Not all our staff was wild about having baseball on and most ignored it, but my eyes were darting back and forth. At night’s end we had gone four for four in presidential debates and the Phillies had put away the Dodgers, and were going on to the World Series. When I talked to Obama after the debate, he was more interested in talking about baseball.
“Honestly, Plouffe, if you had to choose, would it be winning the election or the World Series?”
“Honestly?” I asked. “It’s a close call. I’d have to choose winning the election.” I paused. “But we might need a recount.”
17
Endgame
Barack was in a very light mood after the third debate. He had completed the last really hard thing the campaign trail demanded of him. We had run the gauntlet of the foreign trip, VP selection, convention, and debates, and not just survived but strengthened ourselves immeasurably. The campaign had executed well, but the real credit in the end goes to Barack Obama. “That was all you tonight,” I told him on a call that night. “All of these big moments have been you. At the red-light moment, you’re alone with the ball. You either make the shot or miss it, and you’ve made it every time. I could not be prouder of you.”
I’m sure he appreciated the sentiment, but he snapped me back to reality. “Well, I’ve done my part,” he said. “Now it’s in your hands. I’ll go out there every day and campaign hard and make the arguments we have to make. But from now on, what’s happening on the ground is the most important thing.” I could sense relief in his voice at having his toughest moments in the rearview mirror.
We stood twenty days out from the election, and the data coming in from the states increased our confidence. We were polling quite strongly across the battlegrounds, but in the states with early vote we were beginning to see actual trends in terms of who was voting; the result looked encouraging. Our base—African Americans, sporadic-voting Democrats, and younger voters—was turning out in larger numbers than McCain’s base in most states. And independent voters who we thought were most likely to support us were turning out at greater levels than McCain’s independent likely supporters. Given early-vote data like this, in states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada, we thought we were heading into Election Day with double-digit leads with over half the votes already cast; McCain would have to win Election Day by a massive margin to carry these critical states.
You wouldn’t have known this from spending any time with us. The conversations and demeanor in our HQ and state offices, and on the plane with Obama, revealed none of this confidence. Following his lead, we tended to be a very even-keeled outfit and had been through enough ups and downs in the primary to shy away from speculative remarks like, “Well, we should win this thing” or, “I don’t see how McCain can pull this off.” We just kept our heads down, tried not to make mistakes, and executed our responsibilities. Even though we knew we had the best staff and volunteer squad ever assembled in presidential politics, one that could potentially get us over the top in tied or close races, we did not let that cushion into our mind-set. We stayed focused on hitting our marks and metrics.
We also made sure our campaign counsel, led by Bob Bauer, had the most thorough, experienced, and dogged election protection team in place in all the states. A crack staff of hundreds of lawyers, almost all volunteers, would make sure the voters we were counting on—new registrants, younger voters, and minorities—were able to participate without facing the same degree of problems and malfeasance that had cropped up in recent presidential elections.
Every day, McCain, Palin, or both were hammering us on taxes, using Joe the Plumber as a device, even campaigning with him a couple of times—when he felt like showing up. At one event, McCain called Joe to the stage only to receive an awkward, silent response—and terrible coverage in the aftermath—when Joe was nowhere to be found. “Joe, I thought you were here today,” said McCain to no one in particular. Pretty weak stuff.
And little of it was breaking through, anyway. Everything we heard and saw in the data confirmed that people weren’t buying the notion of Obama as some socialist engaged in economic engineering—they still preferred him on taxes by a healthy margin in most states. And voters quickly grew sick and tired of Joe the Plumber; they were looking for authenticity.
The home stretch was in many ways the smoothest period of the entire campaign. Our organization was humming in the states, McCain’s attacks were not resonating, and Obama’s stumping crackled with energy. Absent some unforeseen earthquake, we had only to block and tackle well, and we would likely win the presidency.
Our e-mail list had reached 13 million people. We had essentially created our own television network, only better, because we communicated directly with no filter to what would amount to about 20 percent of the total number of votes we would need to win—a remarkably high percentage. And those supporters would share our positive message or response to an attack, whether through orchestrated campaign activity like door knocking or phone calling or just in conversations they had each day with friends, family, and colleagues.
On an issue like Ayers, what people on the ground said to one another was just as important, if not more, than what Obama said himself. When our supporter—let’s call him John, a diner owner from Durango, Colorado—talked to his undecided neighbor Mary, we had to make sure John knew what to say. Through e-mailed talking points, postings on the website, and conversations with local field organizers, our volunteers were stressing the same arguments Obama, Biden, Ax, and Gibbs were delivering on any given day. Our philosophy was that John from Durango needed to be as current on the campaign as the candidate was. We wanted to build a message-delivery army in perfect harmony from top to bottom.
You couldn’t put a price on it—regular people bringing Obama’s message to their neighbors, serving as our ambassadors block by block throughout the battleground states. Especially in terms of character attacks, nothing was more potent when it came to reassuring target voters that they could trust Obama than hearing it from people who lived the same life and had the same values and experiences.
