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Sabato’s Crystal Ball: HOW OBAMA DID IT

Posted by HOLLY IN CINCINNATI, Copy Editor in Politics.
Jul 16th, 2008 | Comments

I missed several Sabato’s Crystal Ball emails due to accidental unsubscribing. Here is one of many make-up posts.

06/05/2008

Justin Sizemore’s HOW OBAMA DID IT: Big states, small states, caucuses and campaign strategy

Shortly before ten o’clock on the evening February 1, 2008, Barack Obama’s chartered 737 took off from Albuquerque International Airport bound for Boise, Idaho, where the Illinois senator was scheduled to hold a rally the next day.

In just four days voters in twenty-two states would award 1,681 Democratic National Convention delegates, of which Idaho’s caucuses would pick eighteen.

During the two-hour flight to Boise, Obama’s press handlers tried to assure traveling reporters that the candidate had not taken leave of his senses. “It may not be California,” an aide commented, “but smaller states like Idaho and Delaware add up.”

Barack Obama will become the Democratic Party’s presidential standard bearer in 2008 precisely because small states – particularly small caucus states – add up.

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DLS

It's _outreach_, too. And note the response to it. At McCain's expense if neglected.

"Why are there sportsmen for Obama? Or for that matter, nearly a dozen paid Obama staffers in Montana, a state that Democrats have won only twice in the last 50 years? Surely, its three electoral votes are not the draw."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/opinion/16ega...

Also note:

"Obama has fully staffed offices in five cities in Montana. He’s visited the state three times, and he’s on the air with television ads. Senator John McCain has no paid staff and has yet to set foot here."

DLS

Note that the following, from the New Yorker article (not the cover), doesn't just describe the same people today:

...

"In this early foray into politics, Obama revealed the toughness and brashness that this year’s long primary season brought into view. As Burns, who has a mischievous sense of humor and a gift for mimicry, recalled, “Black activists, community folks, felt that he didn’t respect their role”—Burns imitated a self-righteous activist—“in the _struggle_ and the _movement_. He didn’t engage in obeisance to them. He wanted to get the job done. And Barack’s cheap, too. If you can’t do it and do it in a cost-effective manner, you’re not going to work with him.” Ivory Mitchell, the ward chairman in Obama’s neighborhood, says of Obama that “he was typical of what most aspiring politicians are: self-centered—that ‘I can do anything and I’m willing to do it overnight.’ ”

NOTE that Clinton supporters who preferred her over Obama not only did so out of their own Identity Politics (reverse-sexism pro-woman preference) but they were of the older generation and Democratic establishment and holding a similar position, not only with the women's rights movement but with older traditional Democratic-interest-group-based welfare-state politics. They probably saw Obama as an interloper, not merely someone who was unfaithful to the "gospel."

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