Lessons Learned from the Election of 2008: Looking Back and Looking Forward

As the dust settles from the remarkable election of 2008 and the Obama transition is in full tilt, it is worth taking stock of lessons learned so they can inform not only campaigns that follow but the way Democrats and progressives pursue their legislative agendas.

From the standpoint of political scientists and their statistical models of electoral outcomes, the election was in the bag by the end of August, if not the end of June. My colleague at Emory, Alan Abramowitz, has developed one of the simplest and most powerful models, which predicted the popular vote within a percentage point or two (predicting roughly a 54 to 46 percent rout). In this model, every major factor that predicts electoral success--the popularity of the incumbent (the lowest in the history of Gallup polling), the state of the economy (measured in terms of gross domestic product), and "incumbent fatigue" (the same party had been in power for two terms) was running against John McCain. Other models from political science add the presence of an unpopular war--a fourth strike against McCain.

So perhaps we need look no further. All Democrats need to do is to wait until a corrupt, incompetent, reckless Republican President gets two chances to collaborate with an ideologically extreme Republican Congress and makes such a mess of the country and the world that even suburban white Republicans vote Democratic. But hopefully that will be a long wait.

Harnessing People and Technology

Two additional and interrelated factors not included in these models clearly stand out that reflect the particular skills of the Obama campaign and its chief architects: their extraordinary capacity to organize people and their equally extraordinary understanding of how to use cutting-edge technology.

In her speech to the Republican Convention, Sarah Palin mocked Obama's work history, suggesting that the difference between a community organizer and a small-town mayor was that a mayor has responsibilities. Today, I'm sure John McCain wished he had instead selected a community organizer for his running mate. Watching the Obama "ground game" in action--and the fact that the election was well on its way to over in many states with early voting days before November 4--reminded me of research on ant and bee colonies I had read in a college course on the evolutionary biology of social behavior. The trio of Obama, Axelrod, and Plouffe knew how to organize people in a way that makes Karl Rove's mobilization of ten million new voters (largely fundamentalist and evangelic Christians) that delivered Bush the presidency in 2004 look like a trial run.

Equally important was the fact that Obama was the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt (who used radio to reassure the American people and maintain a personal connection with them) to command a substantial technological advantage over his opponents. Ever since Eisenhower spent over a million dollars advertising on the newly emerging medium of television, Republicans have consistently had the edge on technology, including voter databases that were as essential to Bush's victory in 2004 as to Obama's in 2008. John McCain never learned to use that large system of tubes youngsters in their 50s and 60s know as the Internet, whereas the Obama campaign used new media to stay in constant contact with their supporters, to spread the word to potential supporters, and to amass huge sums of money that gave them the edge in voter mobilization and every form of campaign advertising.

Mobilizing Emotion: The Message and the Messenger

Yet none of these factors--the Bush legacy that bedeviled McCain, which he had to embrace to win his party's nomination but ultimately tightened like a noose around his political neck as November approached, or the Obama team's ability to mobilize people and technology--can explain what happened between mid August, when McCain had caught up to Obama in most polls (and early September, when McCain took his first clear lead) and November 4, when Obama achieved a decisive victory. Nor can these factors explain why Obama, who was steadily losing ground to Hillary Clinton from the summer of 2007 through early November of that year (when she broke 50% in the national polls among Democratic voters and seemed, according to many commentators, "inevitable"), suddenly took off after his speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa, which many observers described as a turning point in the Democratic nomination process.

To understand what happened in November and December of 2007 and again in September and October of 2008 requires an understanding of what ultimately moves voters: the emotions that motivate virtually all human behavior. In October of 2007, the Obama who had tried to win the traditional Democratic way--by focusing on the relative merits of his 10-point plans, using language that was often more nuanced than moving--was running neck-in-neck with John Edwards for second place. The reality is that there wasn't much difference between his 10-point plans and those of his rivals. But there was an enormous difference between him and his rivals when he chose to use it: a capacity to inspire that we see only four or five times a century in American history. In November of 2007, the Obama who had captured the imagination of the nation with his 2004 address to the Democratic Convention (and rekindled that imagination on a blustery day in Springfield in early 2007 with an awe-inspiring address announcing his candidacy for the Presidency) re-emerged at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa and never looked back. Obama found hope, and he began to inspire it again.

