The Emotional Appeal

I keep seeing all of these "what Clinton did wrong" stories without acknowledging what Obama did right. Drew Westen takes the opposite tack.

Nothing went wrong. Hillary Clinton was emotionally outgunned, just as Bill Clinton outgunned his rivals in 1992.

The pundits and pollsters had it backwards. People didn't vote for Obama because they preferred his message of change to Hillary's message of experience. They preferred his message of change because in their gut they preferred Obama. When all the other candidates scrambled to be the agents of change after Iowa, it didn't matter where they put their spare change because they weren't Obama.

As the first woman to have a serious shot at the presidency in our nation's history, who would have reversed virtually every decision George W. Bush made over the last eight years, Hillary Clinton could legitimately argue, as she tried to do after Iowa, that she offered the best of both worlds: change and experience. What she, her pollsters, and the chattering class mistakenly believed, however, was that Obama had somehow found the right one-word magical amulet, and that they just had to own a piece of the amulet. But that view neglects the fact that virtually every challenger in the last century -- including Bill Clinton ("change vs. more of the same") -- had used the mantra of change, and some won with it while others hadn't. John Edwards frequently spoke of "change -- big change," but he didn't win the nomination in 2008.

He's missing the vote for authorizing war in Iraq, which was enough to eliminate any possibility of Clinton as a change agent for enough of the Democratic base to open up an opportunity to her left. But really this is about the emotional appeal of Obama. Yes, he put together an incredible delegate strategy designed to keep Clinton leads close in large states and overwhelm with superior organization in small states. He built on the Howard Dean model of Internet-fueled activism and fundraising to give himself the volunteers and the money to compete. In doing so he changed the playing field forever for how politicians get elected and use donor money, and nobody will ever put the genie back in the bottle, which makes this whining from dinosaurs who have no intention of adapting amusing:

Sen. Barack Obama’s ban on contributions from lobbyists and PACs has irritated Democratic lobbyists and fundraisers, who say that Democratic congressional candidates can’t — and won’t — turn their backs on such a steady stream of campaign cash.

“Quite honestly, we’re taking what we can get,” said a top aide to a House Democratic candidate facing a competitive race in November. “The amount of money needed for a campaign today is just so huge that you really have to look under every rock.” [...]

Democratic lobbyists complain that Obama’s ban has failed to account for the realities confronting candidates who lack the fundraising appeal of an electrifying presidential candidate.

“I’m curious how much [the Obama campaign] thought about this decision,” said one Democratic lobbyist. “I take Obama at his word that he’s serious about changing the culture of Washington. But he’s also got to realize that right now, he’s the Babe Ruth of politics. You’ve got a lot of other people out there who are AAA ballplayers; they don’t have the ability to do what he’s doing in terms of raising money and wowing crowds.”

Another Democratic lobbyist said Obama’s ban effectively tars everyone who can’t live up to it.
“Now you’re implying that the House and Senate Democrats — and Republicans — are scumbags that take lobbyist money,” the lobbyist fumed.

Well, tough. Adapt. If you can't figure out a compelling message out of wresting back control of the country from the failed policies of the GOP you don't deserve to be in government and you don't deserve to raise a cent online.

But the truth lies in that emotional appeal. Obama's message of hope is not all that new, but it was perfectly pitched to the historical moment. In a time with a rogue President and a feckless opposition party, someone had to come along to offer a new direction and get people to believe again. This appeal drove everything else - the ability to raise money, the organizing advantage, the bottomless well of volunteers and activists. They were looking for somebody in which to instill their dreams of a better nation. Hillary Clinton ended up being able to do that in the second half of the campaign by looking to the recent past, but by then it was too late. Obama had nailed the historical moment - and that's why he won.