Three must-reads today:

Karl Rove identifies the four key battleground states in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal is behind a subscription wall, so I’ll give you some hints: two of the states are on the Hayes-Schembechler axis, one state is home to both Red Rocks and the Air Force Academy and one state invaded North Carolina in 1718.

Marc Halperin wonders if Obama is ignoring his rear flank: “Every dollar and every hour spent in places like deeply Republican Georgia divert resources from must win battlegrounds like Michigan. Some strategists wonder, then, if Obama’s campaign risks trying to win by a landslide and possibly losing by a hair.”

And the New York Times‘ Raymond Hernandez examines the decline of the Republican congressman in the Northeast: “Democrats are in a strong position to expand their dominance in the Northeast region, where they already hold 60 of the 81 Congressional seats and hope to improve their numbers even further by aggressively contesting Republicans for eight more seats.”