The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory

by David Plouffe

  At the campaign’s outset, our goal was to have the dominant Internet presence in the field and try to fund-raise, organize, and move message using digital tools. We exceeded even our most optimistic goals in all three. We raised over $200 million online in the primary. Our volunteers and staff had used our social-networking site as a primary weapon to outorganize the Clinton campaign. We were able to move message—on both issues and political-electoral matters—directly to our entire list and subsets of that list, avoiding the media filter. I saw it as augmenting the political coverage and providing more depth and understanding to our supporters. We had also built a balanced relationship with our supporters. The hundreds of e-mails we sent out in the primary were a healthy mix of pure information, requests for organizational help, local and statewide e-mails, and fund-raising asks.

  And our data about voters—the radar of the campaign—was constantly improving.

  We were blessed to have a terrifically talented staff, who were smart, driven, creative, and perhaps most important, in it for the right reasons. They created a terrific esprit de corps. The culture of our campaign was very healthy. We had a real sense of mission, and everyone knew we were working our hearts out for Barack and the country, not ourselves. We tried to be fearless while also being disciplined and committed to our plan. It sounds corny, but we had become a family.

  We simply would not have won without the historic level of participation from our volunteers. They made changing the electorate in Iowa possible (and in every place where we made the electorate more Obama friendly) and did what was considered impossible in South Carolina. They were the major reason that we not only survived but thrived on Super Tuesday. They delivered eleven victories in a row. And even when we were losing primaries at the end, they never lost faith and made sure we kept earning enough delegates to stay on track. They registered hundreds of thousands of new voters. And the growing power of this grassroots movement also had a deep effect on the superdelegates—they could not overturn the work of these millions of committed Americans who were breathing fresh life into our party.

  Our supporters also played an invaluable role in motivating and inspiring Barack and all of his staff. Dozens of times Barack and I marveled at the commitment and talent of our grassroots supporters and pledged not to let them down. “I feel such an obligation to them,” he would say. “They believe in me. In us. In themselves. What keeps me going day after day? Besides a clear sense of why I am running for president, it’s them, our volunteers. It is a special thing we’ve built here and I don’t want to let them down.”

  Of course, by far the most important factor in our success was our candidate. He had the right change message in a change election. But his steady performance, his growth over time, the way he dealt with setbacks, his integrity with all he dealt with throughout the campaign, including all of us, and the personal bond of trust he built with voters all over the country ranks right at the top in terms of presidential candidates. He began the race as a national political novice, having never had a negative ad run against him. He had no organization, and no real knowledge of many of the states he would campaign in. From such a start, he defeated the strongest front-runner and best political machine our party has seen in modern times.

  We had very good electoral strategy and stuck with it in tough times. We executed at the highest levels and innovated throughout the campaign. But staff are replaceable. A mass of dedicated volunteers is not. Our grassroots supporters did not become involved because they liked our backroom strategy or tactical brilliance. They got interested and involved for one reason—Barack Obama. He kept the faith with them, and they dug in harder and deeper because they believed in him so much. That may have been his greatest accomplishment—in this cynical age, he built a grassroots movement that believed in its own ability to effect change, and which grew to become more powerful than anything witnessed to date in primaries of either party.

  The morning of June 4, after maybe two hours of sleep, Katie Johnson, my assistant, tracked me down and said Rick Davis, McCain’s manager, was urgently trying to find me. I called him, and after perfunctory congratulations on both sides, he said they were going to issue a challenge to us to do ten joint town halls in addition to the presidential debates, starting as soon as possible.

  Well, I thought, game on.

  11

  Reloading for the General

  Before we could plunge full force into the general election, we had to engage in a delicate dance with Hillary Clinton and the remnants of her campaign. Success in November demanded full party unity, and it fell to us to welcome all her political supporters, volunteers, and contributors with open and grateful arms.

  The day after Barack clinched the nomination, Clinton held conference calls with many of her key political supporters. According to press reports that surfaced right after that, her supporters made clear they thought she needed to withdraw from the race and enthusiastically get behind Obama, to avoid any hint that she might, symbolically or otherwise, take her battle to the convention. Her campaign quickly sent out word that she would be holding an event in Washington, D.C., that coming Saturday, June 7, at which she would end her campaign and formally endorse Barack. Relief washed over us. After eighteen months of combat, there would be no more attacks from our fiercest opponent.

  Clinton and Obama met on June 5, two days after we formally clinched the nomination and two days before Clinton’s formal concession. Hillary suggested to Barack—they personally handled much of the logistics around the meeting—that they meet at California senator Dianne Feinstein’s house in Washington. I was not wild about having it at the home of someone who had supported Clinton so vigorously, but Feinstein was Barack’s colleague as well, and we wanted to tread very carefully. My view—and Barack probably felt more strongly about this than I did—was that we should say yes to anything that was relatively easy and was not clearly against our strategic interests. Given that, we agreed to the setting.