Although for months pundits continued to frame the race as a battle between Obama and "the Clintons," the reality was that it more like a contest between Bill Clinton (or JFK, or FDR) and Hillary Clinton--a candidate with an extraordinary capacity to inspire versus a candidate with many gifts except that one. No doubt, the capacity to organize and mobilize people was one of the decisive factors in the election of 2008. But that capacity itself was dependent upon not only the skills of the Obama team but upon the rare personal qualities of Obama himself. For the next several months, many political commentators called for Obama to move beyond his message of "change" and toward the approach to campaigning that has been the downfall of Democratic politicians for generations: peppering voters with facts, figures, and policy positions and assuming they will make a rational choice between bundles of plans. But we don't choose any of the important people in our lives that way, whether our spouses or our Presidents. Obama beat Hillary Clinton the same way he beat John McCain: by out-inspiring them, boxing them into the role of the candidate against hope, and defining himself as the candidate of change in a year in which Americans wanted nothing more desperately than to put our nation on a different track.

But hope and inspiration, by themselves, are not enough to win the White House. No one has ever won the presidency without making a case against his opponent, and no one has ever won who failed to address attacks from the other side (as Michael Dukakis and John Kerry would now be the first to acknowledge). As I argued in The Political Brain, Democrats' ambivalence about aggression has been as much their downfall in prior elections as their irrational commitment to rationality--their belief that good ideas sell themselves, irrespective of the way they are presented and by whom. If the Obama of November and December of 2007 began to channel voters' hopes, the Obama of September and October 2008 began to channel and address not only their hopes but their fears--about the economy, about John McCain, and ultimately about himself.

As an article in the New York Times put it in early September,

A new character is making a debut at Senator Barack Obama's campaign rallies: His name is John McCain. It began quietly on Monday in Michigan, but grew in volume as Mr. Obama made his way from Flint to Farmington Hills, carrying over to a speech on Tuesday morning in Ohio. By the time he arrived for an evening stop in the southwestern tip of Virginia, Mr. Obama's sales pitch contained nearly as many references to Senator McCain as to himself, suggesting how the McCain campaign has been driving the recent dialogue of the presidential race. "John McCain says he's about change, too--except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics," Mr. Obama told his supporters here.

By early September, the Obama campaign had discovered that hope--and even substance, of which he had provided plenty over the course of twenty-plus debates and hundreds of stump speeches--was not enough. The constant body shots from his opponent--that he was elitist, outside the mainstream, too full of himself (read: uppity), not really "one of us," the kind of guy who eats arugula and "pals around with terrorists" (whichever is worse)--had taken their toll, and although Obama had given Americans plenty of reasons to vote for him, he hadn't offered them any clear narrative about what would happen if they voted instead for McCain.

But in the closing eight weeks of the campaign, Obama controlled the four stories that matter most in an election: the story you tell about your yourself (that he was the candidate of change, fleshing out what he meant by change in his address at the Democratic Convention and in every major speech thereafter), the story you tell about your opponent (that he was four more years of Bush), the story the other candidate is telling about himself (McCain the maverick, which Obama countered by citing McCain's proclamation that he had voted with Bush over 90% of the time and parrying, "That's not a maverick, that's a sidekick"), and the stories McCain was telling about Obama (that he lacked the experience and judgment to lead, which events transpired to allow Obama to counter with the entire nation watching). Obama did it his way, not resorting to the kind of gutter politics he clearly abhorred, but laying out a coherent narrative about what a McCain presidency would mean to a nation that had endured eight years of George W. Bush.

