The Kerry States: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin
The strategy starts with holding the 251 electoral votes that John Kerry won in 2004; of those states, four are currently on Obama's battleground list. Even though McCain has been leaning hard in Pennsylvania, Plouffe noted, the polls currently show Obama with a five to 10 point advantage. What's more, the Democrats have gained 316,000 new registrations since January, while the Republicans have lost 60,000. The result, says Plouffe, is that "in a state where we already have a demographic advantage, where our base vote is higher than McCain's, he's going to have to win a massive amount of the swing vote to have a chance." He's less confident, however, about Michigan, which was off-limits to Obama during the primaries. "Obama is less formed in Michigan as a campaign and as individual," he says, "so we've had to play catch-up." That's why Obama held his two biggest endorsement rallies--John Edwards and Al Gore--in the Great Lakes State. Asked whether selecting Mitt Romney as his running mate could help McCain clinch it, Plouffe was ready with a red-meat retort. "Presumably the reason to pick Romney would be to help on the economy," he said. "But boy, that would be the greatest job-killing machine in the history of American politics. Mitt Romney is an expert on Cayman Island tax shelters. You couldn't have a more out-of-touch ticket."

The Tipping Points: Ohio and Florida
One major benefit of Obama's expanded battlefield, according to Plouffe, is that "there are a lot of scenarios where we don't need" Ohio and Florida to win the election. Still, Team Obama is "pouring everything we can into those states." The reason? because "if we win Ohio or Florida, I don't think John McCain has any chance to win the presidency," he said. Regarding Ohio, he confessed that "it's close now, it'll be close in September and it'll be close in October." Surprisingly, Plouffe seemed more "bullish" about Florida--a state that many Republicans have said belongs to McCain. Asked why, he pointed to the the 900,000 voters under 40 and the 600,00 African-Americans who were registered but didn't vote in 2004--as well as a combined total of more than a million unregistered voters in both demographic groups. "The places where you have the highest number of base voters are the places you have the best chance of winning," he said. "We think there's going to be slightly more than 10 million people voting in Florida. Our base, we think, is more than 5 million. You gotta like that. Now, I'm not saying we're going to turn everyone out. But it lessens the amount of the swing vote you have to get."

The Targets: Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina, New Mexico, Iowa
Confident that Obama will win two of 2004's closest red states, Plouffe noted that his boss is polling outside the margin of error in New Mexico and Iowa. "They're the most likely to flip," he said. Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina will be trickier. Plouffe is buoyed by the recent influx of young professionals to the suburbs of Northern Virginia, but admitted that registering new residents is tricky and said that Obama can win without them provided he turns out the youth and black votes. "We're not just trying to increase turnout," he said. "We're trying to get the highest percentage of African-Americans to vote in our electoral history, and the highest percentage of voters under 30." Claiming Obama has a "slim lead," Plouffe plans to target voters who say they're supporting former governor Mark Warner's Senate run but still aren't sure about Obama. "Warner gives us a clear sense of who's available," he said. Meanwhile, Plouffe was confident that Obama can catch up in North Carolina, where he trails by a few points--again thanks to black voters and young whites. As for Colorado, Plouffe pointed to last night event's at Invesco stadium, where each of the 60,000 additional attendees--25,000 of who hail from the Centennial State--agreed to serve as neighborhood captains or volunteers in exchange for a seat. "While the Republicans criticize, we choose to organize," he said. "McCain's going to have a very, very hard time winning in November if he can't win here."
 

Here's the witty and wise Jeremy McCarter on Obama's acceptance speech:

The view from Stumper's seat as Obama arrived on stage.

Someone should invite Barack Obama to give an explanation of particle physics while wrestling a gator. Short of that, I don't what could make him give a flat or faltering speech. The oratorical challenges that life has thrown at him over the last four years—the 2004 convention, the race speech, Berlin—have given chance after chance to flop, but the man seems incapable of doing so. Thursday night's challenge was one of the tallest: bringing the Democratic National Convention to a crescendo without providing fodder for those who think him a preening, grandiose celebrity. So he took his inside voice with him to the cavernous Invesco Field, and used it to deliver what might be the most intimate talk ever offered to a crowd of 80,000.

Obama described the speech as "workmanlike." That's true, in the sense that it didn't have the rhetorical flights of some of his previous talks. But it also implies a level of strain, of visible effort, nowhere in evidence. (It sounded workmanlike only in the way that Tiger Woods going eight under for the round is workmanlike.)

