Ignore for a second that this was a bad year for Republicans, anyway.  Many people thought (myself included) that this would be a much closer election than it was.  I predicted 292 EVs for Obama.  Currently, he stands at 364 officially, and perhaps 365 when all is said and done.  Clearly it was a bigger result for Obama than some expected.  So how did he do it?

There are perhaps many explanations, but I’ll pick just two for this article.  First, I think he and his team were able to create an amazing Internet presence.  Second, he was able to campaign where John McCain couldn’t.

Internet

I’ve seen a lot of people talking about it, so I’m not sure what more I can add, but from the beginning, the Obama team utilized the Internet to the fullest.  They were able to recognize the level of which the ‘net has entered the consciousness of American culture, and capitalized on it.

Whether it was Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, or Obama’s own website, they went all out.  They wanted people to get involved creatively, so they created my.BarackObama.com, so supporters could campaign on a local level could get write diaries about their experiences.  It’s these kind of things that make people feel like the politician cares.  It seems the Obama administration might continue along the vein of my.BO with change.gov and other initatives.  See Michael van der Galien’s article from Saturday for more about this.

I think Obama would be wise to implement some of these things Internet initiatives into his administration.  Maybe this is idealistic of me, but they could be used to get new ideas from voters, gague reaction on policies, and help shape his agenda.  I know some will say there’s potential for abuse from extremists on the left and right, but you always get that.  I think in order to remain connected to the people, Obama will have to do something.  So far he and his team seem to have understood the power of the Internet.  So we’ll see if this understanding continues.

Campaigning

I remember that several months ago, Howard Dean was criticized for implementing the 50-state strategy.  The idea was that if you could campaign in states Democrats don’t traditionally win in, you could make some headway there.  Dean was said to be wasting money by trying to win the unwinnable.

Obama followed suit, campaigning in Ohio and Indiana and Virginia, among other places.  Now, even I thought some of these states would go for McCain, but when election day came, they overwhelmingly went for Obama, even Indiana, which is probably one of the few areas the pollsters underestimated (“It’s going for McCain” was the narrative in Indiana up until election day).  The caveat, of course, is that the race was tight in most of these swing states, but in the end, it’s electoral votes that matters, and Obama got them.

Now, Indiana might have come as a shocker, but that’s small fries compared to what was reported late Friday, when the Omaha-based second Congressional district in Nebraska gave an electoral vote to Obama.  The EVs in Nebraska are allocated by Congressional district, as is also the case in Maine.  The real surprise here is that Nebraska was never considered a swing state; it was always safe McCain territory.  But, my understanding is that the Obama camp pushed hard in the Omaha district, and it seems to have paid off.

Now, there’s obviously an money element to be considered here.  I suppose the real question is whether Obama could have afforded to go to all these places if he’d accepted public funding like McCain.  I guess we’ll never know.  But, whatever the case, the 50-state strategy did worked in this election.

Where He Did Wrong

As McCain did some things right despite his loss, Obama did some things wrong.  First, in what I think showed some inexperience in the area, Obama was initially slow to respond to negative reports that came his way.  Back in the Rev. Wright days, it took his forever to finally respond properly.  Obama did eventually wise up, though.

Another mistake, and one I’ve regularly criticized, is his selection of Joe Biden as the running mate.  While Biden brings years of Washington know-how and experience on a number of issues, Biden has a mouth.  Whether it’s “that ad was horrible” or “He’s going to be tested,” Biden doesn’t know when to shut up sometimes.  And here Obama was also slow to respond.  He couldn’t drop Biden, obviously, any more than McCain could have dropped Palin.  So, in the end, it seems Biden was stuffed in some corner and told to zip it.  We didn’t hear much from him after the “He’s going to be tested” statements.  I think we may end up seeing Biden as a fairly quiet Vice President, so he doesn’t run off his mouth.

There are some others, of course, I just only picked two.  But either of these thing improperly handled could have lost him the election.

Conclusion

Obama did make some mistakes, but they were never enough to lose the election.  Obviously, the downturn in the economy played a big role, but the economy alone didn’t win Obama the likes of Ohio and Indiana, two states which ended up being close.