"There is no ground game!"

This election comes down to the ground game - which campaign will be the best at turning out voters. Analysing the McCain campaign, here is the news, 1 minute, 25 seconds into this clip [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27399977#27295062] Joe Scarborough, that smooth shmuck presenter (and Republican on the heavily Democrat-leaning MSNBC) sums it up "There is no ground game."

With 8 days to go, I am surprised that the national polls are still around +7 for Obama [http://www.realclearpolitics.com/]. They will tighten - and the polls that matter, in the swing states, will tighten too .

Looking at the polls as they stand it is difficult to see how McCain can win, but of course he can, and although he doesn't have the narrative, the money or the ground game supplied by enthusiastic supporters that Obama enjoys, he has enough Republican voters to make this election close, and he can still queeze though and win.

8 days out, all the evidence shows that Obama has laid the groundwork for a huge victory, a landslide on a par with Clinton in '92. He created the movement that got him through the primaries by enthusing anti-war Democrats, urban liberals, African Americans and (overwhelmingly and in historic numbers) those under 25 years old - first time voters and those who have become adults during the Bush years. That coalition proved more robust than Hillary's coalition, and it got out the vote in spectacular fashion time and again during the primaries.

But it may not be enough to beat the Republicans' millions of determined volunteers, who are not particuarly fired up by McCain, but they will do anything to make sure Obama does not get in. The ground game is essential for Obama, but less so for McCain, as he and Palin can rely on the votes of the Republicans.

Obama is banking on an unproven coalition. McCain can be certain that his voters will come out. The pressure is on Obama's voluteers - how good will they be at getting out the vote? All those calls, knocks on doors, adverts and campaign offices mean nothing if they don't have the folks coming to the polls.

One element to emerge in the last few days - and this will build as the election comes down to the final few days - is the spin surrounding Obama's massive crowds - 100,00+ twice, first on Thursday in St Louis [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/humongous-crowd.html] and again yesterday in Denver [http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/10/26/obama-crowd-100-000-strong-in-denver/2] These are huge rallies, the biggest he has seen in the 20 months he has been campaigning. It points to Obama closing strong.

So at first glance this seems only positive from Obama's point of view. It does however feed into a narrative that Obama has this election in the bag, and that may dissuade some voters from actually voting - 'he's won it already, so it doesn't matter I don't queue up to vote.' Reports and commentary on the massive crowds, added to the basic need for both campaigns to plan the transition, tend towards Obama thinking the presidency is 'innevitable'. Palin has been calling the election a 'coronation' over the weekend, feeding the idea that Obama is planning his presidency without the decent first step of waiting for the voters to decide the outcome. This won't have a huge efect on the actual votes cast, but McCain can and will exploit this to his advantage.

I expect McCain to win a few states on Nov 4th that are +Obama right now. They are investing healivy in Pennsylvania and Florida, and he has a long-standing positive relationship with New Hampshire.

Still, 8 days out, Obama should win this comfortably, and as results come in at 6pm Eastern, 11pm GMT, watch out for Indiana. If Obama carries Indiana, we are in for a short night and a big Obama victory. Since 1940 the Democrats have won Indiana only once, in the LBJ landslide of '64. If McCain wins, we will be in for a longer night and a closer result, and we will then probably have to wait for Nevada and New Mexico on the West Coast until we know for sure.

Indiana is not a battleground state, it is not a swing state, it was carried by Bush in 2004 60% - 39%. Obama's insistence that there are no red states or blue states have made even Indiana competetive. It is an astonishing place to be 8 days out, and the path of predictability, if this story unfurls as it has, will see Obama comfortably in the White House.

But politics is never predictable, and the only thing that matters is getting out the votes.

Where we are

The man behind the curtain

Here's an image from my friend Marcus, perfectly capturing the way things were.

Morning in America

During the 1984 US presidential campaign, Ronal Reagan released this now famous ad, Morning in America [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY]

In Obama's logo we ceaselessly see the new dawn that Reagan implied. Obama, seeing it for the first time, refused to clear it, saying it was "too corporate." He was persuaded otherwise. It is no accident that it looks like the sunrise, and it, early on in the campaign, gave us a sign that Obama wanted to reach into the red states and challenge the ingrained notion that elections are won or lost by a handful of states - mainly Florida and Ohio - and attempt the landslides that Reagan enjoyed. In 1980 Reagan won by 489 electoral votes against Carter's 49. In 1984 he won against Mondale 525 - 13! Considering Clinton beat Dole in 1996 379 - 159 and Bush beat Kerry 286 - 252, Reagan's victories point to a country unified. There are of course multiple reasons for this, but one of them was optimism - that Reaganesque quality - the idea that America's best days are ahead of them. This quality has been there from the very beginning with Obama. It is encapsulated perfectly in his logo.

