The Obama Primary strategy

How did an unknown junior senator come literally out of nowhere and defeat the clear front-runner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination? He out-strategized and out-organized her. Here's how.

The insurgent strategy the group devised instead was to virtually cede the most important battlegrounds of the Democratic nomination fight to Clinton, using precision targeting to minimize her delegate hauls, while going all out to crush her in states where Democratic candidates rarely ventured.

The result may have lacked the glamour of a sweep, but last night, with the delegates he picked up in Montana and South Dakota and a flood of superdelegate endorsements, Obama sealed one of the biggest upsets in U.S. political history and became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to wrest his party's nomination from the candidate of the party establishment. The surprise was how well his strategy held up -- and how little resistance it met.

"We kept waiting for the Clinton people to send people into the caucus states," marveled Jon Carson, one of Obama's top ground-game strategists.

"It's the big mystery of the campaign," said campaign manager David Plouffe, "because every delegate counts."

Hillary is still trying to bluster her way in and somehow defeat Obama when she claims she has had more voters vote for her than Obama has had. Even that is false, since she can only claim that if she counts Michigan where Obama wasn't even on the ballot, and if she fails to count how many voters showed up for caucuses.

When I voted in the Texas primary, I felt it was a 51 - 49 decision between the two, but now that I have seen the sloppy strategic thinking from the Hillary camp, there is no doubt that Obama will make a better President than Hillary will.

Hillary has done herself no favors by her clear refusal to accept Obama's victory and to exacerbate the divisions in the Democratic party, most of which she herself initiated. Her public refusal to accept that Obama has beat her last night will be a memory I recall every time I ever see her in the media in the future. She wants the Democratic nomination for her own ego, not for what she can do with the Democratic Party and for the nation. If there was any doubt before last night, she made it perfectly clear that the only thing that matters is her and her feelings.

Not that Obama is perfect, he's not. I was first for Edwards because Hillary is too damned conservative. But I think that Obama is educable. Hillary clearly is not.

The better person has won the Democratic nomination.