How Obama REALLY Got Elected

Michelle Malkin and Red State are obsessing over a video and Zogby Poll that purportedly demonstrate how woefully misinformed voters were about their government, the political parties and the members of the two major party tickets … ground covered, btw, on a regular basis by Jay Leno in his on-the-street interviews.

Voters didn’t know all kinds of nasty and negative things about Obama, Biden and the Democratic Congress (which they thought was run by Republicans). They did know that Sarah Palin had claimed she could see Russia from her front porch (a line actually uttered as part of a sendup by Tina Fey).

The title of the site on which the video and poll results are displayed, unfortunately, also covers all too familiar ground on the right: http://howobamagotelected.com.

Let’s get this straight once and for all: as I wrote in response to Washington Post ombudsperson Deborah Howell’s mea culpa on her paper’s misreporting of the election, the fact that the mainstream media was in the tank for Obama … and that Tina Fey did such a devastating take on Sarahcuda … was NOT why O got elected.

The Republican Party has been complaining about media coverage since I was in junior high school … “nattering nabobs of negativism,” anyone? Yet we have won seven presidential elections since then … because we were political innovators and had compelling messages and messengers. Ronald Reagan was roundly denounced and demeaned by the “mainstream media.” They hated Nixon, and were contemptuous of both Bushes. But they couldn’t get around reporting on their clear, consistent themes that were right for their times (but, BTW, not for ours).

In contrast, Obama got elected because he outspent, outorganized and outmaneuvered John McCain. Obama raised and spent in excess of $600 million, while Mac let himself get all tangled up in his own campaign finance “reform.” Obama went to Indiana around 20 times while McCain took the state for granted. Obama used the Internet, YouTube and even phone texting to great advantage, while McCain’s team was clueless.

Obama got elected because he articulated a simple, straightforward and compelling message and agenda that made the case for why he should be President … and McCain and his team could not and did not. Change you can believe in. You might not have believed in it, but you got it. You understood that you were probably one of the 95 percent who was going to get a tax cut. You understood an offer to cut your health insurance costs by $2500. You understood getting out of Iraq to save $10 billion a month to spend here. You understood that John McCain was for Joe the Plumber … but probably not why. And if you heard the word “maverick” one more time, you were going to throw up.

Obama got elected because Commander Mac and his campaign were not quick enough on their feet to get around the younger man’s distortions and misrepresentations. The architect and champion of the surge was “wrong on Iraq?” A rookie four years removed from the Illinois state legislature was more “presidential” in handling an economic crisis than a 26-year Senate veteran? McCain’s healthcare tax credit … previously supported by much of Obama’s team … was a tax hike? One of the biggest recipients of Fannie Mae largess was more prescient in addressing the crisis than a politician who had fought its excesses on the floor of the Senate … because he had written a letter? One of W’s most persistent critics was running for a “third Bush term?”

Obama got elected because McCain and his Keystone Kop team never got beyond the moose-hunting, pro-life “hockey mom” stage to complete the narrative about Sarah Palin … attractive, accomplished, professional, progressive (in a good sense), popular, successful, “smaller-and-smarter-government,” budget-and-tax-cutting female chief executive of America’s largest state by area and one of its most strategic. By muzzling Sarah Palin except for high-pressure, sure-to-fail situations and neglecting to get out the FOS’s (Friends of Sarah) who could have told her success story in Alaska, they performed the reverse electoral alchemy of turning political gold into pitch.

In other words, Obama did a lot of things very right … even brilliantly … and McCain and his team did almost everything wrong, except the “celebrity” ads, the Palin pick and the convention.

That’s why Obama REALLY got elected. And the sooner the GOP and the conservative base come to terms with it and get off the “MSM hates us” kick, the sooner we can do something about it.

UPDATE: Powerline is also featuring the How Obama Got Elected video. Mercy me.

FURTHER UPDATE: Hotair is giving John Ziegler, who commissioned the Zogby poll, a platform to respond to critics. Again, my critique is less of the poll and more of the obsession with attacking the mainstream media instead of focusing on the real issues.

Tags: Barack Obama, election, John McCain, mainstream media, msm, Sarah Palin

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 Uncategorized

102 Comments to How Obama REALLY Got Elected

“Voters didn’t know all kinds of nasty and negative things about Obama…They did know that Sarah Palin had claimed she could see Russia from her front porch (a line actually uttered as part of a sendup by Tina Fey).”

Those of us that watched the televised McCain ads knew more about Obama than McCain. Obama focused on his message and McCain focused on Obama. I made a sincere effort to discern McCain’s “plan” but even his website was a collage of “Obama this…Obama that.” Very unimpressive. Also, Palin’s remarks during the Couric interview were pretty much parroted verbatim by Fey on SNL. She did add some flourish of her own, but about 90% of her words were Palin quotes. I’ve read many claims that Obama bought the election and recieved large donations from questionable sources. To those I say: do the math, its simple division. If you stretch and assume that each of the 66 million voters for Obama donated, that’s about $10 a pop.

Dionysus on November 18th, 2008

Thanks for your comment, Dionysus. Points well taken. Sarah Palin had a great week of media during the NGA, as soon as she was released from her McCain handlers. I wonder why that was?

Bob Maistros on November 18th, 2008

I agree, McCain didn’t run a good campaign. That’s what it all comes down to. The maverick shot himself in the foot many times through the campaign. Not focusing on what he was for more then what he didn’t like about Obama’s plan hurt him.

Mark Williams on November 18th, 2008

I agree that McCain’s campaign left something to be desired, and he simply is not as strong a communicator as Obama. Few people are.

However, I’m not sure any Republican could get elected president this year, even if facing a less talented opponent.

Kirk Petersen on November 18th, 2008

Mark and Kirk,

Thanks for your comments.

Kirk, I’m sure you agree with the main premise: the “mainstream media” did not cost McCain this campaign.

Bob

Bob Maistros on November 18th, 2008

Your title - - caught my eye on the google blogsearch page. Just goes to show you how important good titles are! I’ve added bobmaistros.com to my reader, so I can see what else you come up with

Binwah on November 19th, 2008

I’m not trying to make this an identity issue, but i don’t think it bodes well for our party when rallies become hate fests on anything ‘un-american’. that campaign strategy has to go and the republican party has to bring the base into the 21st century. even if obama voters were silly, acting as if calling someone a muslim is a witty insult in a world where wealth is diffusing to the middle east or acting like the only solution to immigration is a wall is not going to win elections and is unrepresentative of the realities of today in our country and the world. and can we seriously address the reality of the deficits without spin, in my conscience, i know that not all taxes are bad and there are sometimes when it is necessary to raise them. I know for example that fighting wars that cost tens of billions and cutting taxes is disagreeable from the logic stand point, yet i had to cringe when our candidate could only rail against earmark spending which is out of control but frankly not the reason the budget is in such a huge whole. This was a painful election when a party whose principles i believe in went into some kind of paranoid scitzophrenia attacking itself, the identities of its minor stakeholders and just convulsing into complete incoherence. the heartbreak.