2007 Obama campaign memo detailing how to defeat Hillary Clinton surfaces
As the summer of 2007 turned into fall, presidential candidate Barack Obama was trailing in the national polls behind Hillary Clinton, "the pundits were pouncing, and donors were panicking," David Axelrod, his top strategist at the time, told Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker.
With a Philadelphia debate and the Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner ahead, the Obama team decided in October the frontrunner's main vulnerability was her character, and Axelrod — along with campaign manager David Plouffe, pollster Joel Benenson, deputy communication director Dan Pfeiffer, and strategist Larry Grisolano — put together a memo that Axelrod said was "written for a big Come-to-Jesus meeting, at which Obama wanted us to review the strategy and lay out our plans."
The memo, which Lizza published for the first time in its entirety on Tuesday, states that polling at the time showed voters were looking for a president who "can unite the country and restore our sense of common purpose," and the campaign team agreed that "Barack Obama is change. She is not." Obama's slogan, "Change you can believe in," was a contrast to Clinton not on policy, but on character, the strategists wrote, adding, "We cannot let Clinton especially blur the lines on who is the genuine agent of change in this election." They put together a compare and contrast list, with messages that needed to be emphasized by Obama — Obama they wrote, was "tough on issues and doesn't just tell people what they want to hear; he tells them what they need to know," while Clinton was "driven by politics, not conviction. From the war, to NAFTA, to Social Security, her choice of baseball teams, Clinton is constantly shifting, dodging, and changing positions to satisfy the politics of the moment."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
As Grisolano told Lizza, "Frequently, in campaigns, we say 'contrast,' it's a euphemism for a frontal attack. You can see in the memo, and this is important about the constraints that the message put on us, because if you are the unity guy you can't come out with a crowbar against your opponent. We had to show we were different, but do it in a way that wasn't as direct as most campaigns do." The strategists told Lizza they don't know if the same strategy would work against Clinton today, but she definitely learned something from Obama's team — one of her campaign's first hires was pollster and memo writer Joel Benenson.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
-
Border Patrol gets scrutiny in court, gains power in ICESpeed Read Half of the new ICE directors are reportedly from DHS’s more aggressive Customs and Border Protection branch
-
Beth Macy’s 6 favorite books about living in a divided nationFeature The journalist recommends works by Nicholas Buccola, Matthew Desmond, and more
-
Political cartoons for October 29Cartoons Wednesday's political cartoons include gerrymandered voters, taking aim at Venezuela, and banishing the Blue Jays
-
Border Patrol gets scrutiny in court, gains power in ICESpeed Read Half of the new ICE directors are reportedly from DHS’s more aggressive Customs and Border Protection branch
-
Shutdown stalemate nears key pain pointsSpeed Read A federal employee union called for the Democrats to to stand down four weeks into the government standoff
-
Trump vows new tariffs on Canada over Reagan adspeed read The ad that offended the president has Ronald Reagan explaining why import taxes hurt the economy
-
NY attorney general asks public for ICE raid footageSpeed Read Rep. Dan Goldman claims ICE wrongly detained four US citizens in the Canal Street raid and held them for a whole day without charges
-
Trump’s huge ballroom to replace razed East WingSpeed Read The White House’s east wing is being torn down amid ballroom construction
-
Trump expands boat strikes to Pacific, killing 5 moreSpeed Read The US military destroyed two more alleged drug smuggling boats in international waters
-
Trump demands millions from his administrationSpeed Read The president has requested $230 million in compensation from the Justice Department for previous federal investigations
-
Trump nominee in limbo after racist texts leakSpeed Read Paul Ingrassia lost Republican support following the exposure of past racist text messages
