How Obama Won the Re-Election

7/30/2019 How Obama Won the Re-Election

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How Obama won the re-election

John Minchillo/AP - Supporters of President Barack Obama react to his reelection in New York'sTimes Square.

By Scott Wilson and Philip Rucker,

In early spring, President Obamas veteran campaign staff in Chicago confronted the questionthat would ultimately determine the presidency: how to run against Mitt Romney?

The choice discussed on frequent calls between the White House and One Prudential Plaza waswhether to campaign against Romney as a flip-flopper a former centrist governor ofMassachusetts who turned conservative to win his partys nomination or use his career as thehead ofBain Capital to cast him as a protector of the privileged at the expense of the middle

class.

The most striking data we saw early on was on the understands problems of people likeme question, said a senior White House official involved in the discussions. Into thesummer, Romney was in the teens in this category.


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He looked the part, a senior Obama campaign official said, the Brylcreemed executive whocomes into a town and asks why were making Electrolux vacuums here when we can do itcheaper in China.

In the final stretch, Obama almost squandered his hard-won lead with a bewildering performance

in his first debate with Romney. But, for a candidate whose political career has been touched attimes by luck, Hurricane Sandy arrived with a week left in the race and disrupted Romneyseffort.

The campaign bore almost no resemblance to the expansive one Obama waged in 2008 bystrategic choice and by financial necessity. Without the clear financial advantage it had last time,Obamas campaign relied more on the tools of micro-marketing than on the oratorical gifts of thenations first black president.

Gone were the soaring speeches that clarified Obamas candidacy four years ago. Instead thepresident focused on Romney. Meanwhile, his campaign spoke early and often with

persuadable voters, selected for targeted e-mails and doorstep visits through demographic dataunavailable last time.

We turned a national election into a school-board race, a second senior Obama campaignofficial said.

A 2011 move

Before the effort to define Romney began, before they even knew for certain Romney would bethe opponent, the Obama campaign laid the groundwork for victory in a race that would be wonin the margins of a polarized electorate.

In January 2011, nearly two years before Obama would face voters, top strategist DavidAxelrod, campaign manager Jim Messina and other advisers moved from the White Houseto Chicago to be insulated from what one campaign official described derisively asWashingtons chattering classes.

It was not an easy time in Washington. Republicans had just swept the midterm elections andretaken the House. The national unemployment rate was nearly two points higher than whenObama took office.

But what really worried the Chicago brain trust was money the hundreds of millions they

expected the Romney campaign and outside groups to spend on defeating the president.

The Karl Rove-led American Crossroads and affiliated Crossroads GPS, alone, said it wouldraise $300 million a goal the group met, an official there said last week. Two-thirds of thefunds were spent on the presidential race.

In 2011, something unexpected happened: nothing. The predicted onslaught was largely absent,giving the campaign in Chicago the time and resources to set up the organization a full year


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before the general election. Without having to respond to negative advertising, the campaignspent its time and money on preparation.

One of the great mysteries was why they waited so long, a third senior Obama campaignofficial said. We were like the Brits during World War II, staring at the sky waiting for the

bombs to fall. They never came.

The Obama campaign, on the other hand, spent $126 million in 2011 more than threetimes Romneys total that year. The campaign opened field offices, began an extensiveoutreach effort in swing states and enriched a voter database with information unavailablein the last election.

Some of that expensive new data included viewer habits, collected by cable companies, thatprovided clues to voter traits and preferences. In a race where middle-class female voters werecourted by both camps, the Obama campaign advertised heavily on the CBSs sitcom 2 BrokeGirls, according to a Yahoo analysis of Federal Election Commission data. The campaign

bought detailed voter updates, issued every two weeks.

The tools allowed campaign officials to determine on a house by house basis, rather than on aZip-code-by-Zip-code basis how people were likely to vote and whether they were likely tovote at all.

Voters were given support scores and turnout scores to tell the campaigns field offices whoto go after and how. Field workers were outfitted with mobile applications to give an instantreport on every doorstep chat.

The president defied political gravity for a long time, and a lot of the reason was because of

this, the second Obama campaign official said. And none of this would have existed if we hadspent 2011 bailing out the boat.

