Posted on 05/30/2008 12:40:29 AM PDT by HAL9000
WASHINGTON (AP) — Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul.Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama's staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose.
Obama's campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage — money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president.
"Without a doubt, their understanding of the nominating process was one of the keys to their success," said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not aligned with either candidate. "They understood the nuances of it and approached it at a strategic level that the Clinton campaign did not."
Careful planning is one reason why Obama is emerging as the nominee as the Democratic Party prepares for its final three primaries, Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Attributing his success only to soaring speeches and prodigious fundraising ignores a critical part of contest.
Obama used the Democrats' system of awarding delegates to limit his losses in states won by Clinton while maximizing gains in states he carried. Clinton, meanwhile, conserved her resources by essentially conceding states that favored Obama, including many states that held caucuses instead of primaries.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
STEPHEN OHLEMACHER is so wise! Like no one else figured this out many months ago?
Wow, I just watched Recount and thought that rules are unfair?
hmm.
Kinda gives you an idea of the very low estimate typical journalists have of their readers' intelligence.
Either that, or he's just too lazy to make something up do research for an original story...
I am amzed that typical democrat does not see inherent flaw in nominating process.
If party leaders do not like nominee that the people choose, they use super delegates to pick another better candidate.
Thereby disenfranchising every voter.
Oddly democrats keep going back for more.
Here are the Democratic Party rules for allocating delegates to Congressional Districts in some states -
The rules are hopeless, but it's amazing that Hillary spent millions on campaign consultants who never bothered to study the rules.
“The rules are hopeless, but it’s amazing that Hillary spent millions on campaign consultants who never bothered to study the rules.”
Why should they, the rules never applied to the Clintons before?
Obama is a better student of Saul Alinsky, a communist organizer in Chicago. (Hillary actually wrote her thesis on him at Yale)
Subvert the process and make the rules work for you. I would have expected Obama to fade long ago. But he mastered the rules in Idaho, Wyoming, Texas, etc. to make the obscure rules of the caucus his strength.
From “rules for radicals”
RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)
How many people have seen the actual rules?
How many can understand the rules? Corollary, rules change as situation changes.
In democrat nominating process, the only rule “win” by any means necessary.
The Democratic rules are beyond human understanding.
The Obama campaign's methods were fairly sophisticated. They got the rules for each state and crunched the numbers and used that information to target their resources effectively, while Hillary was just flying-by-the-seat-of-her-pantsuit.
HAHAHAHAHA
MATH? ‘Rats can do math??
Algebra??
you might have picked a different analogy than “ while Hillary was just flying-by-the-seat-of-her-pantsuit.”
Shivers up and down my spine, LOL
I will admit to not having read complete article, I despise bioth Hillary and Obamama, however if he out did Hidabeast by reading the rules more power to him
The Democratic rules are beyond human understanding.
This is the party of the people for the people, that has rules no one can understand.
I will never understand how anyone in their right mind could claim to be a democrat
There was another thread based on an article from the Chicago Trib today describing Obama’s first electoral win (actually, his first campaign), where he won essentially by challenging the petitions of all the other Dem candidates just before the deadline and was able to knock all of them out - so fast that even one who was going to file a federal lawsuit didn’t have time to respond before the deadline fell. He was impressively vicious and bloodthirsty.
The only thing he knows is politics - he’s an idiot about everything else. But knowing politics and having a truly ruthless desire for power may be sufficient.
They should out-source the explanation of those rules to the IRS, which has a lot of experience trying to explain Congress to the taxpayer.
No one on their right mind does.
Being a Democrat appeals to two different kinds of people.
You're either a piece of garbage who wants to get something handed to you that someone else worked for, or you're a guilt obsessed piece of garbage who wants to "help everyone less fortunate" with someone else's money instead of your own.
I’m going to simplfy things for the author. People were’nt voting FOR osamaobama they were voting AGAINST hillary. The only candidate that had ANY appeal as an alternative was osamaobama. Even Dems as collectively stupid as they are realized that dodd, edwards, richardson were not a viable alternative to hillary. osmaaobama just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and he benefitted from a accomodating media.
Sadly I have met both kinds
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.