There were two bumps in our otherwise smooth landing—one planned and one that was sadly visited on us.
I was worried about the twenty-day lag time between the last debate and Election Day and thought we needed to create a major momentum-producing event that would excite our supporters, make one last high-profile pitch to lean-Obama supporters and undecided voters, and do something with a big enough footprint to dominate some of the endgame press coverage.
In early October, I floated with Ax and Grisolano the idea of doing a thirty-minute TV program to be aired the last week of the campaign. Of course the first issue they raised was cost. I told them not to worry about that, I’d figure it out. Our October fund-raising would not quite rival September’s record-smashing haul, but we thought we’d easily surpass our initial $100 million target based on how we projected the month. We were firing on all cylinders—online money continued to explode, from both new and existing grassroots donors. And Julianna Smoot and Penny Pritzker’s traditional finance operation continued to yield big dividends—they continued to cultivate new top-level fund-raisers, and even after two years of heavy mining, our raisers were still turning up new, large contributions. So the money for the program was there. The question was whether it made sense and how we would approach it.
We settled on focusing much of the program on stories of real Americans, struggling with the economy and health care. In this scenario, Obama would introduce the people, serving as an infrequent narrator, but he would not be the star of the show—the spotlight would stay on average Americans. Mark Putnam and Margolis pressed hard to have Obama come in live from an actual event site at the end of the program, to add some pizzazz to the production and spike interest. Putnam, one of the best producers in our party, had put together the remarkable video about Michelle for the convention. The candidate was skeptical.
“Going live seems awfully risky,” he said. “Wha
t if there are technical issues? Or we mistime it at the rally? Wouldn’t we better off, if we must go live, to do it from a studio somewhere where we have more control?”
“I think we can pull it off,” I told him. “Look, we’ve been up on the high wire all campaign. So maybe this isn’t a reasoned answer or clinical explanation, but it just doesn’t feel right to pull up on the very last decision we have to make. Let’s roll the dice.”
Obama was quiet for a minute. “Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s do it.” That was that. We were set for a nationally televised thirty-minute program, shown across the dial and of course streamed online, on Wednesday, October 29, just six short days before the election.
It was a ten-strike. The viewership was much higher than we anticipated. Over 20 percent of the country watching TV at the time was tuned in, a phenomenally high number. More important, in some key battleground markets like Palm Beach, Florida; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Greensboro, North Carolina, the number was over 25 percent. And millions more watched the program or parts of it online, whether on our website or on various news and entertainment sites. Our research showed voters responding off the charts to the program’s stories of real people. They were also almost universally surprised that the program wasn’t just a long Obama speech or a Ross Perot—like production with pie charts. They told us it helped remind them what the election was really about: the economy, health care, and the human toll of our nation’s veering off the tracks.
The program essentially dominated a forty-eight-hour period of news coverage during the last week of the race. It was an expensive way to block McCain, but well worth it. At the moment he could least afford to cede control of the campaign narrative, we showed up with a megaphone and he barely had a working mic.
Obama called me right after the live broadcast. “See, I told you guys there was nothing to it,” he joked. He asked how it came across on TV, and I told him it could not have gone better. The show offered a nice contrast: the high-energy rally with the high-technology precision combined with the gritty true-life stories of the Americans.
Obama was psyched to have pulled it off. “I’m so pleased about how this went I won’t even bend your ear about how it’s eleven o’ clock and I still have one more rally to do.”
“This is the last Wednesday of the campaign,” I told him. “And the last Wednesday-night rally you’ll have to do until 2012, knock on wood.”
The success of the thirty-minute program lifted our spirits. But personal tragedy also visited Barack at the end of the race, and it weighed on him a great deal.
His maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had been a rock for him throughout his life. She was the last person alive who had helped mold him into the man he was.
“Toot,” as her grandchildren called her, was eighty-six and in failing health. Barack had spent a great deal of time with her during the August vacation in Hawaii. But she had been declining rapidly. He called me on a Saturday, seventeen days before the election, to say that his half-sister Maya, who was living in Hawaii and was with Toot constantly, reported that their grandmother did not have much time to live. “Do you think there’s any way I could get back to Hawaii to see her?” Barack asked me. “She might make it past the election. But if she doesn‘t, I won’t be able to forgive myself for not going back. I missed that chance with my mom and I don’t want the same thing to happen with Toot.”
Once again, it was really no decision at all; he had to go back. I talked to Alyssa and she suggested Obama fly to Hawaii the next Thursday, spend Friday with his grandmother, and then fly back overnight to resume campaigning on Saturday afternoon. He would be flat-out exhausted, but he said not to worry about it. And we would lose one day of the last twelve in the campaign, but Michelle would be out campaigning, and Biden of course, along with a host of surrogates. While there was no substitute in the battlegrounds for a Barack Obama visit, we knew we could flood the zone and make sure our case was being made in his absence.
