As we were building in Iowa, however, the national narrative was becoming more toxic for us. The prevailing sense among pundits remained that Hillary Clinton was in impossibly strong shape. They granted that Iowa would be competitive but pointed out that she was leading by a wide margin in national polls and actually gaining ground after our temporary summer bounce. She led in all of the state polling at this point, too, with Iowa and South Carolina having the closest margins. She had big leads in New Hampshire and Nevada, the other two early states, and massive leads across the country, with Obama’s home state of Illinois being the only real exception.
The talking heads began calling for Obama’s second act. If Iowa is the linchpin of your strategy, why have you not pulled ahead? Even if you win Iowa, how on earth can you erase her big leads in the rest of the states?
It became overwhelming in September and October. Throughout the campaign we had tried to educate our supporters about our Iowa-forward strategy. Now, though, bombarded by naysayers in the press, our supporters began to get nervous. All they were seeing every day on cable, in newspapers, and on blogs was that Clinton was strengthening her position and we had blown our window to make a move.
These jitters were fueled by the intense scrutiny our supporters around the country-and much of the voting public at large—were giving the race. They visited sites like pollster.com and realclearpolitics.com and saw for themselves that, day after day, Clinton’s national lead never wavered; if anything, it was growing. The only place where this did not seem to affect people was in Iowa. Because Iowans were seeing the candidates regularly in their towns and on the local news (and not through the eyes and words of the pundits), they were witnessing a much more competitive race. They also had a history of not allowing national dynamics to greatly affect their choice of candidate; this independence was one of the reasons we thought we had a pathway to victory there.
None of this surprised us. We stayed focused on measuring our progress in Iowa and the early states, and growing our fledgling February 5 operation. The $5 million we had set aside for those contests thanks to our strong fund-raising was paying for staff and offices in all twenty-two states. In many of them, our grassroots supporters had already been organizing on their own through our social-networking site, my.barackobama.com, or MyBO. It made easier our decision to send a modest amount of staff into these states—they would not have to start from scratch with only a few assets to call in. Our volunteers had already made great strides, and with some more pointed goals and the tools to measure their performance they would only become more effective.
We actively encouraged our volunteers in the non-early states, even without staff on the ground to offer direction. Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook who gave up working there to help us organize online, offered our supporters a clear message: “Get busy on your own. Take the campaign into your own hands.”
In state after state, our supporters answered the call, organizing their communities for Obama. In places like St. Paul, Minnesota, Obama supporters in the area would find one another on MyBO and then hold an offline organizing meeting at a local library or bar. They would discuss how to build their group and get more people interested, usually settling on e-mail, though some also took clipboards to local community events; eventually they wanted to start calling and door knocking potential Democratic primary voters and distributing literature on Obama’s message and plans.
Often they contacted Hughes or someone in our new media department to ask for voter lists, or for guidance on how to download and print literature. More often than not, they were cautiously seeking a green light, worried that the campaign might object to their organic activity.
We gave them the brightest green light imaginable. No one in our camp knew for sure, but we sincerely doubted that the same scenario was unfolding in the Clinton campaign.
Our “go for it” response to eager volunteer organizers was unusual. For most campaigns, command and control is normally the order of the day. But it was clear we had uniquely motivated and talented volunteers who could give us a huge leg up, so we tried to send the message that they should consider the campaign a movement-their movement.
To our great surprise, as we began to move into the fall, the Clinton campaign had not yet opened up offices or sent staff into most of the February 5 states. They completely ignored the caucus states until very late in the year. Almost daily I asked Jon Carson, our field director who was managing the February 5 operation, “Have the Clinton people shown up?” His answer always filled me a sense of wonder and gratitude: “Not yet.”
The best explanation we could come up with for such obvious neglect was that they steadfastly believed the race would be over by then-that Clinton would sweep the early states and we would drop out. Or perhaps they thought that organizing on the ground in these states would not have a deep impact, that momentum and late campaigning and spending would be all that mattered. Whatever the reason, they continued to let us have the field to ourselves, much to our advantage.
Our situation in February 5 states like Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota was no different than in Iowa: we needed to expand the electorate to win. We could not wait until four weeks out from the vote to start working these states. To have any chance of winning, we needed our local supporters out early and often, actively seeking nontraditional primary and caucus participants.
Our preliminary targeting decisions in February 5 states were based on a sense of how we thought we would fare in each one. Was the contest a primary or caucus? We thought our most fervent grassroots support could give us an advantage in the caucus states, even with Clinton at full strength. As it became apparent that her campaign would be late to the party, our expectations grew in terms of what we could accomplish. Could independents participate? We figured we’d carry independents; our polls in state after state showed they were much more skeptical of Clinton than Democratic primary voters. How expensive was it to run strong? Could we make a dent with a modest investment ? We calculated the overall statewide cost of running a baseline effort and developed a cost-per-delegate formula that estimated the media, staff, and other organizational costs to assess how expensive acquiring a delegate might be in one state versus another (small, less expensive states, not surprisingly, jumped off the page as much more cost-effective). On a broader level, how did we see the delegate allocation unfolding, and was there anything we could do to affect it? Our delegate director, Jeff Berman, worked with Carson and me to come up with an initial assessment of how we might strengthen our delegate hand. This ended up playing a pivotal role in the ultimate outcome of the primary.
