Alex Massie Alex Massie

In anticipation of an Obama victory…

Some thoughts on the campaign in advance of the last day of voting tomorrow…

Timing matters and, as any sports coach will tell you, it can’t be taught. You have it or, alas, you don’t. The same might be said for good fortune. That’s to say, success in political campaigns rarely has a monocausal explanation. Hindsight permits one to assemble the jigsaw and see how it all made sense, but that’s a far cry from presuming that it was inevitable that this kind of puzzle could only be put together this way.

Nonetheless, the genius of the Obama campaign – and, I assume, the candidate himself – was recognising that a confluence of events over which he had no control himself had created conditions for a presidential run that were unlikely to reoccur in such favourable circumstances as in 2008.

Political campaigns happen in particular places at particular times. That is, the factors that helped Obama win in 2008 did not exist in 2000 (even if he had been a Senator at the time) and may not do so in 2012 or 2016. This was his moment. Who was he running to succeed and who was he running to beat? Both matter.

The impact of George W Bush’s problematic Presidency – war, natural disaster, financial crisis – was felt in both parties. On the GOP side of the aisle it poisoned the Republican party’s brand; on the Democratic side of affairs, it persuaded liberals that desperate times required desperate measures. The case for “change” rested in large part upon the previous administration’s inadequacies. But the scale of those setbacks also permitted voters to ask what “change” really meant and, having done that, consider which candidate seemed most likely to deliver a fresh start for the United States.

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