  By this point we had a press pool with us around the clock, following Obama’s every move. I did not want the meeting to become a media circus and certainly didn’t want news of it to break before it even started. The day of the meeting, we were on our maiden general-election campaign trip in Virginia, and at my direction, we sent the press covering Obama to Dulles Airport and had them fly back to Chicago, where Obama would be spending the night. They assumed he was in the motorcade and would be flying back with them. He had actually peeled off after the last campaign event and was en route to Feinstein’s house. We chartered another plane to take him back to Chicago.

  Once they were on board, the press could see from the empty seat up front that Obama was not present. Poor Robert Gibbs. He was on the plane and knew he was going to be drawn and quartered by a gaggle of reporters. But he understood the strategic value of keeping this meeting under wraps and agreed that it was worth the cost to maintain discretion.

  Still, I was happy not to be his seatmate on this particular flight. A little while after Obama took off for Feinstein‘s, Gibbs sent a small group of us an e-mail: “They now know he’s not on the plane and it’s mutiny. When should I talk to them?”

  I e-mailed back: “After you take off.”

  Gibbs later described to me the relentless and very personal pummeling he received on the flight to Chicago. “Robert, Robert, Robert,” they barked at him, their voices running together when he went back to face them. His name was perhaps the only polite term employed.

  Put plainly, the press were furious. In the days after, we received many strongly worded e-mails and letters complaining about “an unprecedented breach of trust.” I understood their frustration. They had been hijacked and misled. Despite some deep frustrations with how the campaign was covered, the press plays an invaluable role in the process that must be respected by those of us on the other side of the fence. But there is almost no escaping the ever-present media and its microscopic coverage of modern presidential politics. Occasionally a campai
gn has to have space to breathe.

  News of the Clinton-Obama “summit” broke as the meeting got under way, as our abducted press contingent deduced the reason for the deception and elicited confirmation from the Clinton camp. Details such as venue and exact participants were not yet public. Later the two campaigns issued a joint statement confirming the meeting that simply said, “Senator Clinton and Senator Obama met tonight and had a productive discussion about the important work that needs to be done to succeed in November.” That alone was heralded as big news: a joint statement from former enemy combatants was further proof that the primary was indeed over.

  Barack called me to report on the meeting as he was en route to the airport. “No blood?” I inquired. He laughed. “Actually, we had a nice conversation. Some reminiscing about funny moments along the way, none of the tough ones. She said all the right things and I think she meant them. She’s established a committee of three people from her campaign to sit down with us and work through issues. I told her you would be our point person. She asked that you call Cheryl Mills to set up a meeting.”

  “A committee?” I responded incredulously. “We’re not negotiating a hostage release here. The general election is in less than five months. I don’t have time for the Yalta peace talks.”

  Obama laughed but was firm. “I know you don’t have the time,” he said. “But I need you to deal with this first. Try to make progress and hopefully you can delegate a lot of it on the back end. We need to work out a lot of things quickly, so we can move on. My sense in talking to Hillary is the only big sticking point will be the debt. It sounds bigger than we knew and they clearly want our help on it.”

  I told Obama I would call Cheryl and rope in Bob Bauer, our attorney, as my wing man.

  Cheryl Mills had worked in the White House counsel’s office during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, and she was heading up the Clinton delegation. Also involved were Bob Barnett, a leading Washington lawyer who was very close to Hillary, and Minyon Moore, a longtime Democratic operative and former White House political director.

  I sent Cheryl a meeting agenda that ran the gamut: how to get the Clinton donors and volunteers involved; when and where Hillary and Barack should first campaign together; the Democratic Convention, which would necessitate its own set of complex discussions; Bill Clinton’s role; how much time Hillary could give us for surrogate campaigning; and, finally, the debt. She easily agreed to the schedule, which came as a surprise. I was conditioned from the last year and a half to believe all interactions going forward would be like pulling teeth.

  In many ways, watching Hillary concede that weekend made our victory more real to me than did the speech Obama had given in the Twin Cities. The race had been conducted at such a breakneck pace for months and months, and she had hung on so long and so defiantly that it was difficult to believe it was truly over.

  Our entire HQ gathered on Saturday to watch. There was unanimous agreement that her speech was phenomenal. She thanked her supporters and famously said, “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about eighteen million cracks in it,” a reference to the number of votes she received in the Democratic primary. They had a lot to be proud of.

  Her endorsement of Barack—and more important, her call for all those who supported her to follow suit—was unambiguous, clear, and compelling. We couldn’t have asked for anything more. Under what must have been painful circumstances, she delivered a ten-strike.

  Bauer and I met with her committee for several hours, and the discussion went swimmingly, with the exception of one topic—the topic that dwarfed all others.