We did not expect-and did not get—much poll movement until right before the contests. What was moving the race to our advantage was an imperceptible force that was passing from voter to voter, and manifesting itself in the amount of ground we were able to cover in spreading our message.
We knew that doubts would be raised about Obama by the press and our opponents: he was too inexperienced; the GOP would chew him up; he should wait his turn. We believed local people talking to their neighbors, friends, and family, to address these doubts, could create a permission structure whereby voters rationalized, “Well, you’re supporting him enthusiastically. We think alike, live the same types of lives. You see something in him, and that’s important to me.”
Thousands of these conversations were happening every day, out of the glare of the media spotlight and we thought it could be a difference maker. We believed we had genuinely widened the enthusiasm gap over Clinton. Our supporters were more passionate, meaning they would give more time and more money, and a higher percentage of them would do both. In states where organization mattered, we believed having a more committed and diverse volunteer network could make all the difference.
We talked often about the enthusiasm gap with the press, but since it was not easily digestible catnip like national tracking polls, nobody bothered to figure out what it might mean if it was true.
We
were hitting or exceeding our internal metrics in the fall of 2007. Fund-raising was ahead of pace. Organization building in the four early states was on schedule, and we were making the number of phone calls and door-knocks we needed to meet our overall voter-contact goals. Our e-mail list growth was much more robust than our original projections. The website and MyBO were growing into a powerful force. Most surprising, we were much more advanced in the February 5 states than Clinton was. And we still thought our message best suited the times.
But the chorus of criticism and concern only got louder. Externally, and even internally, people continued to question our electoral strategy and message. We shouted from the rooftops that national polls didn’t matter and that the race would reset after Iowa. We believed that to our core. But even some of our most steadfast supporters were getting shaky.
I attended a meeting of our top New York donors in September in the sparkling and leather-laden conference room of one of our top fund-raisers. Our finance staff had done a very smart thing from the outset: they made sure that our communication with our donors wasn’t just about the money but was a regular dialogue, so that they were in on the campaign’s thinking and trajectory. We had many sessions in person and on the phone where I, Ax, or sometimes Barack himself would remind people what the strategy was and that they needed to take the long view, not sit at their computers hitting Refresh until that day’s national Gallup tracking poll came out.
Despite all that education about how we viewed the race, I felt like I was starting from scratch that day in New York. The fifty or so attendees were very nervous. All of them had gone out on a limb in supporting Obama and opposing their home-state senator, whom many of them had known and helped for years. I got question after anxious question about national polls: Did we know it was settling in that she would win, which made fund-raising harder? Why weren’t we doing more to answer the lack of experience charge? Even if we won Iowa, the polls in New Hampshire and Nevada were terrible; how would we make that up?
After taking several questions I calmly and flatly laid it out:
“Listen,” I told them, “I know it’s hard to be surrounded by political chatter every day about how Hillary is going to win and we are stuck. It’s frustrating. The media seems to be covering a completely different campaign than the one we believe will unfold. As if events down the road do not have the ability to fundamentally alter the race. We believe this is an incredibly dynamic process. If we do not win Iowa, we probably can’t win. But if we do, we believe the door will have opened, and we have a shot. Not a sure thing, but a shot.” I paused to let this sink in. “We may not lead any poll in Iowa until the end, though. And if we do, don’t pay too much attention to it. All that matters is if we enter caucus night with enough confirmed supporters to win at the turnout level we project. And those numbers and that view will never—ever—be visible in the media. You just have to trust us that this approach and this discipline is our only path.”
I ran through the specifics of the four-state forward plan, then went wide. “Our fund-raising and grassroots support is deeper and larger than we could have imagined,” I said, “allowing us to compete with her, if not exceed her, during a lengthy primary fight. Now, perhaps we can win three or four of the four first states; that’s certainly our goal, and we may have essentially secured the nomination by that point.” This brought smiles to a few faces. “But if not, we can be in this for the long haul. Despite Clinton’s big leads nationally and in most states, she is only in the forties in most states. That means over fifty percent of the electorate is open to an alternative. And we will be that alternative.”
My explanation helped mollify them to some degree, but many were still skeptical. “That all sounds good,” someone piped up after I was done speaking, “but it seems to be a scenario only you guys believe will happen.”
“That may be,” I answered. “But this is our chosen electoral path. Yes, it is unquestionably narrow. But we believe it is the only one available to us. We have committed to it, and we need you to preach the gospel out there that it is doable, even if you harbor your own doubts. Please trust me-at some point the coverage of the race will move from the national abstract to the early states. The coverage will shift then because the media will finally encounter voters in those states who see how close the race really is, voters who have never accepted the national media spin that someone is unbeatable. So just hang on for a couple more months and the tenor of the coverage will change.”
