A year ago, Barack Obama began his campaign for president by calling it an "improbable quest." It’s not improbable anymore, as Obama is certain to defeat Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination. How did Obama win? How did he defeat one of the most powerful political machines in the Democratic Party?
Despite some minor missteps, in the end the Clinton campaign didn’t stumble, didn’t fail, and didn’t get smeared. Instead, Clinton simply got beat by a better candidate with a better message, a better organization, and a better strategy.
A Change Election
Obama’s message of change fit the country’s mood perfectly, especially when the war in Iraq is so unpopular. Even better than a message, Obama created an image of stability and consistency while Clinton struggled to find the right tone for her campaign. Obama was roundly criticized by the pundits and the press because he didn’t go negative against Hillary Clinton and because he was accused of being too policy-oriented in the summer and fall of 2007 in Iowa and New Hampshire. But he played the campaign just right, understanding the nuances of a long nomination process. Traditional Democratic campaign "strategists" like Mark Penn, Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, imagined that winning an election consisted of dividing Americans into microidentity groups and then doing everything possible to suck up to them. Obama realized what a message of unity could provide among Americans tired of politics as usual.
Clinton’s Failed Big State Strategy
The primary tactical brilliance of the Obama campaign (and failure of the Clinton campaign) was to run a 50-state strategy. While Hillary Clinton focused on Super Tuesday and the big states such as Massachusetts and California, Obama spread his resources around the country. When her advantages on Super Tuesday didn’t provide the knockout blow expected by the pundits, Obama was in a much stronger position to emerge victorious. Clinton ran a campaign designed to end on February 5, and it fell into chaos after that. Barack Obama ran a campaign aimed for a long-term battle. When the Clinton campaign talks endlessly about winning the big states, all they’re doing is discussing the strategy they had that failed miserably. The Clinton campaign never grasped the meaning of the complex delegate system, where a huge victory (by a 20-point margin or more) in a small state is worth as many delegates as a small victory in a big state. Obama completely dominated the category of big-margin wins. Obama won 13 states by more than 30 points and 21 states by more than 20 points. Clinton has won only three states by more than 30 points and two by 20 points. The big wins in small states accounted for Obama’s winning margin in pledged delegates. Unfortunately for Clinton, she doesn’t live in the Big States of America, but the United States.
Organizing Matters
As a former community organizer who helped lead a massive voter registration drive in Chicago in 1992, Obama had the experience Clinton lacked of bringing together a national organizing campaign. Obama had field organizers and campaign offices everywhere in the country, while Clinton struggled to keep up. Obama put together the most massive grassroots organizing campaign ever seen in a primary. More importantly, Obama’s campaign also understood the importance of the internet. Obama’s presence on the web and social networking sites blew away the competition, creating a massive force of volunteers and supporters. And it turned Obama into the greatest fundraiser in American political history. In traditional fundraising, where candidates go to parties and talk to rich people who give large sums of money, Clinton had a clear advantage over Obama. But Obama brought in so much money over the internet, without needing the big donors, that many of his fundraising events were actually big rallies for his supporters.
The War in Iraq
Despite Bill Clinton’s attempt to dismiss Obama’s opposition to the
war in Iraq as a "fairy tale" (while Bill was re-imagining his own
support for it), Obama drew key support from Americans as someone who
could not be associated with the disaster in Iraq. Hillary Clinton
weakly tried to oppose the war while refusing to apologize for her vote
to support it. But ultimately, the American people (and especially the
Democrats) hate the war in Iraq with extraordinary passion, and mourn
the loss of life and waste of money in Bush’s fight.
What’s equally interesting about this primary race are the factors that didn’t impact the election.
The Myth of the Pro-Obama Media
The Clinton campaign has been trying to game the system by complaining about media bias, as Clinton herself did in a debate by imagining some vast media conspiracy to ask her questions first. In reality, there was no media advantage for Obama., even before the press began obsessing about Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers. To the contrary, from the start the media smeared Obama as "inexperienced" without ever questioning Clinton’s qualifications. From coronation to humiliation, the press dutifully followed the Clinton campaign, never questioning Hillary’s key claim to "experience." The fact that Clinton failed to live up to her hype doesn’t change the reality that the media gave this election to Hillary Clinton from the start, and it was hers to lose. When Hillary personally went after Obama’s connection with Rezko, the press dutifully reported the details while ignoring the long record of Clinton scandals. The media clearly liked the fact that Obama turned the Democratic primaries into a real race, but there was plenty of fawning and abuse for both candidates.
The Lack of Progressive Support
What may be most surprising about Obama’s victory is that the left had surprisingly little to do with it. Many leading progressives never recognized (or openly mocked) Obama’s transformational abilities. In the exit polls, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton all roughly split equally among liberals, moderates, and conservatives in the Democratic Party. On DailyKos and other progressive websites, activists tended to favor John Edwards over Obama because Edwards told the left what they like to hear. Leftists such as Paul Krugman, David Sirota, Ralph Nader, and Rick Perlstein all favored Edwards for his anti-corporate rhetoric, and Krugman continued attacking Obama even after Edwards had left the race and most progressives reluctantly embraced Obama as better than Hillary Clinton. The failure of the left to embrace the most progressive presidential nominee in American history reflects the practical ineptness of today’s progressive movement. The left has been out of power for so long, and is so easily accustomed to ideological sniping on grounds of purity, that most of its leaders never saw the groundswell of a new generation moving past them to join the Obama campaign. To this day, cynical grumbling is the preferred leftist stance toward Obama, even though he has the potential to be the Ronald Reagan of liberals, putting a popular face on progressive politics and leading a landslide to the left never seen before in contemporary American politics.
The key problem the Clinton campaign faced is that they could never figure out how to attack Obama. If they smeared Obama as a left-winger, they would alienate the base of the Democratic Party. If they smeared Obama as a centrist, they would alienate the swing independent voters. In the end, Clinton tried many different attacks, but never came up with a consistent ideological approach.
But it was Obama’s positive attributes that ultimately brought him the support of donors, volunteers, and voters. For the first time in many years, Americans feel inspired by a presidential candidate. Instead of being embarrassed by George W. Bush, they imagine Obama as someone they can be proud about as president.
Crossposted at DailyKos.