He needed all his gifts for this one, beginning with the agile, dynamic voice—an instrument that lets him, like a singer with a four-octave range, hit notes and make tonal shifts unavailable to the rest of us. "What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me," he said, using a pianissimo note to draw people closer, before booming: "It's about you." There's also the sheer quality of the writing, not just the arc and the rhythmic drive of the overall speech, but little flecks of language, as when he described the promise of a democracy "where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort." Grace, the unexpectedly delicate word, recasts the whole sentence, makes you listen anew.

The good news for the Democrats is that Obama did what they needed him to do; the bad news is how much they needed him to do.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

DENVER--Barack Obama just wrapped up his nomination speech here at Mile High stadium, and it's already clear that the chattering classes are content. "Magnificent," said Pat Buchanan. "Awfully impressive," added Bill Kristol. "A masterpiece," concluded David Gergen. The reaction in the stands--shouting, stomping, phoning loved ones, snapping photos, weeping--wasn't much more equivocal. That said, it's worth remembering, despite all the understandable uplift, that neither pundits nor partisans will decide November's election--and worth wondering what the people who will (that is, undecideds) thought of Obama's performance.

Considering that Chicago distributed the evening's 60,000 civilian tickets solely to supporters who'd agreed to volunteer for the campaign, I wasn't expecting to find many Nobamans in the crowd. Fortunately, I stumbled upon Malissa Garcia. Her path to Mile High was somewhat circuitous--to say the least. Last weekend, CNN asked Garcia, a 23-year-old hairstylist at the nearby Oxford Club Salon, whether she'd be willing to spend the convention primping, preening and priming on-air Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez and her headful of extensions. She immediately accepted. After four days of follicular service, Sanchez rewarded her loyal tresswoman today with a ticket to the show--and Garcia, reluctant to miss "history," was soon sitting in Section 133 with a tray of chicken fingers on her lap and a camera (one video, one still) in either hand.

She arrived a skeptic. Unlike the hyperinformed true believers who make the most noise online and on the air--and, incidentally, like the vast majority of Americans--Garcia "hasn't been paying much attention to politics this year." Before tonight, in fact, she'd never seen Obama speak. Still, as a committed Clintonista during the Democratic primaries--"the country was in good shape when they were in the White House"--she told me she wasn't sure she'd be voting for the Illinois senator come fall. It wasn't her Republican family giving her grief--Garcia( defied them to support John Kerry in 2004--and it wasn't anything she knew about the nominee. Instead, it was what she didn't know. Saying she was "worried" by an email she'd received, Garcia, a "serious Christian," ran through an abridged list of familiar false Obama rumors: he "doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance"; he may be "a Muslim"; he was "sworn in [to the Senate] on an Iraq Bible." (I take back that "familiar.") Do you believe them? I asked. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe I won't vote. I'll just let God figure it out."

Then came the feature presentation, with all its pundit-pleasing magnificence and impressiveness and masterpieciosity. As confetti mingled with smoke above the stadium and the Obaman hordes shuffled towards the exits, I asked Garcia whether Obama's performance had changed her mind. "Actually, yes," she said. "I really liked it." So if you had to vote today... "I think I'd vote for Obama," she interrupted. "I'm, like, 75 percent sure." Garcia said she was hooked when Monica Early of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio--one of a series of "ordinary Americans" who spoke before the senator--confessed that she too had received a "scary email," but had discovered, after checking the facts, that "Barack Obama is a man of faith, a man of values and a man of action." She didn't love Obama's line about civil unions ("I don't agree with that"), but his armada of generals and riffs on education and health care more than made up for it. "My husband and I pay $400 a month, and that's only with partial dental and partial eye," she told me. Before the speech, Garcia associated Obama with "inexperience." But now, she said, "I think he can make change. And middle-class people like me really need change."

This is, of course, exactly what Chicago wants to hear. In fact, Garcia's reactions were so on message, I began to wonder whether David Axelrod had taken to creating cyborgs in his spare time. All kidding aside, Garcia is proof positive that Axelrod and Co. know their targets. They know that the most voters are only tuning in now. They know that a lot of early support is soft, and easily swayed by biographical details, strong surrogates and an isolated policy or two. They know that most former Clintonites aren't dead-enders. And they know that the best way to compete with a caricature of your candidate is to expose as many people as possible to the real thing. What happened to Garcia at Mile High tonight undoubtedly happened to voters all across the country (only without all the confetti). But the flipside of such an easy swing--which will likely show up soon in the polls--is that John McCain has a chance to swing the same people back his way next week in St. Paul, Minn. As Garcia told me, "now I'm going to have to watch the Republicans."

