He's won more primaries
There's been a running theme for months in blogs and media that Obama owes this race to the caucuses. E.g., Tom Edsall's item on HuffPost, which says "If the caucus states were eliminated, Obama would not be the one on the edge of declaring victory."
I'll set aside that "eliminating" a bunch of states from the Democratic nomination process seems an odd basis on which to hypothesize about what might have been.
My concern is that the ongoing discussion of this topic seems to repeatedly overlook that while Obama has done well in caucuses, more than half of the contests he has won so far have been primaries: he's won 17 primaries out of 33 contests. So it would appear that his campaign knew how to strategize for both scenarios.
What does seem a critical difference in Obama's vs Clinton's approach is using grassroots vs. conventional tactics. Obama has had many thousands of dedicated volunteers who worked their communities spreading the word -- in addition to the standard tools of candidate rallies, mailers and media buys. And it would appear that Clinton has gotten that message, because I just got back from doorknocking in SD and for the first time in 3 states over 15 months, I saw Clinton doorknockers hitting the turf (sometimes paralleling us down opposite sides of the street!) When I watch the SD results come in tonight, I'll be thinking of them.
Coming into this election cycle, I'd never worked for a campaign before. After being involved for more than a year as a volunteer, I see how powerful grassroots tactics are. The fact that I got involved is my first piece of evidence - someone reached out to me personally and that brought me on board. Day after day, I've watched as people come over to a candidate based on person-to-person discussions. I gotta tell you, it feels darn empowering to hear someone say "Okay, you've convinced me" -- especially for those of us who don't think of ourselves as "political people."
I don't discount the power of the standard techniques; our MN hdqtrs phones were flooded with people calling in for their voting locations in the last week when the tv ads were hitting the airwaves (We could track whether they were responding to ads or personal contacts.)
But I feel that if our take-away from this election cycle is "caucuses won it for Obama, let's keep them" or "caucuses lost it for Hillary, let's eliminate them", we're going to be missing the point.
I'll set aside that "eliminating" a bunch of states from the Democratic nomination process seems an odd basis on which to hypothesize about what might have been.
My concern is that the ongoing discussion of this topic seems to repeatedly overlook that while Obama has done well in caucuses, more than half of the contests he has won so far have been primaries: he's won 17 primaries out of 33 contests. So it would appear that his campaign knew how to strategize for both scenarios.
What does seem a critical difference in Obama's vs Clinton's approach is using grassroots vs. conventional tactics. Obama has had many thousands of dedicated volunteers who worked their communities spreading the word -- in addition to the standard tools of candidate rallies, mailers and media buys. And it would appear that Clinton has gotten that message, because I just got back from doorknocking in SD and for the first time in 3 states over 15 months, I saw Clinton doorknockers hitting the turf (sometimes paralleling us down opposite sides of the street!) When I watch the SD results come in tonight, I'll be thinking of them.
Coming into this election cycle, I'd never worked for a campaign before. After being involved for more than a year as a volunteer, I see how powerful grassroots tactics are. The fact that I got involved is my first piece of evidence - someone reached out to me personally and that brought me on board. Day after day, I've watched as people come over to a candidate based on person-to-person discussions. I gotta tell you, it feels darn empowering to hear someone say "Okay, you've convinced me" -- especially for those of us who don't think of ourselves as "political people."
I don't discount the power of the standard techniques; our MN hdqtrs phones were flooded with people calling in for their voting locations in the last week when the tv ads were hitting the airwaves (We could track whether they were responding to ads or personal contacts.)
But I feel that if our take-away from this election cycle is "caucuses won it for Obama, let's keep them" or "caucuses lost it for Hillary, let's eliminate them", we're going to be missing the point.
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