By midsummer, though, Obama had problems as president that overshadowed, at least publicly,the progress being made in Chicago. The prolonged fight over the debt ceiling, during whichObama became the face of a dysfunctional political system, had left him at his weakest point inoffice.

Crossroads GPS spent $16 million on negative ads during that period, and although thatwas largely it for the year, the ads did damage. Obama scraped bottom in August 2011when a Gallup poll showed his job approval rating at 38 percent.

We had entered Jimmy Carter territory, the second senior White House official said.

Discouraged, Obama left for his summer break on Marthas Vineyard. It was a time to figure outthe future.

The president was at the center of the thought process after the debt ceiling, the second senioradviser said. He knew where we were, and he was very frustrated with where we were.


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tenure as chief executive so they could prepare for criticism. When it came in the GOPprimaries, Romney easily turned it away, accusing his opponents of attacking success itself.

That instilled a false sense of confidence. When Obama began going after Romneys time atBain, advisers in Boston convinced themselves it already had been litigated.

The Bain attacks were arrows that just bounced off Mitt Romney, Fehrnstrom said. Theydidnt do lasting damage.

The Obama campaign thought otherwise.

Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter argued for a series of Bain-related ads in the latespring. A Massachusetts native, Cutter had studied Romneys unsuccessful 1994 bid to unseatSen. Edward M. Kennedy (D) and the role Bain had played in it. There was a playbook, andCutter, as much as anyone, knew it.

In May, the ads began.

Bain Capital walked away with a lot of money that they made off this plant, a formeremployee at GST Steel, a company bought by Bain and eventually closed down, said to thecamera. We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer.

The Obama campaign dispatched former Bain employees to Romney primary events. It lookedlike the work of state party committees, but the organizing force behind it was the campaign inChicago.

It also looked, at first, like a mistake.

Democrats such as former president Bill Clinton, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, formercongressman Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) and Steven Rattner, who oversaw the presidentsbailout of the auto industry, all condemned the ads as unfair to capitalism.

Still others referred to it as Obamas attempt to swift-boat Romney, the tactic of using aperceived strength against a candidate. The term recalled the 2004 presidential race, when Sen.John F. Kerrys sterling Vietnam War service record was turned into a liability.

I think the criticism actually helped push the issue onto local news more than it would have, afourth senior Obama campaign official said.

At Romney headquarters, senior officials noticed alarming movement in their internal polls.

It was the cumulative weight of everything they were doing that moved numbers, changedimpressions and made it more difficult for us to climb out of the political hole they put us in,


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said Neil Newhouse, Romneys pollster. We knew it was hurting. But it was a matter of howlong can we survive and how can we raise money to push back.

Complicating the campaigns response was Romneys discomfort discussing his personalwealth. With an estimated net worth of between $190 million and $250 million, Romney is

one of the richest Americans ever to win a major partys presidential nomination, and hehas never been at ease talking about it.

Romney refused to disclose more than two years worth oftax returns and finally did soonly under pressure, leading Democrats to suggest that he was hiding something.

That image was reinforced by Romneys planned expansion of his La Jolla, Calif., beach house,which included a car elevator, his wife Anns passion for the elite equestrian sport of dressageand the couples summer getaways to their lakeside compound in New Hampshire.

The Romney campaign fought back, complaining about articles they believed contained factual

inaccuracies. But advisers chose not to air a number of positive testimonials from businessleaders that they lined up on Romneys behalf. The campaign lacked money, and did not want todistract from the candidates core case against Obamas economic record.

The Republican super PACs, sitting on millions of dollars, also decided not to defend Romney ata time when the campaign could not afford to defend itself.

This became a source of deep frustration for some campaign strategists in Boston, who werelegally barred from coordinating with the outside groups. One senior campaign adviser lamented,We didnt have any of our allies providing us any kind of cover.

The Republican problem may also have been the message or the lack of a single one.

During one week over the summer, the three big GOP super PACs had a different anti-Obama adup featuring a distinct aspect of his record, including the governments role in the failed solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra, the lack of jobs and the rising federal debt. The Romney campaignwas hitting Obama for allegedly diluting welfare reform.