  Their debt was well over $30 million. Hillary had loaned her campaign over $10 million, which she gallantly wrote off, but they still owed more than $20 million to campaign vendors large and small, and that money had to come from somewhere. It was clear they expected us to take responsibility for erasing all or most of this figure. I thought this was preposterous. Given that our fund-raising would have to stay competitive with the entire Republican machine and all its offshoots as we headed toward the general election, we simply could not take on the Clinton debt.

  This was going to be thorny, if not downright toxic. I think they believed we could send out a couple of e-mails and generate enough money to erase their debt. They clearly did not understand our supporters, or divine the extent of the hard feelings still lingering in the ranks of the victors.

  We knew our supporters would respond very poorly to a request for Clinton debt assistance. First, it was just too soon after eighteen months of pitched battle. It would take some time for things to cool off. Second, and more important, many of our small donors were making a real sacrifice to give us twenty-five or fifty dollars every once in a while, and they did so because they believed fervently in our unique candidate and message. They would consider debt assistance a “politics as usual” ask and not part of our core mission. And many of our supporters who were new to politics would be downright disgusted by this political deal making.

  As I saw it, it had been their choice alone to keep racking up debt, and, in fact, their continued spending had forced us to do the same, making it more urgent that we focus on rebuilding our own coffers. At this point, McCain had more money than we did.

  We agreed that we would ask the members of our National Finance Committee, our strongest fund-raisers, to write checks to pay down the Clinton debt and to raise money from others to do so. Ultimately we raised almost $2 million for them in the aftermath of the primary. The Clinton folks were not pleased by this figure and likely believed we were only going through the motions. But we tried hard. Obama made some calls himself, and even he ran into fierce resistance. I had numerous conversations with people who had previously come through on everything I asked of them. To this they said, “David, I simply can’t do it. I can’t ask people whom we need to give money to Obama for America and the DNC to write a check for Clinton debt.”

  On every other score, the two camps worked very well together, and Hillary campaigned her heart out for us through the fall. For both groups, the suspicions toward the other waned over time, as it became clear we could work together, resolve issues, and listen. But it did take time. Obama took the lead on our side when it came to fence-mending, sending a clear signal within the campaign that he wanted no dancing in the end zone; the message was, work smart and welcome Clinton staff and supporters with open arms. When I occasionally complained about the words or deeds of someone in the Clinton camp, he reminded me to take it easy. “Put down the sword, Plouffe,” he would say. “It’s over.”

  Primaries are like family disputes—the wounds can be deep and long-lasting. The 2008 primary was fierce; at times it got downright nasty and personal. For most of a year and a half I woke up wanting nothing else but to destroy the Clinton campaign (I’m sure they felt the same way about us), and I believed passionately that we needed to turn the page, not only on George Bush but within our party.

  Still, when you go through an experience like we did, you also develop a grudging respect for what your opponents do well. You actually start to feel a certain connection with the enemy with whom you shared the arena; after all, they’re the only other people who truly understand the battle just waged.

  Barack Obama was a better candidate than his campaign. Almost all successful candidates are. Some days the gulf was wide (see D-Punjab, Texas, Wright) other times his campaign played a complementary role in his victory (our electoral strategy and discipline, harnessing the grassroots energy he inspired, innovating campaign use of technology and message tools).

  In Hillary’s case, I believe the gulf was consistently wide. Ultimately candidates have to take responsibility for their campaigns, but they need to have strong staff to handle a lot of strategy and planning details. And it was clear that Hillary’s staff did not understand delegates as well as they should have, did not appreciate the role Iowa could play in resetting the race, and ma
de a host of other strategic and tactical miscalculations that opened the door for us.

  No candidate should be expected to be the lead strategist on those matters. Hillary was first and foremost responsible for going out every day and making the best possible case for her candidacy. And she performed at a very high level. She won most of the primary debates; as the campaign dragged on and she became the underdog, she really hit her stride. She got to a compelling economic message before we did. As we started playing more of an inside game to lock down superdelegates, she skillfully took on the underdog role and got enormous mileage out of it.

  She had to know for months that her odds of winning were absurdly low. Yet day after day she campaigned effectively and with gusto, only rarely betraying her political position in the race and becoming a real voice for economically struggling voters. Very few human beings could pull off what she did. It was a remarkable and often frustrating dynamic to watch from the front row, and I couldn’t wait to have her out campaigning for us; I thought she could be a terrific advocate, particularly in making an economic case for Obama’s candidacy. But for this to work, we’d first have to earn each other’s trust, no small feat after everything we’d just been through.

  The primaries took us to forty-eight states and six territories. In that respect, the length of the contest served us well. By the time we crossed the delegate threshold, we had built organizations in every battleground state except Michigan and Florida, and Obama had campaigned in them all.

  As we plowed into the general election, core principles developed during the primary helped guide us. We had no time to come up with new approaches, even had we wanted to. We were three months behind John McCain.

  First, as in the primary, we studied our opponent. We thought about his campaign as carefully as we thought about our own.