Curious, I asked whether she knew anything about McCain. "Just that he's just like Bush," she said.

Somewhere, David Axelrod is smiling.  

*We exaggerate.
 

By Tom Watson

In the upper reaches of Invesco Field, there is a collision of cultures afoot. Here in the stands, reporters and editors sit cheek by jowl with Obama delegates. Their interests diverge. One group whistles, screams, and stomps its feet so hard it moves one's insides around. The other sits and stares at little screens, flailing away at laptops and BlackBerries, trying to capture the moment and keep their bosses happy.

This behavior baffles the party faithful. "You call that journalism?," one puzzled partisan exclaimed, as fingers flew over the tiny keys. Elsewhere, the journalists' tendency to leave much-in-demand seats to track down outlets for their many plugs created tension with the die-hard Obama fans seeking the best vantage point from which to hail their hero. When you sit mute while everyone else is raising the roof, people look at you funny. Then, the moment of truth: a surge of enthusiasm swept through Section 133. The partisans looked over expectantly. The journalists huddled: Is it a conflict of interest for the Fourth Estate to do the wave?

The unanimous decision: Yes we can't.
 

DENVER--Barack Obama may not look like the presidents on our printed money--but there's at least one guy out there who looks a lot like him.

With more than 50,000 people packed into Invesco Field and security everywhere, it isn't easy to get around. But be thankful you're not Gerardo Puisseaux. A young Cuban-American PR rep for Miami's Americateve 41, he has the unfortunate burden--at least for today--of bearing a striking resemblance to the newly-minted Democratic nominee.

I spotted Mr.Puisseaux on the stairs of Section 134 struggling to escape from a Ukrainian TV interviewer determined to capture him on camera. "I'm not the man," he told the reporter, pointing to Obama's stage. "He's the man." Soon, the entire section was snapping photos. Behind me, a woman in a red Obama t-shirt said that she had buttonholed "the lookalike" earlier. "I asked Obama if he'd take a picture with me," she said. "He even kissed my hand!"

Maybe being Obama isn't so bad after all.
 

DENVER--The Democratic convention has already moved to Invesco Field, but that hasn't stopped the GOP from making mischief back at the Pepsi Center. On my walk from the parking structure to the NEWSWEEK workspace this afternoon, I stumbled across a posse of young men and women wearing togas, waving "The One" placards and chanting, in the adoring drone of brainwashed Branch Davidians, "Change! Hope! O-BAM-A!" One sign read "The Temple of O." I figured they were referring to the neoclassical stage where Obama is planning to accept the Democratic nomination tonight.

"Look to the clouds!" shouted one worshiper.

"Is he descending yet?" asked another.

"He must descend so we can change," the first one intoned. Then they began singing "O-bam-a" to the tune of Handel's "Messiah."

When they stopped, I approached and asked if they were representing anyone in particular. "Obama," said a tall goateed gentlemen. "Obama," repeated a shorter, clean-shaven woman. "He is 'The One.'" "What about that McCain sticker on your toga?" I asked, pointing at the McCain sticker on another man's toga." "I'm not worthy, so I'm supporting McCain," he explained. I didn't bother to mention the RNC credentials--complete with the party's "A Mile High, One Inch Deep" slogan--dangling from everyone's belt loops.

As I walked away, a woman who'd traveled from Montana to see Obama's acceptance speech sidled up beside me. "What did you think of those Obama fans?" I asked. "Stupid," she said. "All the negative people are voting for McCain." Then she joined the throngs for the long walk to Invesco.
 

When Machiavelli warned “before all else, be armed,” he probably couldn’t envision how a Youtube videoblogger known as richprince78 would use his advice a few hundred years down the line. Armed with his camera and the support of a buzzing new media presence at the DNC, Iowa City-based Rich Peters, the winner of a joint Youtube/DNC video competition, is one of thousands of new media troops swarming the Democratic National Convention this week to promote their cause.

Shameless DNC PR stunt? Absolutely. But if you’re looking for an on-the-ground look at life at the convention, the kid-with-camera strategy is nifty enough. Peters, a recent law school graduate, has been chronicling his adventures stumping for the Obama campaign since he joined up last November. After Youtube fans voted him in for the DNC slot, he hit the trail with the traveling press pool and roamed the halls of the Pepsi Center, picking up interviews with delegates, activists, protestors, and even NEWSWEEK’s very own Jonathan Alter along the way. All of which is to say that his Youtube channel, www.youtube.com/richprince78, is pretty well stocked, while maintaining that down-home raw footage charm.

