Attention To Detail: Obama's General Election Strategy
On Wednesday, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, gave a lengthy presentation on general election strategy to members of the press. It was an overtly confident perspective on how the Senator could reach 270 Electoral College votes, notable in the conclusion that 14 states that President Bush won in 2004 could now be put in play in 2008.
In the end, a theme emerged: the presumptive Democratic nominee would be running a meticulously detailed, numerically driven, largely-on-offense campaign, marked mainly by a political precision that had even seasoned operatives impressed.
"They understand this process very well," said Tad Devine, chief political consultant to Al Gore and an adviser to John Kerry. "One of the big reasons [Obama] became the Democratic nominee is that his campaign had a mastery over the process and the Clinton campaign didn't have anything resembling that, I think it is fair to say. They understood that in the nominating process: tactics are strategy. And it sounds like they are taking a similar approach to electoral college targeting."
Take, for example, the following declarations made by Plouffe:
• The campaign is going to "compete hard" in Alaska, taking advantage of the infrastructure it has on that ground for that states THREE electoral votes. "We have a fantastic organization in the state in Alaska and John McCain doesn't have anything.... We think Alaska is a real possibility."
• The Senator has little shot of winning Texas. And yet, there will be a roughly 10,000-person strong "persuasion army" to, ostensibly, test the waters, drive up the popular vote and, perhaps, force John McCain to spend some resources and time. "We will have people in communities who live where these swing voters, talk like them, and have had the same experiences," said Plouffe. "And they will be persuading them to vote through the fall."
• Among other things, the Obama campaign would consider investing resources and time to Omaha, Nebraska, because the state runs its election on a proportional (not winner-take-all) system and the Senator could pick off an electoral vote by running up the margins in that city.
That offense and precision would be the guiding tenets of Obama's electoral strategy is hardly a surprise. A month ago, Idaho Democrat Party Chairman Keith Roark told the Huffington Post that he had "received assurances" that the Obama campaign would "have paid people on the ground" in his state - a Republican bastion with four electoral votes. Yesterday, reports emerged that the candidate would actually venture out to Alaska, becoming the first Democratic nominee to do so since John F. Kennedy.
As Plouffe acknowledged, the strategy is similar to the one used during the primary campaign when Obama picked off areas that Hillary Clinton had deemed either inconsequential or not worth the resource investment.
"First of all, strategically, you saw in the primary, we tried to play everywhere. We didn't always win states, but in the pursuit of delegates we tried to play everywhere," said the strategist.
And so Obama has roughly five or six different electoral outcomes that could get him to that vaunted 270, even though all he needs to do is hold onto the states won by John Kerry and flip Ohio.
To win those states, the campaign is doing what amounts to micro-targeting voters - utilizing the rabid grassroots following the Senator enjoys to help persuade new converts. In Montana, Plouffe discussed building "a precinct-based organization down to the block level." The state has three Electoral College votes. The Senator also seems poised to do a lot of biography advertising, in hopes of introducing himself to voters in his own frame.
"In many ways it feels like last July or August in Iowa for us," said Plouffe. "You look at the voters in these states and they know very little about him."
But, as centralized and controlled as the Obama campaign seems to be, even they will admittedly be relying on outside help. In Georgia (and Alaska), Plouffe calculated that Obama would only need 47 percent to win - because of votes being siphoned off by home-state libertarian candidate Bob Barr. And in more than a dozen crucial states, he added, Obama will rely on assistance from Democratic governors.
"It helps," said the strategist. "[Clinton] had a lot of them and they help a lot." They are important in "eliminating the number of shenanigans around election day."
In the end, the Obama campaign seems committed to only one gospel: the electoral math. And, for better or worse, they have built a strategy that - from the precinct level to the state - demands adherence to numbers. It will, Plouffe acknowledges, require a bevy of resources to be committed to non-traditional locales. But it also brings with it innumerable, electoral possibilities.
"It is very important not to have a slim margin of error," said Plouffe. "We simply aren't going to wake up on the morning of November 4th and be worried about one state."
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First Posted: 06-27-08 09:53 AM | Updated: 07- 5-08 05:12 AM