When the race for the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton was well ahead of everyone else in pretty much all metrics. So what happened? How did Obama win - and win handily - at the end?
Karen Tumulty wrote this interesting behind-the-scenes of the Obama campaign for TIME magazine:
How did he do it? How did Obama become the first Democratic insurgent in a generation or more to knock off the party's Establishment front runner? Facing an operation as formidable as Clinton's, Obama says in an interview, "was liberating ... What I'd felt was that we could try some things in a different way and build an organization that reflected my personality and what I thought the country was looking for. We didn't have to unlearn a bunch of bad habits."
When Betsy Myers first met with Obama in his Senate office on Jan. 3, 2007, about two weeks before he announced he was forming an exploratory committee to run for President, Obama laid down three ruling principles for his future chief operating officer: Run the campaign with respect; build it from the bottom up; and finally, no drama. Myers was struck by how closely Obama had studied the two campaigns of George W. Bush. "He said he wanted to run our campaign like a business," says Myers. And in a good business, the customer is king. Early on, before it had the resources to do much else, the campaign outsourced a "customer-service center" so that anyone who called, at any hour of the day or night, would find a human voice on the other end of the line.
[...]
Even Obama admits he did not expect the Internet to be such a good friend. "What I didn't anticipate was how effectively we could use the Internet to harness that grass-roots base, both on the financial side and the organizing side," Obama says. "That, I think, was probably one of the biggest surprises of the campaign, just how powerfully our message merged with the social networking and the power of the Internet."
Link (Photo: Callie Shell/Aurora for TIME)
Is this guy the Messiah or what? He's healing the planet and slowing the oceans already!
Leading with a finger in the air. What a novel concept.
This guy is like a combination of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter; Carter's failed policies with Clinton's spin machine. Yeah, this guy is going places; with any luck he'll be going right back into obscurity.
Hey Barack; say hi to your buddy Tony for me.
Jumping the gun a little here, are we? (don't get me wrong, I'm voting for him when the general election comes, too)
Obama won his senate seat because his opponent was embroiled in a massive sex scandal.
And he still voted for the war.
Smak, when did he vote for the war?
Dave, Obama is taking no lobbyist cash. Now the DNC isn't taking any. I'd rather have a candidate that feels more beholden to the electorate than to corporate lobbyists. At any rate, that's not the customer centric idea that worked. What worked was being ready to take the cash and mobilize volunteers.
Obama is the first halfrican american running for office that has absolutely no ancestry of Colonial Ameran or Caribian Slavery. Obama is an empty suit that will be destroyed by McCain. The only way that he can win is if a third party politician takes enough votes away from McCain for him to get elected with out atleast 50% of the vote. This is exactly what Perot did to Bush and Dole, or what Nader did to Gore.
I'm sure Bob Barr would be happy to have your vote. I don't know how anyone could support McSame. You'd have to be crazy to vote Republican after the last 8 years.
Obama was Harvard Law Review editor and a prof of constitutional law at Chicago. You'd better have some pretty bad ass credentials yourself before you call him an empty suit.
Also, I know you feel sorry for oil companies but I really can't sympathize with their pain. They are fleecing us all.
And he doesn't even know how many states there are.
The oil companies do not make the majority of the money when it comes down to it. Most of the profits are made by the government by taxes. With Obama in the office those taxes would go even higher and not just on the cost of fuel. Right now there is a thing going though the senate for another tax on fuel.
The government has made it illegal for anyone to try and obtain the billions of barrels of oil in the Rocky Mountains. It is illegal to get the oil off the Florida coasts. It is illegal to collect the oil in Alaska. We have more than enough oil in America to provide us for 1000s of years. The government just make it illegal for ourselves so we can help out by paying the terrorists billions of dollars to kill our own people.
If Obama was to get into office I out right refuse any kind of government health care. I better not be taxed for it or I am out of this country. It will be impossible to have government health care without taxing the people.
Obama = Much more taxes and impossible living for the poorer side of America.
As I said before, this will be a very divisive time in American politics.
I still can't get over how quickly the media dolts got over all of the skeletons in this guy's closet; Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Father Pfleger, Michelle Obama (and her anti-white comments), etc... If it were a Republican who had associations like that, the media would be all over that like flies on sh1t, and he'd likely have been forced to drop out of the race. But Obama... A few too many questions before he finishes his waffle, he throws a fit, and the media lackeys back off. It's downright sickening.
He's run his campaign on flowery speeches filled with empty promises of "change" and getting Washington politicians to work together... He's got nothing in his background to show that he's capable of delivering on anything he's promised. If he had an R behind his name, I think even rayray would call him an empty suit.