Phew. I was relieved to head back to Chicago that day, but it would not be the last time I faced a nervous and skeptical room of our donors. Julianna had me go out to many of the major fund-raising cities like Los Angeles and Washington to calm everyone down and get them refocused and confident. But my talks were no better than a Band-Aid; only a drastic shift in political perception would create a better fund-raising environment for our major donors. They had already tapped all the people in their close circle of contacts. To get new recruits to contribute and raise money, we needed to foster a sense that we could actually pull this off. At this stage, potential recruits would not get that from perusing the political coverage. It was then easy for someone to say no to a financial solicitation—“I like him and will vote for him,” went the rationale, “but it’s not easy for me to get involved financially and I just don’t see how he wins.” Our fund-raisers were hearing versions of this every day.
Obama dealt with all this in a very healthy way. At one point in September he called a meeting with some of the senior team in order to make sure there was not another electoral path available to us. I thought he was doing this in order to be able to assure his friends and political supporters—who were obviously chewing on him about it—that he had rigorously explored other avenues but come to see that an Iowa-and-early-states strategy was our best shot.
“The Iowa strategy makes sense to me,” he said in the meeting. “If Hillary wins Iowa, she will be next to impossible to stop. But should we be doing more in the other states, and nationally, to decrease her lead and help change the narrative even if it’s only for optics? I don’t know about you guys, but it’s no fun to be told dozens of times a day you don’t know what you are doing and have no shot.”
We had a healthy discussion about what types of things would be required to move numbers nationally and in states. And all of them—national advertising, advertising in big states like California, more candidate time on the ground in those states, more national media appearances—led to the same problematic result: it would take time and money away from Iowa and to a degree the other early states, in direct opposition to our strategy. We would have to make cold-blooded choices about how to allocate resources, financial and human. Axelrod summed it up: “This is a zero-sum game. The clock is ticking, and every minute we spend somewhere other than Iowa gets compounded as we draw closer to the caucus.”
“We’re not sitting on surplus cash,” I added. “To spend more nationally we would have to take from the early states and our initial February 5 spending. We can do that, but we need to be clear about the tradeoffs that would entail.”
“Okay,” said Obama. “We are going to stick to the game plan. I just wanted us to make sure we weren’t getting too comfortable or lazy, not willing to adjust.” I relaxed for a moment, thinking it was settled. But Obama wasn’t finished. “I’m going to ask for one concession that should not harm our Iowa efforts,” he said. “We are doing good African American politics in the early states. And that’s as it should be, that’s our focus. But I am going to insist that we start spending more time on African American leaders in states down the line. One, we will need their help eventually. Two, it’s just psychologically draining for me to get e-mails and calls from people about how upset they are that we lost another prominent African American to the Clintons and that it appears like we really don’t care. Win or lose, I just can’t have that. We have to do more.”
This was a conversation that had been going on for some time. I knew
he felt I was being too stubborn by insisting that we did not have time for what I viewed as extracurricular campaigning when we did not have a dime or a minute to spare. And though it went unsaid, it was clear to me that he was viewing his base politics more through the prism of losing than winning. He did not want to lose and be charged with ignoring the African American community. Ever pragmatic, he knew how steep the next few months’ climb would be.
He called me on his way home from the meeting. “Look, Plouffe,” he said, “your focus and discipline are an important part of the campaign. Without it, we’d be tilting at windmills too often. But you can also be too stubborn in trying to enforce that discipline. Yes, Iowa is the pathway. I am in one hundred percent agreement with that and we’ll just have to ride out the naysaying.” He paused for a moment. “But if you want me to perform in Iowa, I need to have this burden lifted.”
I told him I would try to do better with the African American community and would make sure we picked up our game in this regard. And we did. Valerie Jarrett began holding a daily call with our staff and key supporters involved in outreach, which helped to instill more discipline and allowed us to track progress more closely. Each day, Valerie had people on the call report on their conversations with various African American political targets and what their next steps would be.
The results didn’t change much immediately in terms of endorsements, but all the contact helped freeze some leaders who might have gone over to Clinton and would now wait to see how the first states unfolded.
On our postmeeting phone call, he raised one other idea. He was fairly sheepish about bringing it up, so I knew it wasn’t his idea but something a friend had brought to him. “What if we bought national ads on BET for a few weeks?” he asked. “We might be able to spike our numbers enough that it could erode her national poll lead to some degree.”
I quickly did the math. “Even if we could easily move a bunch of African American voters,” I said, “and I don’t think we can, because the Clinton name and brand is strong and these voters probably won’t break for you in big numbers until after you win Iowa and/or New Hampshire, proving your viability—if we went from thirty percent support to sixty percent support, it would move the national horse race a total of one point, because African American voters represent only fifteen percent or so of the national Democratic primary electorate.”
The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory Page 13