All touched on the Republicans central theme that Obama had failed in his management ofthe economy but the impression left on voters may not have been as indelible as theDemocratic effort.

There were no ads for him on his positive vision, said Bill Burton, co-founder ofPrioritiesUSA, the pro-Obama super PAC. We were out there by ourselves defining what people knewabout him based on his experience in private equity.

Selection of Paul Ryan


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Even before Romney secured the nomination, his advisers began discussing potential runningmates, and the habitually cautious candidate made clear that he did not want to repeat the error of2008, when John McCain made a dramatic pick in Sarah Palin but failed to run a thoroughvetting.

The selection of Rep. Paul Ryan, a conservative favorite from Wisconsin, would pose otherchallenges later. But when Ryan, 42, stepped off the USS Wisconsin as Romneys running mateon Aug. 11, it surprised and delighted the Republican base.

Within the Obama campaign, advisers believed the Ryan pick was a mistake. Ryan was not well-known enough in his home state to help Romney win it, and his conservative positions on fiscaland social issue were likely to bother some independents.

They were coming up to a convention that was essentially a hostile gathering for Romney, thethird senior Obama campaign official said. He thought Ryan would help with that.

Even inside Romneys campaign, some advisers worried Ryan would be identified too closelywith his proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program, an idea that could alienate seniorscritical in Florida.

Those concerns translated into disagreements between Ryan and the leadership in Boston. Oneweek after his selection, Ryan, on his own, gave a speech about Medicare to residents of theVillages, a city-size retirement community in central Florida.

We want this debate. We need this debate. We will win this debate, he declared.

To the relief of Romneys advisers, the debate never materialized. But they did not allow Ryan to

set the agenda again.

As part of his role, Ryan had wanted to talk about poverty, traveling to inner cities and givingspeeches that laid out the Republican vision for individual empowerment. But Romney advisersrefused his request to do so, until mid-October, when he gave a speech on civil society inCleveland.

As one adviser put it, The issues that we really test well on and win on are not the war onpoverty.

Ryan did not complain publicly. But he later had reason to.

Benghazi backfires


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After a troubled summer trip to Britain, Poland and Israel, Romney placed foreign policy to theside.

The overseas excursion, described by a member of Romneys national finance committee as amistake from beginning to end, had been followed by an awkward convention. The Romney

campaign searched for something to turn its fortunes around.

On Sept. 11, amid developing reports about an attack on U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt andLibya, Romney aides found a political opportunity.

Hours earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo had issued a statement responding to outrage in Egyptover an anti-Muslim film made in California. Romneys advisers viewed the statement asmisplaced sympathy for the attackers.

Within hours, on the advice of his messaging shop and with the blessing of his foreign policyadvisers, Romney approved a statement that accused Obama of sympathizing with anti-American

interests in the Muslim world. It was sent out shortly after 10 p.m.

By sunrise the next day, it was clear to Romney that they had acted too quickly. The campaignlearned that four Americans had been killed in an attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya,including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Even to some Republicans, Romneys hastystatement looked insensitive.

We screwed up, guys, Romney told aides on a conference call that morning, according tomultiple people on the call. This is not good.

His advisers told him that, if he took back his statement, the neoconservative wing of the party

would take his head off. He stood by it during an appearance in Florida. Two days later,Obama traveled to Joint Base Andrews to meet the four flag-draped coffins.

From then on, including during the final debate on foreign policy, Romney was reluctant toengage Obama on the Libya attack, a useful way to discredit his otherwise strong record onnational security issues.

The governor felt snake bit by the reaction to our public pronouncement, said one senioradviser. I think it made him shy about aggressively prosecuting the Benghazi case against theObama administration.

As Romney remained largely silent on the subject, Republicans and some prominent Democratscalled on Obama to make clear how the attacks were carried out and by whom.

A New York Times-CBS News poll published a week before the election showed that a majorityof likely voters disapproved of Obamas handling of the Benghazi attack.

The 47 percent


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The Obama campaign moved quietly through Romneys bumpy summer, and then, for acandidate who has enjoyed moments of good fortune through his political career, another onecame.

On Sept. 17, less than a week after the Benghazi attack, Mother Jones magazine began

publishing secretly recorded footage of Romney speaking derisively about the 47 percent ofAmericans who pay no income taxes at a spring fundraiser.

