"America, our moment is now"

The Obama campaign has a new web video to fire up the base and get the folks to the polls [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2J42Mz8-0eg&eurl=http://www.jedreport.com/]

And this 30 minute campaign show, which ran on on 7 channels, national channels nad special interest channels, like a Latino channel. 30 million people saw it. [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GtREqAmLsoA&feature=channel] After 27 minutes, the show went live, to join Obama and Biden in a stadium-filled ralley in Florida. [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GZPIdyONWyw&feature=related] He told the entire country to go to his website and find out how to help get out the vote. This 30 minute ad is designed to shift the undecideds (and low info voters) into his camp.

Add another 3 million watching Obama on the Daily Show Wednesday evening, and a storm of media coverage over the midnight rally Obama held with Bill Clinton. A good day, then, for the Obamas campaign. And I expect it doesn't end here.

Some events that could be round the corner, to seal the deal?

A return to Springfield, Illinois late monday night, for a rally at the place he began it, in February last year? [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gdJ7Ad15WCA] He went back there in August, after choosing Biden, so maybe he'll visit a series of swing states - Pennslvania, Virginia, Nevada, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio - there are many to choose from.

I sense that the media-busting surprises are not over. Maybe Obama'll convince Powell to go on the stump, maybe he'll bring Bill and Hillary, Biden his wife Jill, and Michelle Obama and their two kids all together. I don't know, but I am sure there will be something.

And they will have to keep the momentum going. The Page reports [http://thepage.time.com/2008/10/31/davis-were-pretty-jazzed-up/] that McCain's "Mike DuHaime says the campaign has made 5.3 million phone calls and doorknocks in the past week, including 1.3 million Thursday alone. Compares with 1.9 million for the same week in 2004.
These big-scale efforts have never been seen before."

That is a lot of people, so this is by no means over.

It all comes down to getting the folks to the polls, and those folks knowing that with their vote they can bring their man to power.

"Whack job"

The McCain campain is falling to pieces, and although this desrves and will get more attention, here is a little quote to set up some scrutiny of how so much went wrong so quickly for McCain:

"In convo with Playbook, [http://www.politico.com/playbook/] a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless “diva” description, calling her “a whack job.”

Analysis - Even if he loses, he’s won: Part 1

Accentuate the positive

This is the first of a series analysing how Obama, in four years, changed the global political landscape.

Obama knows how to campaign. His campaign’s professional, work-harder-than-everybody-else attitude has shone a light onto competing campaigns that have seemed amateurish and petty in comparison. One of the key elements to his success is the motivation of his supporters. This is based on the mutually beneficial relationship his supporters have with the campaign and the candidate himself.

Ten months ago, in December 2007, Obama was on the ropes, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. He had already created a large grassroots movement through his website, and crucially they were talking to each other, at a time when, as Deepak Chopra said, the only people supporting Obama were either dreamers or intellectuals. (I could never quite decide which of those I would want to be more!) Obama’s supporters had their chant, and knew the Fired Up story [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rsLp59Bn9ng] that went with it, Obama was getting better at the debates and speeches, and he was keeping his cool, but there was a sense that he needed to do something to change the dynamic. He then gave this speech [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tydfsfSQiYc] at the Jefferson Jackson dinner at Iowa (the first Democrat primary.) This tub-thumper did what it had to do – it pumped up the activists on the ground, leading to the Iowa Get Out The Vote effort which propelled Obama into first place. Winning in Iowa – or, more importantly, the way he won - showed that his candidacy was not a pipe dream or an air balloon – he wasn’t testing the water, he was going to fight hard for the nomination. A string of positives continued; the Yes We Can speech, [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe751kMBwms] the $55 million raised in February, the iconic images – like the Newsweek cover above - and his insistence that "your voice can change the world." These moments were used by the campaign and the supporters, feeding off each other; the campaign picks up on the enthusiasm, packages it up and sends it back out to them - this video is a good example. [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUUYo9o9eg]

It was not all smooth sailing of course; the Yes We Can speech came after his failure to clinch the New Hampshire primary and the race speech came after Reverend Wright’s stupid remarks. Every time Obama is on the ropes without fuss he directly addresses the issue, and he asks his supporters to do the same.

Each of these elements allow Obama’s supporters to feel as if they own the campaign, a feeling rooted firmly in reality; without their money, their knocking on doors, their phone calls, their caucusing and getting out the vote Hillary would be the nominee. Obama asked for their active participation in his candidacy and in return the campaign constructed itself around them – they got in on the ground floor at a mass movement, with its own aesthetic, its own cast and supporting cast, its own songs, its own stories, its own superstitions. It was widespread and open to satire, critique and jealousy. On March 2nd, in response to criticism of the motivated Obama crowds, Denise from Saratosa, Florida said; “If it comes across as cult-like, then the cult is called America.”

Obama has changed presidential politics for ever; even if he loses, he’s won. He has reconnected, in a tangible way, the offices and kitchens and beauty parlours and school yards to the highest office in the land. His biography has flattened the distance from the street to the Avenue, but his campaigning never forgot that the presidency taps into the American psyche for big events, for being a part of something you believe in. Only in the last two months, a week before the Democratic National Congress did Obama’s slogan change from Change we can believe in to For the change we need.

While watching the astonishing firework display at the end of Obama’s outdoor acceptance speech (seeing the upbeat and positive message in the stagecraft of the fireworks, an MSNBC commentator noticed how the fireworks were going up, as opposed to the usual end-of-speech balloons, that fall down) millions of viewers loved the spectacle, and asked “when, if not now, will we ever see this in politics again?” It is an indisputable fact that the US presidency is more important than, say the Beijing Olympics. If they can have their celebration, why can’t we have ours? Yes I am very attracted to the spectacle, partly due to the sheer unBritish over-the-topness of it, but also because Obama’s nomination is historic, and that night was imbued with historic and symbolic significance. The moment needed to be marked by a first. The speech and subsequent fireworks sparked off a night of celebration, pause and remembrance across the world. His supporters knew that they were a part of this, an indispensable part of the primaries like never before, and that the night belonged to them too. They remembered how far the US has come, and perhaps for the first time they allowed ourselves to imagine Obama delivering his next big speech, on election night, as President-Elect.