Note to site admins... What's up with the Cocomment doodad? I get an error trying to post through Safari almost every time, even though my cookies setting is correct.
Dave, I don't think Obama is getting a free ride from the media at all. McCain's pastor problems were nasty as well, "Hitler part of God's plan" and "the Catholic church is the whore of babylon" stuff. That didn't get near the media attention. USA Today is running a story today about Obama's "problem" reaching "hard working" white Americans. This after winning the primary in Montana whose whites don't work hard enough to satisfy the media.
Obama did cosponsor the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act with McCain last year. It was signed into law. He's actually done quite a bit of bipartisan legislation. I'm also not concerned about Obama's ability to defect criticism like you are. I think it's awesome.
McCain is the real waffler. I used to respect the man for his stance against torture. I know that shouldn't be worth much. I mean, everybody knows torture is wrong. I figured Republicans might listen to him seeing as how he was driven to insanity from being tortured in Nam. Now he's got a more nuanced stance. He was against torture before he was for it. It's sickening how your "maverick" has come right into the fold to support the same creepy policies that the Bush team implemented.
McSame can't do enough to distance himself from the current train-wreck. It won't matter in January 2009.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/
For example, McCain doesn't come out on his website and say he voted against a bill that would clearly make waterboarding illegal. And it doesn't say that he had spoken out against waterboarding before. In fact he used the issue to take the high ground against Rudy in the primary. (beats chest, pisses really far.)
Who wants to be informed? This is politics after all! Informed people just get in the way of the circus act.
Just to make sure (some aren't versed in the subtle ways of sarcasm) I'm kidding. Timothy is absolutely right.
Damn straight.
Not to mention a state representative for years.
Obama has no past achievements, and he changes his policy positions daily. He's an empty suit.
I don't see a lot of critical thinking going on among his supporters. They ignore or dismiss his background, his record, his associations and his many stumbles, lies and backflips on the campaign trail. I'd say Obama is the faith-based person's candidate.
You also say you're "also not concerned about Obama’s ability to defect criticism"... (I'll assume you meant "deflect criticism".) But the point is that anyone who aspires to the presidency can't blow off the media the way that Barack has and expect to get away with it for long. Tough questions are part of the job. If he doesn't answer them, there are always aspiring Woodwards & Bernsteins waiting in the wings to take him down. The man seems to have the patience & tolerance of a spoiled two year old. And the belligerence of a surly teenager at times.
I think it’s awesome that you're so naively innocent. I'll give that about six months of an Obama administration before reality sets in and you see how much of a stuffed shirt he really is.
@jonk thinks that because Obama's got an economist on staff that he can't be a socialist? That's laughable. A leftist is a leftist, and Goolsbee wears the colors proudly. He's been working for the DNC, and that speaks volumes about his ideology. From what I've read of him, he sees nothing wrong with the income redistribution the left is always pushing. Obama is on record saying that he understands that lowering capital gains taxes ends up increasing tax revenue (a Reaganomics concept, by the way), but he plans on raising them anyway, out of "fairness". I haven't heard a reversal on that, so either Goolsbee agrees with him, or isn't paying attention to what Obama says. I think it's the former.
And just for the record, don't assume that because I don't like Obama that I'm a McCain fan, because I'm not. McCain is almost as much a leftist as Obama, but if the choice I have for a vote is between him and Obama, McCain is the lesser of the two evils. Either way this next election goes, we're still gonna have a rough ride the next few years.
Democrats' strength this campaign has been the internet. It's not Obama's figuring out how important it is or how to maximize it's utility that has lead to his phenomenal fund raising.
Because ALL Republicans are the same?
I guess under that type of thinking all Democrats cheat on their wives and have sexual relations on the job and lie under oath.
Of course I'd never make such an absurd statement.
This country will stay at a standstill until the political party zealots (Left and Right) stop with their dividing the country in half by demonizing anyone that simply doesn't belong to that particular person's party.
That is what I'd love to do away with the same Lame two party system we've had.
I know some political zealots that would rather see America fail under the "other guys side's" leadership than for it to prosper under it. It should be what is best for the country as a whole, working together no matter what "side" you are on. After all both sides have about the equal amount of losers. Politicians are Politicians. If you think of Clinton OR Bush as a hero then you haven't been paying attention. We need better options. The two we have now stink.
http://current.com/items/89039295_obama_supports_fisa_legislation_angering_left
I could say "Told you so"... but we shall wait and see