No doubt, the financial meltdown that began in the middle of September helped seal John McCain's fate. But in electoral politics, stories don't write themselves. One of the major mistakes Democratic candidates have often made is to assume that voters will connect the dots for themselves (e.g., about the draft-dodging W attacking the war hero Kerry) or that the media will do it for them. In this case, Obama wisely chose not to let facts speak for themselves (as they clearly had not done two months earlier when McCain succeeded in spinning a stunningly successful Obama tour of Europe and the Middle East into a beauty pageant allegedly bespeaking Obama's narcissism, empty celebrity, and appeal to foreigners). In a speech in Colorado on September 16, Obama began to tell a story about the financial crisis and John McCain's place in it that would have made it difficult for McCain to take a coherent position on the economic crisis even if he had one to offer:

Now I certainly don't fault Senator McCain for all of the problems we're facing, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to. Because the truth is, what Senator McCain said yesterday fits with the same economic philosophy that he's had for 26 years. It's the philosophy that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down. It's the philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise. It's a philosophy that lets Washington lobbyists shred consumer protections and distort our economy so it works for the special interests instead of working people.

We've had this philosophy for eight years. We know the results. You feel it in your own lives. Jobs have disappeared, and peoples' life savings have been put at risk. Millions of families face foreclosure, and millions more have seen their home values plummet. The cost of everything from gas to groceries to health care has gone up, while the dream of a college education for our kids and a secure and dignified retirement for our seniors is slipping away. These are the struggles that Americans are facing. This is the pain that has now trickled up.

This passage is effective in both its narrative coherence--it tells the story of how we got to this point, who was responsible, and why McCain could not possibly be the one to lead us out of it--and in its emotional resonance. It begins with magnanimity and a sense of fairness, not attempting to blame the entire crisis on McCain but making clear his complicity in it and his ideological commitment to the causes of it. It uses language like "common-sense regulation" that appealed to a populist public that knew it had been swindled and was no longer buying Republican lines about government as the problem. It took the abstractions of a Wall Street meltdown and a credit crisis and turned them into the experience of everyday people: "You feel it in your own lives," he told his listeners, and described how the hope of a "dignified retirement for our seniors" was slipping away. You can picture the people he is describing, and they could picture themselves, their parents, and their grandparents.

At the same time, the nation watched as the two candidates showed what they were made of in confronting the economic meltdown, and the Obama campaign lightly reinforced what voters were observing in McCain with their own eyes with words like "erratic" and "out of touch." McCain had tried to make Obama's judgment and experience a voting issue. It had not worked for Hillary Clinton, and it wasn't likely to work for McCain, but the contrast between McCain and Obama's response to the unfolding economic crisis completely undercut the attempt to make voters anxious about Obama's judgment. Instead, what voters accurately perceived, using what the political scientist Samuel Popkin described as "low-information rationality," was one candidate who careened from one posture to another in a desperate attempt to appear presidential and another candidate who seemed calm and steady in the most stressful circumstances--precisely what voters mean by presidential. Nearly a week after Election Day, six out of ten voters reported that they had no idea what Obama would do to get the country out of its financial mess, but they had the confidence he could do it. McCain had succeeded in making voters anxious about a McCain presidency on the issue that worried them most, whereas Obama had allayed their fears.

At the end of the campaign, Obama returned to a positive message that emphasized his values and his personal biography in just the way that empirically wins elections but that Democrats have been slow to embrace. His 30-minute message to the nation on the eve of the election was a model of how to win hearts and minds. It was not a discourse on the fine points of policy, but it was hardy devoid of substance. It was an emotional argument for his presidency--a message that embeds reasons within an emotionally compelling narrative. He wove together his own life story with the stories of four Americans and their families who were facing precisely the kinds of problems the rest of the nation was facing. His narration was moving, personal, and laden with the values he shares with his fellow Americans (personal responsibility, hard work, compassion, fairness), yet woven into its fabric were bulleted plans that described his vision for the future and what he would do as president that emerged in brief text overlays on top of the emotional message.

Moving Voters, Moving Forward

Voters are neither rational nor irrational (although at times they can be both). They vote with their values as well as their interests, and a good candidate and a good message appeals to both.

Candidates and campaigns needn't choose between reason and emotion. A good message is one that draws people's attention, gives them pause to reflect on what has happened and what we need to do, and moves them to act.