He was subdued but relieved when I talked to him upon his return to the trail. “I’m so glad I was able to get back,” he said. “She’s meant so much to me. I’m not sure she’ll make it to election day. I really hope she does—she is still following things so closely, even as weak as she is. But we’re both at peace.”
His grandmother passed away on Sunday, November 2. Barack was very serene, repeating how important it was that he had been able to say good-bye to her.
In an appearance in North Carolina Monday night, Barack, his emotions betraying how profoundly he felt her loss and with tears streaming down his cheeks, spoke of Toot and how much she meant to him, and what a strong and giving person she was. It had been a long journey and she would not be there to see its end.
Later that evening, ninety thousand people turned out at that rally in Manassas, Virginia, for the very last rally of his 2008 presidential campaign, a stone’s throw from historic Bull Run, a key Civil War battleground. One hundred and forty five years after that battle, an African American was ending his presidential campaign in the heart of the old Confederacy, and likely to win the state, though it had been carried by Republicans for the past forty-four years.
I watched the coverage on television and felt proud of our discipline. We said Virginia would be perhaps the pivotal state in the election, and true to our word, our first and last events of the general-election campaign were held there. When we committed to something, we meant it.
Near the end of the rally Barack broke out, for the first time in the general election, the chant that had been such a constant in Iowa. “Fired up?” he’d shout. “Ready to go!” ninety thousand people shouted back in unison.
At the end, McCain’s camp decided to throw everything they could into Pennsylvania, believing that if they could pull an upset and steal the Keystone State’s twenty-one electoral votes, we would have to win a higher percentage of our targets. While that was true, we simply couldn’t come up with a scenario—not one—where McCain could win Pennsylvania. Our lead was too strong and the state had become decidedly more Democratic in the last four years; we now enjoyed a registration edge of over 1 million. To win Pennsylvania, McCain would have to win about 55 percent of the independent vote and 20 percent of the Democratic vote. We did not think he could get anywhere close to that, and our data backed this up. Although McCain was essentially living in Pennsylvania at this point, we refused to take the bait and send Obama back there. Instead, as always, we stuck to our strategy and spent time in Florida, Ohio, Indiana, and North Carolina.
The night before the election, our last poll in Pennsylvania showed our lead slipping to just four points. These numbers didn’t square with anything else we were seeing. I asked Jon Carson if he saw anything in the field data so far that day that suggested any erosion. “No, if anything we see strengthening,” he told me. “The poll just seems way off.”
Ax called me after seeing the Pennsylvania numbers. I relayed Carson’s thoughts and said that I had been poring over different election scenarios and simply couldn’t get McCain to 50 percent. His final ferocious effort might narrow the margin, but I was dead-certain we would win the state. Usually Ax was like a cat on a hot tin roof when we got bad polling numbers, but now he was calm. “Yeah, probably a screwy poll. I just don’t see how this gets away from us tomorrow. It’s weird to feel so confident.”
I agreed and told him what a joy being on this journey with him had been. “Brother, the ride of our lifetimes,” he responded. “Win or lose, I wouldn’t have done it any differently or with different people. The hardest thing about tomorrow night will be that it’s over. We’ve become a family and after tomorrow night, it’ll never be the same again.”
I hadn’t really thought about that, but he was right. We all had gone through a political war together. Many of us had spoken nearly every day for two long years. We spent every waking hour together, talking all day long and sharing the highs, lows, and surprises. I would miss them all terribly.
One
of the fundamental truths of the campaign’s story, one that will always stick with those of us who went through it, is that we threw long. We refused to be defined by past electoral and American history, by what we were told we couldn’t do. We tried to see things simply as they existed. We refused to accept the story that many thought would be written for us, and instead wrote our own chapter of history. The greatest treasure of the campaign was the chance to be my best self, and to share this with a band of brothers and sisters who were also their best selves, as we met and seized our moment.
As I hung up from that call with Ax, it dawned on me that it was all finally going to be over. Done. Finis. In about twenty-four hours. I was desperate to rejoin my family. Barring a Bush-Gore-style recount, this would happen at the crack of dawn Wednesday—unless our baby came on Election Day.
Even though it was midnight and I had to be up at 4:00 a.m. to do a round of the national morning shows, I left my short-term corporate apartment and walked down to Lake Michigan, past the apartment where my family and I had lived for most of the last two years. For at least an hour I stared at the water and the skyline. I tried to savor the memories of moments gone by and to get my arms around the idea that the verdict would be known in a matter of hours.
I chuckled aloud, recalling a board game I had often played as a kid with the improbable name Landslide. This may sound hard to believe, but it was actually a game based on the Electoral College. The goal of the game was to beat your opponents to 270 electoral votes, thus winning the presidency. Sometimes I would play against myself because, for some unfathomable reason, my friends and family weren’t all that interested.
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