Huh?

Maybe I’m missing something. Wouldn’t be the first time, of course:

Minority Americans have been flocking to the nation’s “swing counties,” hotly contested areas that could play a crucial role in this year’s election.
That’s got to be good news for Barack Obama, bidding to become the first black president.
Blacks and Hispanics are moving to counties that already were racially diverse, such as Osceola in central Florida and Mecklenberg in North Carolina, home to Charlotte. They also are moving to key counties that remain predominantly white, such as Lake in Northeast Ohio, Lehigh in eastern Pennsylvania and Oakland outside Detroit.
If this year’s election is as close as the past two, demographic shifts in these counties could make a big difference.
The racial changes reflect national trends: 93 percent of all counties are less white than they were at the start of the decade, according to new Census estimates. But the changes are even more profound in swing counties of potential battleground states, counties that were decided by razor thin margins in 2000 and 2004 and could decide statewide winners this year.

They finally pinpointed something pertinent in the final sentence, although the entire story still doesn’t make much sense. As Al Gore and John Kerry found out, losing an overwhelming majority of counties (we’ve all seen the red/blue county-by-county map, right?) means, well, nothing electorally. States matter. Electoral votes matter. If Sen. Obama can eek out some states that were red in ’04, then he’ll be our next president. Winning counties? Besides, is anyone out there willing to put money down that Obama will win NC or Florida? The red states have been the ones increasing their electoral tallies and the ones that are really in play are OH and VA. I know I certainly don’t expect McCain to win Michigan. I’m sorry, I don’t see the story or why a paper would devote space to something that is of zero importance.
That is, unless the story is a rebuttal to the county-by-county map that the right has pointed to for over seven years. Again, I admit that I’m probably missing something, but could there be any other logical reason that an editor gave the go-ahead on such a non-story, because Obama winning counties in Florida means jack squat if he wins Florida. Again, ask Citizen Gore.