Candidates can incite and channel both the hopes and concerns of the electorate without wallowing in the gutter of demagoguery. Barack Obama would have been derelict in his duty as a candidate if he had not made clear that John McCain's answer to the collapse of the economy--radical deregulation--was also the cause of it. Like other mammals, we evolved both positive and negative emotions for a reason, and the reasons are not redundant. In recent history, bad candidates have won elections by demagoguing fear and hate, but good candidates have lost elections by failing to elicit negative emotions about candidates who should have made the electorate anxious or angry. Just as reason versus emotion represents a false antinomy that has hamstrung Democratic and progressive thinking, strategy, and messaging for decades, so does positive versus negative campaigning. You can lie by offering false hope (e.g., promising to lower taxes dramatically while balancing the budget) just as you can lie by offering false fears.

Messages matter. Compelling narratives, carefully crafted one-liners, and pithy phrases are no substitute for carefully thought-out policy positions if you want to govern well. But carefully thought-out policy positions are no substitute for compelling narratives, carefully crafted one-liners, and pithy phrases that capture the essence of your values or vision if you want to govern at all.

And there is nothing as powerful in politics as a powerful messenger. This time, this moment, the American people found that messenger.

Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."

Comments

[swkidder]

I have read a series of pieces you've written with increasing pleasure, interest, and respect. My undergraduate training was in biology and clinical psychology. I had the gift of a fabulous professor who literally invented the first methodology to link process and outcome in clinical therapy groups - using a bunch of us as his guinea pigs and research assistants.
The Pop Psychology offered up by the pundits is usually pretty painful to read. Finding someone who can take a complex process, and dissect it from the perspective of both "intellectual" and "emotional" intelligence is a genuine pleasure. And then to find that that someone can write simply, elegantly, and eloquently - is the icing on the cake. Bravo. A Great Read.

[slowtono]

Holy cow! You left out so much! Where's your accounts on what was spent on the media, or should we say tabloids? The money is gonna be what's handed to all of us. Where's your facts and figures. The figures right now are who ever spends and buys gets the job. Show me the money. Guess we could call it the President electoral bailout. The next election, if there is one, will be somewhere into $2 billion each candidate, and as long as the media gets it's share to hell with the truth and the American way. Facts are if the new deal was so great why didn't it survive? Facts are the American people actually trusted the media instead of seeing they were just purchased like any other business commodity. You said nothing of securing the black vote, What will you do if the Republicans select a Hispanic next. Cry foul. As for Palin she did her job best of all. Beating her was all Democrats could muster. Shows how little the confidence really is. Heres how I read it. Clinton won because of Pero, who paid him I don't know. Obama sealed all black votes only thing left was to pull in women or hispanics. It's just a tactic, it's when you get to the work that the problem rises. It's wait and see time baby, and theres already cracks everywhere. 47 to 53 just 3 points from a tie!

[beansandrice]

Bitter much?

Obama kicked butt in fund raising, organization and message. You are right about one thing, though, the cracks [in the Republican base] are everywhere. But by all means cling to the hard-right ideology and push the Republican Party to run more extremists like Palin. Meanwhile, liberals will be organizing libs and cons alike to chip in rebuilding infrastructure, mending broken ties with the rest of the world and investing in mutual responsibility.

The New Deal was destroyed by vulgar corporate Marxists posing as conservatives, you can stop kidding yourself about that right now. Obama ran on many New Deal proposals, he made sense of their necessity. McCain made the election a very clear choice between a tax and spend, big gubmint liberal and a tax cutting, small gubmint Reaganite. McCain had his butt handed to him.

And by the way, the difference between 47% and 53% becoming a tie would require a six point swing. No wonder you are so wrong about so much, you don't even understand basic addition and subtraction. Must be that No Child Left Behind school of math.

[bitterindependent]

sadly the republicans blind devotion to begging for the "hillbilly vote" is going to ruin them in 2012....do you seriously think that Quaylin is going to learn how to put together a coherent goverment policy by that time.....i still don't understand the sentences that come out of her mouth....!!!!!

i said this before in a lot of republican blogs when palin was announced as the vp pick " republicans are shaking with joy, while democrats are shaking with violent laughter....hoping that she stays on the ticket".......if she runs on the top of the ticket, it will be another republican buttwhippin.....republicans stop excluding independents like me(as well as minorities, the young, gays, college educated whites, and other religions that are not christian)......no wonder you guys got blown out!!!!

