A political junkie friend told me last year that Obama beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination because Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn “can’t count.”
I didn’t fully understand that comment until I read the new book by Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe – “The Audacity to Win.”
Ignore the reviews in newspapers! If you are a political junkie of ANY PARTY, you’ll stay up all night with this one.
Plouffe drops all sorts of bombs on the reader about the historic campaign. But he is subtle and you have to pay attention. I read it with pen in hand, making notes.
The biggest “Ah Ha” moment comes when Plouffe explains the strategy behind caring more about winning delegates than about winning states. Translation: It was just as important – if not more – to win the Idaho Caucus (18 delegates) than to win the New Jersey primary. (107 delegates). Clinton won New Jersey by 10 points, won 59 delegates to 48 for Obama, a net gain of 11 delegates. Obama won Idaho with 80 percent of the vote, winning 15 of the 18 delegates, a net of 12 delegates.
That means Obama had a net gain of one delegate over Clinton, even though she won a delegate-rich state like New Jersey. This scenario repeated itself over and over. It’s boring inside baseball. But it won Obama the nomination. It must have been a terrible sinking feeling inside the Clinton campaign that they could not win, even as they were “winning big states like California and New York.
Because Plouffe and his staff could count i.e. win delegates in small states like Idaho and Maine, Obama is president.
One last “Ah Ha” moment from the book. The mainstream media did not catch on to this strategy until very late. For months, Plouffe says the media completely missed what was actually going on behind the scenes – the real strategy. Not a great vote of confidence.