NEWSWEEK's Matthew Link files this report from Denver



As a longtime friend of Rep. Barney Frank, I was offered the chance to bunk on an extra bed in his driver’s room at the Denver convention--giving a whole new meaning to the idea of a literally embedded journalist.

Following Frank around the convention has been both eye-opening and exhausting, not only because of the crazy schedule and hours (three or four worthwhile events, parties, speeches or caucuses happen concurrently at any given hour of day or night), but for the incredible access to the stars of the Democratic Party. I plopped myself down at a delegate luncheon, and realized my tablemates were three Democratic members of Congress--Frank, Lynn Woosley of California and Jerry Nadler of New York, with Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin waving to us from the next table over. At Nancy Pelosi’s ballroom party on Monday night, I watched Tony Bennett and James Taylor sing a duet, and that afternoon I nearly spilled my Sprite on a smiling George McGovern as I passed him in the hallway of the Pepsi Center.

Like many journalists, I was expecting at least some drama at the convention--maybe not as tumultuous as the riot-heavy 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, but at least some shouting matches between Hillary and Obama supporters. Instead, protestors were hard to spot in Denver. The only skirmish I witnessed was a predictable shouting match between pro-choice and anti-abortion proponents, politely occurring across one of Denver’s clean, spacious downtown streets. Police in riot gear on horseback quickly showed up, but seemed unfazed by the goings-on. The city seemed quiet and intent and focused on one goal: Getting Obama into the White House no matter what. I’m sure there are some Republicans somewhere in Denver, but I didn’t see much of them.

After Ted Kennedy’s appearance on the convention floor on Monday, which electrified the audience of the Pepsi Center, Frank was invited to join his fellow Massachusetts resident for breakfast Tuesday morning. It was a small, intimate get-together with family and friends of Kennedy. I asked how the senator was doing, and Frank told me, “Ted looked great, and his memory was amazing. He remembered a letter I had sent him some months ago. I think he’ll be around for a long while.” Perhaps the torch wouldn’t be passed as soon as people think.

Later, I followed Frank to a gay and lesbian delegate luncheon he was hosting. Michelle Obama showed up and the crowd went insane with standing ovation after standing ovation. Frequently peppering her speech with the pronouns “we” and “us” when talking about LGBT citizens, Obama finished her pro-gay oration by proclaiming, “Change never happens easily. We need you. I am grateful to you.”

Even though it’s my first convention, I had a feeling that something profound is happening in Denver. No matter what the outcome, history has occurred before my eyes. As Barney so understatedly put it to me, “The first convention I went to was in 1968. I can tell you this one is a little bit different.”

Into a political season that has already seen the McCain campaign put out its share of sharp and sometimes misleading anti-Obama ads comes this higher note: John McCain congratulating his opponent on his nomination.

Answer: So that hacks like me--and more importantly, my hacky brethren who endlessly "analyze" the 2008 election on TV--would spread the video posted above.

"Hello Democrats!" Obama said as he strode on stage, amid screams and squeals and a roar of applause. "I just wanted to come out here for a little something to say." Incidentally, that "something" was not his praise for "Joe Biden and Jill Biden and Beau Biden and Mama Biden and the whole Biden family." Nor was it his kind words for wife Michelle, who "kicked it off pretty well"; for Hillary Clinton, who "rocked the house last night," or for her husband Bill, who "reminded us of what it's like when you have a president who actually puts people first." Instead, it was the short statement he delivered last. "We are going to be moving to Mile High Stadium tomorrow, and I want to let you know why," Obama said. "At the start of this campaign, we had a very simple idea, which is: change in America doesn't start from the top down, it starts from the bottom up. That change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things. So we want to open up this convention to make sure that everyone who wants to come can join in the party and join in the effort to take America back."

In other words, Obama was playing pre-emptive defense. With Democrats worried that the move to Mile High contradicts Obama’s convention goal of "connecting with average Americans" and offers Republicans yet another opportunity to characterize the Illinois senator as "a narcissistic celebrity candidate"--after all, the GOP is already calling his be-columned, classical-style stage set the "Temple of Obama"--the campaign clearly wanted a chance to frame the decision to its advantage, and chose the most visible moment (prime time) and most famous surrogate (Obama) to do so. Moving the convention to a 75,000-seat football stadium isn't about showing off my celebrity, Obama said. It's about conveying my message of inclusiveness and grassroots organizing.

