Right away, I could tell by the reporters’ facial expressions and questions that they were deeply skeptical. I resigned myself to another round of the primary dynamic: our strategy and theory of the race would be neither properly understood nor believed. The press was conditioned to focus on a few key battlegrounds as the prism through which to see the race, usually Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina were not in their vocabulary.
Headlines after this press event read, “Obama Camp: We Can Win Without Ohio, Florida.” Damn right, I thought. But this wasn’t arrogance, foolishness, or spinning a poor hand. And it wasn’t meant to suggest that we planned to ignore these. Quite the contrary: we would vigorously contest both of them. A win in either would doom McCain, and we thought we had credible, if uphill, paths in each. But some in the press suggested that (1) our strategy was flawed for being too broad, and (2) we would hurt our prospects in Ohio and Florida by suggesting they weren’t the be-all and end-all of the race.
The last point was nonsense. Real voters aren’t influenced by political process arguments. They vote based on issues, character, and leadership qualities. To say that voters in Ohio and Florida might be less likely to support us because we had suggested their states didn’t hold the key to the election, and that this had somehow hurt their feelings, was just silly. As to the first point, we were used to outsiders finding fault with our strategy.
Writing in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, one prominent commentator suggested our strategy of widening the playing field could doom us and that investing in states like Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina, and Indiana was too risky a proposition. “If McCain pulls off a victory in November,” the piece opined, “there will be a lot of postmortem scrutiny about the prudence of playing it safe versus the dream of shooting for the moon.”
In retrospect, I should have offered the press a simpler visual technique for understanding our plan. We would hold all the Kerry states and flip Iowa and New Mexico. That puts us on the threshold. McCain at that point would be like a hockey goalie, and we would pepper him with an onslaught of shots. He might stop Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, Nebraska 2, Nevada, North Carolina, and Colorado. But if Virginia slipped past him into the goal? Game over. His margin for error would be close to zero. That’s what we were setting out to do.
We could do it only by growing and strengthening our powerful grassroots movement. We ended the primary with over 2 million contributors and more than 7 million people on our e-mail list. Almost all the contributors were volunteers (highly unusual in politics), and we had many more volunteers who had not yet contributed. Our record on that front was promising. We had what businesses call a high conversion rate. I referred to it as the enthusiasm gap. In the primary, our supporters were more committed and passionate than Hillary’s had been. She drew plenty of diehards, and they hung some big losses on us. As a percentage, though, a greater number of Barack’s supporters were willing to work ten or twenty hours a week, make multiple contributions, and convince others to climb aboard.
We thought the enthusiasm gap would be even more pronounced in the general election. Democrats were wild about replacing Bush. Republicans were less excited about a third GOP term. Bush’s performance had left even some hard-core Republican activists disillusioned and unmotivated, further depressing enthusiasm. And though McCain had a core of passionate supporters, he had a very thin base of hypermotivated voters. Many on the right were still skeptical of him; they found him too willing to oppose the party in the past and distrusted him on some social issues. Of course, this dynamic had an upside for him as well; it explained why he was attractive to many independent voters and why we thought he was the strongest GOP candidate of the 2008 field. Independents would play a huge role in this race, and more-extreme candidates, like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, surely would have been busts with these voters.
But the tension and lack of enthusiasm within his party could cause him real problems. In 2004 Bush won Ohio largely due to off-the-charts GOP turnout; McCain might have trouble matching this. And having fewer super-motivated supporters could also leave McCain facing an organizational deficit that would have real impact on the outcome in battleground states.
Even with this leg up, we had to grow our numbers. Much of the work would be similar to the primary at the ground level, but voter registration would take on a greater focus. We would need a persuasion army to convince Republicans and independents to support Barack. The sheer scale of the electorate in a general election dictated that we continue to amp up our recruiting.
With this in mind, I told Joe Rospars, whose new media team had already built an unpredictably successful online campaign, that we needed to come close to doubling its size in five months—we had to have at least 3.75 million contributors and the e-mail list needed to surpass 12 million names. Our volunteer numbers would also have to jump considerably. Joe sighed. “We’ll do our best,” he said. “But we’ll need more resources, both staff and external spending, to get it done.”
This was a daunting task and not one that could be achieved simply by ticking off points on a plan. Of course, we would buy more Internet advertising to capture people and then hopefully convert them. On the event side, we’d hold a lot of large rallies, which were always a great source of thousands of new names. We also hoped a high percentage of Hillary Clinton’s most active supporters would eventually decide to get involved. But this effort alone would not grow our ranks sufficiently. We had to hope that the excitement of the general election, the stark Democrat-versus-Republican issue matchup, and the intensity of the campaign’s “big” moments—conventions, debates, and unscripted incidents—would help spike the number of people coming to our site and signing on.