Ill never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives, hetold the guests, who paid $50,000-a-plate to attend.

The video played perfectly into the image, showcased in Obamas Bain ads, of Romney as acandidate whose chief concern was protecting the wealthy.

It reinforced a negative perception of the governor that was being peddled by our opponents, soyeah, of course we were concerned about it, Fehrnstrom said.

Those close to Ryan, whose idea of talking about rising poverty was rejected by the campaign,were also frustrated.

If we had been speaking out about these issues before this happened, it wouldve inoculated usa little bit, an adviser said.

Within a few hours of the videos release, Romney conceded during a news conference in CostaMesa, Calif., that his remarks were not elegantly stated. The campaign hit a low point.

Among some of the senior members of the campaign, you found people slip into talking about

the campaign in the past tense, one Romney adviser recalled.

In Chicago, Cutter, the deputy Obama campaign manager, and Ben LaBolt, thecommunications director, walked into Axelrods office within minutes of the video postingon the magazines Web site to decide what to do.

By the end of the day, the campaign had issued a statement denouncing Romney forwriting off half the nation. Then, for a few days, it stood back and watched.

As a fifth senior campaign official said, We didnt know what to make of it at first, only that wehad to play it right.

Within 36 hours, Priorities USA aired an ad about the taped comments. And the Obamacampaign followed with its own, using Romneys words behind a series of black-and-whitephotos of working Americans, veterans and seniors.

At a campaign rally in Woodbridge four days after the tapes release, Obama told a raucousstadium crowd that weve always said that change takes more than one term or even onepresident, and it certainly takes more than one party.


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The rubber band that had stretched toward us the previous month suddenly snapped back towhere it was, said the second senior Obama campaign official.

Obama was angry with himself and began studying the tape in preparation for the second debatethat was more than a week away.

Vice President Biden called him the day after the Denver debate, and the president said heregretted letting him down. For a campaign that had good fortune on its side for months,suddenly nothing seemed to work in its favor.

The polls showed Romney gaining steadily, despite a good September jobs report released daysafter the debate that showed that the unemployment had fallen to the lowest point since themonth that Obama took office.

As nervous Democrats wondered whether Obama had given the election away, Biden was askedto steady the base in his debate against Ryan.

Unlike Obama, Biden had been preparing, off and on, for months. Advisers had put together 100questions that Biden should expect to get, and during even the smallest windows of free time onAir Force Two, they would quiz the vice president: So why is the economy better off than itwas four years ago?

Im nervous, Obama told him during a call on the day of the debate, according to advisers. Isthis how you felt when you were getting ready to watch me?

Hours later, Biden turned in an aggressive defense of the administrations record. Before he hadeven left the stage at Centre College in Danville, Ky., he was handed a mobile phone.

It was Obama calling with congratulations.

The final stretch

The Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago thinned out in late October as some of the 700-plus staff flowed into the field. Perched on some desks and shared tables were signs advisingKeep Calm and Carry On, a message from Britain during the Blitz in World War II.

In the final days, Obama swept through swing states in an effort to rally his supporters and urgethem to the polls, at one point suggesting that casting a ballot would be suitable revenge for a

nasty campaign. He drew on Obamadata, as the campaign refers to its voter lists, to holdconference calls directly with thousands of voters and volunteers.

Romney, too, bounced through Ohio, Virginia, Florida. Polls showed narrow leads for bothcandidates with little over a week to go before Election Day.

Then Hurricane Sandy arrived, stalling out the campaigns. It couldnt have come at a worse timefor Romney.


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Obama left the trail for the White House, taking charge of an emergency response that evensome Republicans praised.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was among them.

For months, Christie had been one of Romneys staunchest allies. He had predicted Romneysknockout performance in the first debate and spoke for him whenever asked.

With days to go, Christie turned his kind words to Obama. He called Obama outstandingin the aftermath of Sandy and, as the two walked the storm-thrashed streets of AtlanticCity, he noted that he could not thank the president enough for his personal concern andcompassion for our state.

Six days later Obama secured his second term.

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How Obama Won the Re-Election