[JulieSA]

"It begins with magnanimity and a sense of fairness, not attempting to blame the entire crisis on McCain but making clear his complicity in it and his ideological commitment to the causes of it."

You have it backwards. I don't how Barney "Fannie Mae" Frank, Chris "Countrywide" Dodd, and Barack (Frank Raines and Jim Johnson) Obama, along with Rahm "Freddie Mac" Emanuel are supposed to lead us out of this crisis. They caused it, while making huge amounts of money off of it. The foxes are still in charge of the henhouse.

[RadicalRepublican]

Climb back into the clock and stop making your noises. It's now a minute after the hour.

[bitterindependent]

the fact that you chose to leave out greenspan's flawed philosophy, phil graham's blind indifference to the economy, and bush's irresponsible war and goverment spending leads me to believe that you got your "facts" straight out of the FauxNews bullet sheet......just sayin....

[billw8017]

Obama's win was well deserved since he was the better man.

Democrats owe a lot to African Americans who have sometimes carried the party. So, Democratic candidates have trouble running against them. I noticed this in 2004 when the candidates made of point of treating Al Sharpton with extreme care. Sharpton is a good man but he is most of all the defender of African Americans. When Hillary started to get a little rough, Obama started to slip but he had built up his organization and his following (particularly effective in caucuses), and it was too late to stop him. McCain began where Hillary left off and soon had the advantage.

Then, the economy tanked. Given McCain has no idea of how the economy would work, he identified himself with the responsible crowd -- not just Bush, but Phil Gramm ("the smartest man" he knew). McCain's declaration the the fundamentals of the economy are sound was a chilling echo of Herbert Hoover. Suddenly, Obama begone to march and, in the end, he won going away.

[Lionsden]

It seems, to me, that it was easy for mainstream media to have "selected" John McCain a year or two out before the primaries and "choose" him as their favorite. The mainstream media loved McCain, from the New York Times on down.

Once he secured the nomination they dropped him like a hot potato. Republicans were left with the candidate that Independents and conservatives would detest.

Pump in half a billion dollars plus (money talks) and McCain's feeble run didn't have a chance. McCain wasn't really overly interested in being president and that is obvious. He is a rich guy who lives a comfortable life. This was just some fun for him. The NYT's knew he was never much interested in anything the "base" cared about and that probably delighted them.

One can say anything anyone says as mockery, but Sarah Palin referred to Obama's community organizing because she was discussing executive experience in government, not effective campaigning. She was absolutely correct and we've yet to see Obama do that which Sarah has already done in an executive role in government.

It seems that, short of McCain and Sarah coming out in support of Obama, nothing they said would have made democrats happy. Unfortunately McCain didn't know how to fight that.

[slytot7]

Do you know the size of the population of alaska???...executive experience my a**s! I lose patience with meaningless phrases like "executive experience"! We need intelligence and knowledge from a president NOT "executive experience"!..The owner of a ten person plumbing company HAS executive experience!

[Lionsden]

That's exactly right, Sarah's experience was as little as Obama's and he was running for office just like she was.

Obama hired people to run his campaign, he didn't run it himself. Sarah was hired to run Wasilla and Alaska.

I'll agree intelligence and knowledge is important, but I believe virture and wisdom are more important.

None of the candidates exhibited virtue or wisdom, in my opinion.

[Querent]

So, is it really warm and cozy inside that dream world you live in?

[scubafox]

Lionsden wrote: "The mainstream media loved McCain, from the New York Times on down. ... Once he secured the nomination they dropped him like a hot potato."

Oh really? Hardly. They didn't "drop him." McCain's lies became so egregious that even the corporate media had to point out the obvious. Had his lies not been so blatant, that wouldn't have happened because the corporate media is quite nicely aligned with the economic "right" ... even the supposedly "liberal" NY Times and Denver Post editorialize about the wonders of "free trade" (McCain loves it) that has so effectively undermined wages and destroyed the U.S. economy. Google "The 9/22/08 Economic Crisis".

What deserves mocking is nonsense like this "the liberal media did McCain in" ploy.

[berrycooda]

Don't forget....
#1. P.E. Obama had $700million to spend on his campaign. (donations from umpteen people) ???

#2. Acorn did their share for him.

