retreat obviously is that McCain can now spend his Michigan resources in more "competitive" swing states like Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.  He'll need to: the Real Clear Politics average of these bellwethers has him down 2% in OH, 2.4% in VA, and a whopping 7.9% in PA. 

The flip side of the retreat is that Obama gets to pull most of his ad resources out of Michigan as well.  If the Illinois senator shakes some of that money onto PA, we might just see a McCain retreat there, too.

But not everyone in the McCain campaign is on board with the Michigan decision.  According to freshly-pepped running mate Gov. Sarah Palin, when she got word of the decision through a campaign-wide email, she promptly registered her displeasure, replying all:

“Oh c’mon, do we have to?” Palin said she wrote.

Palin's email brought to mind those people at my firm who will Reply All to a 1,000+ recipient, office-wide email announcement, asking if lunch is included in that afternoon's training seminar, and if not, do they have to go?.