Central to this effort to grow was our supporters’ continued use of social-networking sites like MyBO.com and Facebook to build the campaign and organize themselves. We wanted to make it easy for these self-starters to connect with our huge staff in the battleground states, most often our young, talented, and fearless field organizers. And always we made sure to stress to volunteers that they had standing behind them a national HQ—and most important, a candidate—that believed in them and would make sure their work was strategically sound and received adequate resources.
We made some of our key strategic and targeting decisions based on the belief that we could grow the grassroots movement to this level and that we would get maximum productivity from this engorged group of supporters. Without them, we could not have targeted states like North Carolina and Indiana. For one, we would not have had the money. But most important were the volunteers on the ground; we could not convert enough Indiana Republicans unless we had their neighbors talking to them about why they were supporting Obama, explaining his positions and defending him against McCain’s attacks.
If we did not register enough African Americans and young voters in North Carolina and then turn them out on Election Day, we could not win. Facing a traditional electorate meant we shouldn’t even bother with a state like North Carolina, no matter how much money we spent. Quite simply, money was no substitute for committed volunteers. Without question, we had to grow the campaigns in these states enough to shoulder the massive workload. Without our volunteer army, our strategy of a wide electoral map and multiple avenues to victory would have been the fantasy many people believed it to be.
One decision we had to make quickly as we formally entered the general election was whether to participate in the public funding of federal elections. Candidates who agree to accept federal taxpayer funding—in 2008 it was $85 million per candidate—get a check from the government in return for ceasing their campaign’s fund-raising after their party convention. The government put this system into place after Watergate, and since then all presidential candidates have agreed to public funding.
In 2004 this cap especially harmed Kerry because the Democratic convention was held a month earlier than the Republicans‘. Both c
ampaigns received the same amount to spend, but Bush had to pay for only eight weeks compared to Kerry’s twelve, a huge advantage. Kerry later told me that staying within the system was one of the biggest mistakes they made.
Axelrod and I saw what happened in 2004 from a unique vantage. The DNC hired our firm to produce ads for the so-called independent expenditure, or IE, unit of the committee. Since Kerry would not be raising money for his campaign after the convention, he asked his contributors and other supporters to give money to the DNC instead. The idea was to have the DNC supplement the campaign’s activities.
As it turned out, largely because there was so much energy in our party to defeat Bush, the DNC raised far more than had been predicted. In fact, we ended up spending more on advertising alone that fall than Kerry did on his whole campaign, well over $100 million. But there was one big catch: to honor the public financing agreement, campaign finance laws make it illegal for the party to communicate with the campaign. So nothing we did could be coordinated with Kerry or any of his people.
As a result, while we spent over $100 million, we did so inefficiently and with many tools not at our disposal. We had no access to the candidate, and so believed our role should be to run negative and comparative ads, allowing the campaign itself to run more positive ads since they could actually film Kerry. That roughly worked. But we spent as much time trying to figure out what we should do as we did actually doing it once we figured it out. Our first rule was “Do No Harm.” We wanted to make sure everything we were doing was strategically aligned with the Kerry campaign, but since we couldn’t talk to them, this was a dilemma.
We looked for smoke signals every day to determine if we were on the right course. Was the campaign sending us messages through the press about an issue we should hop on? Their television point levels went down in the St. Louis media market—is that because they’re preparing to throw in the towel or feeling more confident? They’re not buying radio heavily but Bush is—does that reflect a lack of resources or a belief that there aren’t many available voters in those markets? We were playing second chair at best, just trying to divine their cues and strategy and act accordingly.
Kerry also could not afford to support a field and organizing campaign, so almost all his groundwork was done by the DNC, state Democratic parties, and outside groups. This situation offered a clear lesson, one that stuck with me—if you believed in running a strong ground game based on people leading the charge in their own communities, nothing could be more problematic than having zero control over that operation.
The 2004 experience carried a lot of weight with me as we worked through the 2008 funding decision. It gave me a deeper understanding of the system’s drawbacks as they would relate to our campaign. So important was this election that I believed we owed it to our party and country to have a very clear view of how the funding decision might affect our chances of winning.
Complicating the decision making were statements we had made earlier in the campaign suggesting we would “aggressively pursue” an agreement with the Republican nominee to stay within public funding. We never should have set down so bright a marker that early in the campaign, when we barely had the lights in our office turned on, but we were overly concerned with making sure the reform community and elites like the New York Times editorial board, which care deeply about these issues, would look favorably on our approach. And honestly, we weren’t doing much thinking in February 2007 about our general-election campaign. We could hardly see past Iowa into New Hampshire then.
If we opted out, we knew we would be heavily criticized by the media, campaign finance watchdogs, and, most important, McCain, who had made it very clear he was staying in the system and would consider it an outright lie and a breach of public faith if we did not.