#3. Black voters who never voted before voted because he was black.

#4. He seems to moving from the far left to the center of the aisle and using many of
J. McCain's ideas (which is a good thing)

#5. He is putting very experienced people in his cabinet ( shows his inexperience in many areas)

#6. Save your article and write another one in 4 years and tell us what has happened.
Good or bad, no matter what the president does...he gets the blame or the credit just
because he has the title at the time.

#7. Time to look ahead and quit dragging McCain/Palin thru the mud..( that was then and this is now.)

#8. God Bless America...we need some blessings...we (ALL THE GOV'T) really messed up this time.

[MDHutchinson]

You probably should've remembered:

#1: That $700 million Obama raised...that didn't come from large corporations or PACs. It came from hundreds of thousands of people like me who may not have a lot of money to give, but donated what they could for a chance to get our country back on track.

#2: Acorn? Please, I'm begging you, just do a little research. For your own sake.

#3: Imagine the nerve of those first time black voters who suffered through Jim Crow, police intimidation at the polls, racially gerrymandered districts and a whole host of policies and provisions designed to limit the influence of minorities in the political sphere feeling excited about a smart, successful black man occupying the highest office in the land and living with his family in a house originally built by slave labor. How selfish of them!

#5: Yeah, what's Obama thinking by bringing in smart, qualified and highly experienced people with specific areas of expertise to debate and discuss the pros and cons of decisions that will literally effect millions of lives.

#8: From JFK's inaugural, "HERE ON EARTH GOD'S WORK MUST TRULY BE OUR OWN."
In other words, it's up to us to fix it. We can't depend on God's blessing any more than we can depend on the invisible hand of the market to magically straighten everything out.

[JulieSA]

#1. Actually, about half of it came from large orgs and pacs. The rest of it we don't know, because his website enabled fraudulent donations.

[penelopepunditwatcher]

#1 Yeah, umpteen gajillion people, just like me, giving small amounts. Sort of blows your mind, doesn't it?

#2. Oh, puhleeze, not that tired old acorn line again. Surely by now you've figured out the difference between defrauding a voter registration organization by not earning your pay and actual voter fraud.

#3. Yeah, there were some of those ... and a whole heck of a lot of young voters who had never voted before, as well. Citizens actually voting is a gooooood thing, despite what the GOP says.

#4. Ah! You're waking up from your kool-aid hang-over are you? Obama was always more of a centrist than the RNC, McCain/Palin, and the Repub base said he was. Surprise!!!

#5. That's not called inexperience - it's called intelligence, common sense, able to generalize from others' experiences, and hiring the best.

#6. Sounds like a plan. Do you promise on the blood of your first-born to give him credit where credit is due? (just kidding)

#7. Tell Palin; she's the one still giving stump speeches. We're just analyzing.

#8. Yes!. God bless the U.S.A., its leaders and its people. (and please grant us patience and perseverance. I have faith Obama will lead us out of this mess if we give him time and our support.)

[EasyCheese]

#4....he is only a centrist with what he says...

He is the most liberal according to his voting record.

[JulieSA]

#4. he has gone back on nearly all his positions from earlier this year in the primaries. All of his statements have an expiration date. No one really nows what his positions are. I'm hoping for the best, but he's been so inconsistent, I have no idea what he will do.

[weatherwaxx]

Obama's average donation was $85. The legal limit is around $2000. That means his funding mostly came from ... weird concept, isn't it? THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Um, #6? Blame? Bush is still blaming Bill Clinton for this meltdown. Republicans only know how to throw blame, they never seem to be able to say "I was wrong."

[JulieSA]

No. We have no idea where the money came from. The security software was disabled on the donations, and much of the money came from illegal foreign donors, and people illegally giving over the $2300 limit under different names. Unlike McCain, Obama refuses to release the names of his small donors, and a lot of them are probably fake names anyway.

All this, after Obama went back on his pledge to use public financing.

[RadicalRepublican]

In 4 years you'll be saying that anybody could have fixed all of the problems created between 2001 and 2009 and a republican probably could have done it better. Tow that line and never let facts get in your way!

