This is the first part of review of the '08 election via the reading of David Plouffe's book and then Sarah Palin's book (and maybe some others if I have the time).

I'll begin with Plouffe's book, from the beginning up till about December 2007.

There's three main points that I want to talk about from the book up to this point. And together they show the genius, and the political ineptitude, that delivered a win to Obama, and a loss to Clinton and Edwards.

First, the value of having had top strategists that worked the 2004 cycle & its relevance for the caucus strategy. This isn't always the case, in fact its far from being a good precedent to follow, but it was critical for '08. Plouffe writes:

Plouffe doesn't go into it, but he worked for Gephardt in 2004, focusing on Iowa. Gibbs had worked with Kerry for a part of the campaign as his comm. director, before directing ads to takedown Dean. Axlerod did the media and message for Edwards. They all three got to see how the Dean campaign managed to use tech to go from longshot to frontrunner. No doubt, it wasn't a fun experience for them, but they saw firsthand how Dean's campaign melded the grassroots with the campaign via the internet.

Axlerod, in particular, pivoted Edwards message in late 2003 to what was later adopted by Obama. I remember being there at an Edwards event in Jan '04, and reading their lit saying "change for America" and thinking 'they ripped off our message' from the Dean campaign. It was a deft and nearly successful move by Axlerod for Edwards in Iowa. People forget how crazy that Dean drove the Democratic consultant establishment in 2003, but I'm sure these guys remember that hellish experience from their vantage point. Wolfson, Solis Doyle, and Penn had no such experience in 2003-4. They watched as outsiders. Now, Clinton did hire expertise from '04, like Karen Hicks & Jay Carson from Dean's campaign, and Peter Dauo from Kerry's GE campaign, but their voices were not in the inner circle-- I don't even think that Harold Ickes had much of a voice in the strategy that was used by Clinton early on and in particular with the caucus states.

The number one change that ran counter was to be the importance of delegates.

Penn thought along the old lines of believing that the big states would decide who would win. Plouffe understood that this was going to be about the numbers if the first four states were not swept. The primary in fact became only about the delegate numbers (I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans have their own sort of intra-party battle around the same issue in '12).

With the completion of the NV caucus, it was plain to see that Obama's campaign understand the new playing field: Clinton won the most votes but Obama won the most delegates. Fair or not, those are the rules, and it was political incompetence to run a strategy counter to a delegate-based one.

Second, the behind-the scenes coordination of getting Clinton to take Michigan & Florida off the table. The MI strategy in particular was amazing, and I'm glad that Plouffe laid it out. I posted a lot about this back in 2007 and early 2008. There were plenty of Obama runners that denied it here, but I knew it was the case because I'd talked with the Edwards people that executed the Obama-led strategy. It was dumbfounding to me at the time, that Clinton's team let Michigan be taken off the table. To this day, I don't know what they were thinking. In fact, oh nevermind, its just mind-boggling... and then there's Florida:

That's such a "duh" point, but it was lost on the Clinton inner circle. Part of why I thought Clinton would win, looking at this race in 2007, was because I assumed assumed a a competent Clinton strategy. I think Plouffe nails it though, as to why Clinton let Penn & Solis Doyle gave away MI & FL:

Third, the emphasis on Iowa & beating Edwards there. "We thought Iowa could be potential quicksand for Hillary." Right they were. This was always the most important state for Obama. I never saw the path to victory for Obama in New Hampshire, but did in Iowa. The Mike Henry document that Clinton should have written off Iowa was, looking back on it, the right strategy to have taken for Clinton. The Obama folks knew they had to get an early win to get to SC, and if Clinton had dropped out of Iowa, I have no doubt that her Iowa caucus supporters that showed up would have wound up in Edwards camp.

When the haircut issue broke, I recall blogging that that Edwards had been hamstrung by the HHH curse. First the flamboyant Home, then working for a Hedge fund, and then the Haircut. Plouffe reveals that the Obama research team was behind the Haircut leak. Now, Edwards was who I backed in the primaries before he dropped out, but what a disaster it would have been with him in the GE given his lie (Elizabeth Edwards might call it the Harlot curse). I'm sure the Haircut did big damage to Edwards in Iowa, perhaps arguably just enough that he got second instead of first too.

The winning coalition that Obama put together in Iowa was amazing in its uniqueness of new voters. With overriding demographic characteristics of being 17-29, but the biggest swath of 30-44 too; super majorities of anyone other than white voters; singles; Republicans & Independents; union families; $100,000 or more earners; Urban/Rural voters. Its as if they combed the entire state, and picked up individuals here and there who had only one real thing in common-- they wanted Obama. To go from a 125K turnout to a 239K turnout from '04 to '08. I don't think that will be topped for a long long time. I wound up getting a front-row spot for that remarkable victory speech by Obama in Iowa. The Obama win in Iowa deserves a post of its own, so that will come in the next part.

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Hey folks, I wanted to share my latest column with everyone here at MyDD -- a review of Bernard Goldberg's latest book, "A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media". If you like what you see, feel free to recommend this diary and share it with your friends.

-K

That certainly didn't take long. Just shy of a week after Barack Obama took the oath of office, becoming America's 44th president, the nation's foremost right-wing publishing house has released a new tome by Bernard Goldberg that seeks to trash the supposedly liberal "mainstream media" for being in the tank for Obama.

The three-ringed circus of liberal media bias cryptozoology is nothing new for Goldberg. He's been part of this factually challenged freak show for years. This isn't even his first book on the subject -- he wrote 2001's creatively titled, Bias.

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One of the joys of 2008: there are too many good races, too many viable opportunities to turn Red districts Blue on the electoral map. Sadly, on Kos' latest map of the Western US, one of the opportunities that we all should be banding together to make a reality remains red.  In CA-46, we have a true progressive, Debbie Cook, is facing a die-hard troglodyte, global-warming denying, immigrant bashing, etc ... Dana Rohrabacher who might be "the biggest blithering idiot" on the Hill.  

In the past few weeks, this race has tightened. We are talking within measure of error.  Debbie doesn't have DCCC behind her but she does have us.  A few $XX.01s could help to flip a district which would, in this case, shift from deep (corrupt) red representation to truly a "better Democrat".

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A presidential campaign involves the following:

1. traveling to places to make speeches
2. achieving press exposure and media coverage
3. running advertising
4. operating campaign offices
5. engaging consultants
6. conducting polls

In the last 48 hours, McCain has been:

1. traveling to places to make speeches
2. achieving press exposure and media coverage
3. running advertising
4. operating campaign offices
5. engaging consultants
6. conducting polls

Halted campaign? Senator, we're still waiting.

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So I'm not a Democrat.
I'm voting Obama.
I'm on the ticket.
I'm behind him, though not unquestionably behind him, I am behind him.
I try not to be an armchair general, and in general try to get cues from what the Obama campaign is trying to portray both about Obama and about their opponent.

This is important because everything depends on "narrative" and "perception".

Before reading further, I recommend everyone to read Laskoff's piece and Jerome's post (sorry I don't know how to link, so I'm posting the url)
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/9/12/6842 /84682

That is probably one of Jerome's finest diaries this entire election season.

More below...

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