Whether voters will agree remains to be seen. It's worth noting, for instance, that Obama's riff about "mak[ing] sure that everyone who wants to come can join the party" was a bit hyperbolic--the event's 60,000 tickets sold out within 24 hours, forcing the campaign to turn away hundreds of thousands of fans. And to viewers watching at home, the difference between a 75,000-person grass-roots organizing event and a 75,000-person rock concert will probably be imperceptible. That said, when the pundits and prognosticators take to the airwaves and the Internets to speculate about the "risks" of Obama being seen with all those voters--as if being popular were a bad thing in an electoral democracy--they'll now have to include Obama's own rationale, conveniently captured on video, in their reports.

Kind of like me.

UPDATE, 1:26 p.m.: Hat tip to reader SMS67: "The stage at Invesco that is being ripped by the GOP" may have been designed "to recreate the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous ['I Have a Dream'] speech on this day 45 years ago." Developing, as they say...
 

Here's my NEWSWEEK colleague Howard Fineman on Bill Clinton's just-completed convention speech. Especially smart: Howard's point about Clinton "not laying it on too thick." He went far further than Hillary in describing why Barack Obama--and not just any old Democrat--would make a better president than John McCain. But with a "hint of jealously and rue" in his voice, Clinton's compliments sounded totally credible. He hadn't been force-fed or coaxed or cajoled. He wasn't just doing his duty. You got the sense, rather, than Clinton really (if begrudgingly) respects Obama, another Democrat said to be "too young and too inexperienced," for outwitting him--even if he hasn't completely "gotten over" the first loss of his career. After all, what better testament is there to someone's skill as a politician than defeating the Natural? I'll pass the mic to Howard:

I just watched a master at his craft. It was like watching Michael Jordan in his prime. Bill Clinton showed the world—and Barack Obama—how it's done, and he made it look easy. Better than anyone else at this convention so far—and better than the nominee himself on the campaign trail to date—the former president made the case for the senator from Illinois and for the Democrats to take back the White House from the Republicans.

I sat five seats away from Clinton Tuesday night as he watched his wife speak in the Pepsi Center. Afterwards, I had a chance to chat with him. He said he'd read his wife's speech " a hundred times." As for his own, he said, "We'll have a good time with it tomorrow."

He was right. He enjoyed the hell out of himself. In a speech that he wrote—and rewrote—up to the last minute (what else is new?), he praised Obama directly and personally far more than his wife did (she didn't, in fact); he described elements of Obama's character in ways that made them seem just what the country needed; he described in clear detail what he saw as the devastating consequences of Republican policies; and he described with a sweeping sense of history much of public life in the last quarter century.

Clinton looked every inch a president—and not quite a "former" one at that. He told me Tuesday night that he had worked hard to lose the Campaign-Trail Ten (or Twenty) he had gained crisscrossing the country for his wife. He looked tanned, rested and ready to do it all  again.

He did not lay it on too thick. His praise of Obama's inclusive character and toughness had just a hint of jealously and rue about it—just enough to make it credible. Clinton's description of Obama's historical role was apt without being histrionic. His tone and touch were perfect—even as his wry, tongue-in-cheek smile seemed to tell, the world: boy, I'm good at this!

This convention needs above all to explain to middle-class white voters in swing states why their economic best interests lie with the Democratic Party and Obama—and why those voters cannot afford four more years of "extreme" GOP policies. Clinton laid out the problem and the case clearly. He did the same when discussing foreign policy, arguing that we do better as a nation when the world sees the "power of our example" rather than the "example of our power."

As I watched from the NBC balcony, I saw below in a sea of flags a white-haired lion not quite in winter, and not angry at his fate. I covered his first convention speech in Atlanta in 1988. I was bird-dogging him and was up close and saw what happened. He was young and hungry and afraid, and the speech was disastrously long because he had asked every friend to contribute a paragraph—and then read them all. He was also, back then, distracted, shall we say.

What I saw tonight was a testament to the fact that we all can grow up. Bill Clinton finally, impressively, has.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

In case you couldn't tell on TV, the Pepsi Center went absolutely wild when former President Bill Clinton strode on stage. After more than three minutes of sustained applause and frantic flag-waving, Clinton started his speech with a line not included in his prepared remarks: "I love this." You could tell.

Here, courtesy of NEWSWEEK Washington Bureau Chief Jeffrey Bartholet--and his trusty BlackBerry Curve--is the view from the floor.