The campaign teams Part 1: Ax

"David is the first among all equals" - Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Chairman of the Democratic Caucus

David Axelrod is Barack Obama's chief strategist. He is a journalist and an ad man, and it shows with Obama's campaign. From the logo (see above) to the slogan Change you can believe in, to the idea of staging the acceptance speech in a 80,000-seater stadium, Axelrod has shown a consistent talent for joining his candidate with the elements of selling ideas to people and doing things different enough to get a lot of press attention.

He differs from others in that he is interested in the authentic candidate, not changing the candidate to fit a model of what is perceived the voters want - as in Gore being told to shake off that stiffness and become the man of the people. A big part of his job is emphasis of one thing over the other - what to stress to the voters, and what not to say too. Obama was a community organizer for a few formative years and this has been used by Axelrod as the pivot of Obama's candidacy - more so than, say, Obama being the president of the Harvard Law Review (the first Black president) which there is no doubt pushed him into the echelons of power more than sweeping the floors and putting out the chairs for two years on Chicago's South Side.

In the formidable acceptance speech [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kv8eiDvrHJ4] Obama and his writers, with Axelrod in full agreement, coupled his story to the story of the folks he had met on the road (Obama's been on the road now for 20 months.) It sound like an easy thing to do, but its all in the writing, and political speeches fall or fly by the subtlest aspect. In one move, he sketched out his biography and that of his family, and he spoke up for those across the US who have been hit hard by the Bush administration. He also adjoined the people with the values set he knew a lot of the public were waiting to hear he held. Here is an extract:

"Because, in the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton's army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the G.I. Bill.

In the face of that young student, who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree, who once turned to food stamps, but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships.

When I listen to another worker tell me that his factory has shut down, I remember all those men and women on the South Side of Chicago who I stood by and fought for two decades ago after the local steel plant closed.

And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business or making her way in the world, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman.

She's the one who taught me about hard work. She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she's watching tonight and that tonight is her night, as well.

Now, I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine.

These are my heroes; theirs are the stories that shaped my life. And it is on behalf of them that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States."

Thank you for comments

Just a quick note to say thank you for the comments, I've replied to a few and of course welcome more - to leave a comment, just click on 'comments' below and type away in the box provided - if you are not a member of blogger.com, just tick 'annonymous' and it should come through okay - leave your name in the body of the text if you like.

Time

"The biggest mistake I made was not being at my mother's bedside when she died. She was in Hawaii in a hospital, and we didn't know how fast it was going to take, and I didn't get there in time." - Barack Obama

It is unusual for a candidate to leave the campaign for 36 hours, but perfectly understandable for Obama to do just that at the end of this week, to visit his grandmother in Hawaii. The Obama campaign says she is "gravely ill" and Obama's decision to suspend campaigning tells us how grave the situation is. Obama's maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, is 85. She and her husband bought Obama up during those crucial adolescent years. He moved from Indonesia to Hawaii to live with them when he was 10, and stayed until he left for college. The man he is is due to a large extent on the woman she is. Obama has spoken many times of his mother teaching him about empathy. For probably the best news report I have read about the campaign, see the New York Times piece on Obama's mother here. [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/us/politics/14obama.html]

The world has turned upside down

Check out this picture from an XBox 360 computer game, Burnout Paradise. Obama is advertising in this game! This is what $600 million says. It enables the campaign to reach out in ways we have never thought possible. Imagine David Cameron turning up on a billboard of a football game! Its not only possible for Obama to do this financially, but also culturally - it is not being scoffed at, it is being accepted as a logical continuation of his appeal to young voters.

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.

Only in America

After Obama's rallies and gatherings, his sound guy usually plays this excellent classic from Stevie Wonder [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XfkXEp5Pj6I&feature=related] including the great lyrics

Here I am baby
Oh, you've got the future in your hand
(signed, sealed delivered, Im yours)

But recently, presumably to appeal to voters who only think of Stevie Wonder when making jokes about blind people, Obama has been shaking hands on the ropeline to 'Only In America' a sickmaking little country dittie by two Texan flopperinos named Brooks and Dunn. Great name. This song (the mirror of which we in Britain could never imagine Gordon Brown playing) is strangly addictive and catchy, and drips of sentiment.

In a sub-John 'Cougar' Meloncamp way, Brooks and Dunn have captured the essence of the American dream by sketching out a few kids' futures:

One kid dreams of fame and fortune
One kid helps pay the rent
One could end up going to prison
One just might be president

Ah, ya see - just like Barack! He's gonna be president and this song is about that too! Duh!

The song is here [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QLILrC7Y5L4]