Then an issue questionnaire from the obscure Midwest Democracy Network popped up. Our policy staff had filled out hundreds of these questionnaires throughout the campaign, but this one, completed in the fall of 2007, really came back to bite us. When asked whether we would commit to being in the federal system, our team had responded, “Yes.... We will aggressively pursue an agreement. . . .” We had never before or since used that one word—“yes.” It was declarative, and it unquestionably stated we’d be in no matter what the GOP nominee did.
The answer blindsided all of us at the senior level of the campaign. It was an unforced error and would make a decision to opt out of the federal system extra painful.
We had to look at this decision through two lenses. First, Barack Obama had been a reformer in practice, accomplishment, and outlook since he was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996. He had championed tough ethics and campaign finance reforms in Illinois, the first in a generation. After arriving in Washington, he led the fight for tough new lobbying restrictions, drawing the wrath of insiders and colleagues from both parties. “You are going to cost us the majority!” one prominent Democratic senator had yelled. “We are in power now and you’re going to take away some of the advantages that allow us to stay there.”
Reform was in Obama’s DNA. We knew McCain would try to make us pay a price, but that was of less concern than making sure whatever we did squared with Obama’s reformer credentials and instincts.
The second lens focused on the practical considerations. Which path gave the campaign the best chance of success? I felt we had a searing obligation to win this race—not just for Barack or on behalf of the staff, but from an absolute belief that we could not afford another four years of George Bush’s domestic and foreign policies. To my mind, we needed to look through this second lens first, before we got to the harder question of principle.
If we decided to stay within the system, the DNC would be the major spender on our side—we would have our $85 million in federal funds, and I figured the party would raise at least $250 million, almost all from the existing Obama donor base. But a healthy percentage of our contributors were Republicans, independents, and nonpartisan types who would not give money to the DNC, even if they were asked to by Obama.
If we opted out, I thought it was safe to assume the campaign would raise $350 million and the DNC $100 million. The party’s portion could be spent in coordination with our money; it would not be an independent expenditure with all the legal barriers prohibiting communication. DNC chairman Howard Dean and his senior staff had prepared well for the moment our party chose its nominee; they were ready to “hand the keys over,” as Dean put it. We could essentially subsume the DNC into the campaign and gain control of all their resources as well as of our own.
The overall difference in funding would be around $100 million, not chump change. Sacrificing this added cash would mean we either had to pare our list of target battlegrounds or run less rigorous campaigns in each. These were highly unappetizing options.
More important than the dollar discrepancy was the control that would be ceded in the campaign. With only $85 million, we would find ourselves in Kerry’s position, unable to afford a field organization or a broad range of advertising. Instead, the DNC and outside groups, with their far larger financial resources, would be forced to take the field and airwaves for us.
And all their decisions would be made without our input. They would invariably be running a negative health care ad in a market where we would have preferred a tax cut comparative. And since tone was so important to our campaign—we did not want traditional low-blow negative ads run on our behalf—this factor took on added weight.
Most painfully, taking the federal funds meant losing control of our secret weapon: we would have to largely outsource our entire grassroots ground campaign to the DNC. As with fund-raising, there were many people volunteering for us who would offer their help in the name of Obama. If these people were forced to volunteer through the Democratic Party, no matter how clearly the mission was stated, we feared we could lose up to 20 percent of our volunteers.
Finally, nothing would be under one roof. One of the central tenets of our campaign was to look
at everything together, not stack them into individual silos labeled media, press, field, and so on. We wanted everything synched up so we could keep our communications tight and coordinated, and maximize the value of all possible data points when making decisions.
I wanted a campaign in every battleground state with a robust enough field and advertising budget to address all our needs and to deal with whatever attacks McCain and his outside henchmen threw our way. Staying in the federal system would seriously impede our ability to mount the kind of campaign that left no stone unturned. We needed to be clear-eyed about that.
I thought if we opted out of the system, we would also enjoy a significant financial advantage over McCain. Our sense was that his campaign would feel they could not raise enough money to justify opting out. McCain lacked a powerful online fund-raising program, and he would have to do a lot more traditional fund-raising events than we did. This would take up a lot of his time, pulling him out of battleground states. From this perspective, it would make more sense to stick with the devil you know and let the RNC raise the money.
I thought this would be a grave mistake for them. The decision was not just about total dollars. More important than resource disparity would be a “control gap.” If we were out and he was in, he would be at the mercy of the RNC and outside groups, while we controlled our own destiny.
For example, in October, it would be likely that in Cleveland, Ohio, McCain could afford to run only one ad a week. To supplement this, the RNC would then need to run their own ad (or two), and several outside groups would also have to get on the air for him. And all this would happen with the threat of felony prosecution guaranteeing that no communication beyond smoke signals was taking place between the candidate and his outside help.
The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory Page 34