CONTACT: Kavan Peterson
Phone: 410-455-1896
Email: kavan@umbc.edu

Nationally recognized political analyst Tom Schaller will have a front row seat at the Democratic National Convention as a correspondent for Salon.

Schaller, an associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), will be in Denver August 25-29 covering the presumptive nomination of Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for president.

Follow Schaller's reports from Salon's political War Room.

Author of “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South,” Schaller predicts a tight race that will focus on pivotal swing states in the Southwest and upper Midwest.

“The candidate who gets the lion’s share of the vote in the Midwest and the Southwest will be the 44th president,” Schaller said.

Below, Schaller previews what to expect during the final stretch of the 2008 presidential election:

A twice-monthly political columnist for the Baltimore Sun and contributing writer for Salon, Schaller has published commentaries in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The New York Daily News, The American Prospect, and The New Republic, and has appeared on ABC News, The Colbert Report, MSNBC, National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and "Talk of the Nation" programs, The Tavis Smiley Show, and C-SPAN's Washington Journal.