[LenRobertson]

Interesting comments. As a laid-back futurist, I wonder if history won't see it as a technological sea change equal to Teddy Roosevelt's Presidency that opened the 20th Century with a bang. I mention Teddy rather than Franklin (his 5th Cousin) because internal combustion, steel, mass production, the auto, the airplane, motion pictures, the radio and the submarine which will define the 20th Century all appeared during Teddy's decade.

What might we see during Obama's Presidency that define the 21st Century? Hydrogen replacing carbon based fuels, Carbon fiber replacing alloys, Intercontinental suborbital travel, 22000 mile high space elevators and discovery of life on a planet orbiting another star to begin with. Like Teddy's decade, these technological breakthroughs will have greater importance in later decades.

There is one more change that will mark Obama's Presidency. It will be during Obama's 8 years that this tired old Globe will begin to see itself as the colossal, super city it actually is. And, like the super city of antiquity, Imperial Rome, it needs an empire. Anyone ready to make his/her fortune on Mars, Europe or Enceladus mining the raw mateials needed by Rome? Or, how about traveling to the far side of Lune to build the enormous, many miles wide telescopes that find other civilizations possessing interstellar infrastructures.

I think I better stop before I draw a picture of One New World passing the baton to nother.

[kellygrrrl]

what the GOP and the "ConservativeMovement" do not seem to have learned:

you do not build a coalition through judgmental exclusion. duh!

[mogirl09]

.

I was a fulltime volunteer/intern in New Mexico -We got a lot done, without necessarily sacrificing fun.

My suggestions for President Elect Obama, the DNC and the entire legislative branch , should they want to keep the system that delivered them wins in places nobody thought would do so well in are: It is hard to measure the success of volunteers by looking at numbers, without taking individual notice. I had the privilege of working with many many people who's effect could be measured by listening to the volunteers they inspired, but were virtuously unnoticed by the campaign, even working 16 hour days and being a true to life hero to all the volunteers she worked with. I think the Obama campaign has the right idea and will probably work out the kinks in this and it will be a force in future elections unlike anybody has seen.

my issues were It was very male dominated, there was a lot of people who were sent over from california or texas who had no clue about New Mexico culture which is vaaastly different than other states with high hispanic population, it didn't compute well here and nobody really wanted to hear what was needed to engage the public here until the last few weeks, there was a lot of one upmanship, the rally organization and volunteer recognition was at times disheartening.

[alumtrix]

Getting elected is a completely different animal than actually governing. I think you'll find that not a lot changes when Obama gets into office. I want Obama to close Gitmo. I want Obama to pull the troops out of Iraq. I want Obama to put more troops into Afghanistan. I want ACORN and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd to keep lending money so that everyone can buy a home. I want the auto makers to stay unionized and keep demanding 6 figure incomes to build cars, provide income even when they're not working, and health insurance until they die. I want the Democrats to ban drilling for oil just because it will take 10 years to realize the results. Nothing will change

Connect the dots

[weatherwaxx]

Acorn isn't a lending institution, friend.

[JulieSA]

ACORN pushed for the expansion of subprime lending, by political means, and sometimes even by physically intimidating bankers--breaking into their offices, and harassing their kids at home.

[TrustMeImASalesman]

Hooray you guys won! Yet you constantly kick the losers? Why? What is it about Sarah Palin or John McCain that you are still afraid of?? Do you see something in Sarah that we should be careful about.

Even in the worst most violent contests(Sports, Boxing, Ultimate Fighting) after there is declared a winner; the winner and his backers don't keep beating on the loser of the contest. So be a good sport and shut up!

We'll see soon enought whether President Elect Obama can walk on water. And of course he can(if it's frozen). So why don't you pray for the losers of the contests and the winners then wish them BOTH WELL!

[Winthorpe]

You in the GOP might want to learn from sound, measured advice like this. Kicking the losers? Where does Westen do this? Were some of the words too big for you?

In 2012, I'd prefer that you guys run another divisive, negative, right-wing campaign. How's that been working out for you lately?

We didn't fear anything about McCain but his age and failing health. If you can't see the damage that a Palin administration would do to our country, read one of her church's sermons or her husband's secessionist manifestos.

[EasyCheese]

If nobody fears Palin then why are there continually ridiculous stories about her in an attempt to discredit her?

I still see coverage on her...still trying to be negative. I think feminists fear her because she doesnt represent what they believe feminists should represent.

[Capaneus]

It's not about "being a good sport." It's about analyzing why McCain/Palin lost. The reason for the latter was that they didn't resonate with the American electorate. After eight years of Bush's failed politics, anyone running on the Democratic ticket would have won. McCain's choice of Palin--a sop to Dobson and the evangelical crazies--sealed the deal. McCain's flip-flopping all over the place didn't help the GOP ticket.

[MDHutchinson]

No point in kicking McCain...he's the one who's going to have to live with the knowledge that he sacrificed his integrity at the altar of ambition and sold the straight talk express for a vehicle that can only spin in circles and reverse positions. I'll make sure to pray he finds a way to rationalize the fact that the guys he hired to trash Obama were the same ones who helped cost him to GOP primary back in 2000 by falsely claiming he had fathered an ilegitimate black child.
Also, you may want to rethink the use of that boxing metaphor given that Sarah Palin has continued her assault on Obama since the election. I'm not sure about you, but at my gym you don't keep throwing punches two weeks after the bell.

[Cogitoe]

When I was much younger I asked my mother why she always voted for Democrats. She said, "Son, all politicians lie to you. I like the Democrats becuase they tell me the lies I want to hear." That about sums it up.

[kellygrrrl]

LOL!

[EasyCheese]

sad

[MDHutchinson]

With Bush's approval rating at a historic low, Americans' increasingly frustrated with the corruption and lack of leadership on the part of Republicans, Sarah Palin's stream of 'dumb chill' inspiring Miss South Carolina moments, and the massive economic collapse, Obama undoubtedly had a mighty wind at his back.

Nevertheless, it's pretty amazing that an African-American first-term Senator named Barack 'Hussein' Obama was able to defeat both the Clinton machine and a decorated war hero. However hostile the political environment toward Republicans, Obama, Plouffe and Axelrod had an almost impossibly small margin for error, and it's truly incredible they were able to pull it off.

My one criticism is the reluctance of the Obama campaign to strike back more forcefully at the "Pallin' around with terrorists" Bill Ayers line of attack. Although Barack himself probably couldn't have addressed the "un-American" insinuation directly, someone like Bill Clinton could've blasted both McCain and Palin for the reckless and immoral attempt to link Obama to a word that has become synonymous with the attacks of 9/11, and called on McCain/Palin to think about the potential harm such an irresponsible claim could have on young Maliah and Sasha Obama if they were to overhear such an accusation about their father.

Thankfully, the Ayers attacks didn't significantly effect the outcome, but who knows what would have happened in a healthy economy where people have the luxury to indulge whatever irrational fears they may have.

[weatherwaxx]

No -- Obama took the high road that no other politician had the guts to attempt, and I think part of his massive popularity was that he did not dignify that line of attack with a response. Political aikido ...

[jrbear]

"low-information rationality," I never heard this term before, but I have to agree it says it all in regards to why the Repub's managed to get 46% of the vote.

In a rational world, they should have got no more than the 15 to 20% of the vote that corresponds to Bush's approval rating. A 'sweep' should have been a tidal wave, carrying all states but Texas and Alaska.

They were able to "energize the base" with their lies, fear-mongering, packaged and delivered by a good-looking woman that "she is nice to me", "she looks like me", and underneath it all: "she is a closet racist like me". They prey upon the people that actually believe the Hannity's and Limbaugh's without questioning what they say.

So it's very hard to say that this kind of campaigning is over. Palin thinks it is going to sweep her into office in 2012. shudder.

[dianhow]

jr bear...Low info voters>>you got it ! They believe what ever they hear on 'sound bites' or McCains' campaign lies and smears, or Limbaugh or Hannity. We all need to check out the facts. Take a few minutes from TV or games and go to factcheck.org. I get forwards all the time with false info...yet it is sent to millions of people as if it were fact. It's so sad....maybe we get the govt we deserve. Keep up with the facts people..it's so important. Think of the world your kids and grandkids will inherit. it's not all about us ! Let's give our new President a chance to do well.
Its a huge burden.