Seven Lessons McCain Should Have Learned From The Democratic Primaries

Photo by Marc Nozell (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

Back in February, I identified what I then saw as the seven central problems with Hillary Clinton's strategy in the Democratic primaries. While I have been quite frank about my preference for Barack Obama, my February criticisms were not motivated by the differences between the candidates' platforms, but rather about the structure of their campaigns and their strategic decisions. Looking ahead to the remaining races, I felt confident that Clinton had largely lost the fight because of these problems.

As we enter the final leg of General Election Season, it is becoming increasingly clear that John McCain and his strategists were not paying close enough attention to what gave Obama a victory in the primaries, because the McCain camp has been making many of the same strategic (as opposed to political) mistakes that Clinton's campaign made. In the face of our currently-deepening financial crisis, McCain's chances are looking increasingly grim, but the seeds of his defeat were sown before the credit crunch had loomed its head and the DOW had plunged. Here are the seven lessons to be learned from Hillary's campaign, as they apply to McCain's run for the presidency.

1. Start Positive, Stay Positive

When McCain was riding high on the bounce he received from the Republican National Convention, the right-wing base rubbed its hands with glee and declared that "the gloves are coming off!" And indeed they were. With his nomination of Sarah Palin as the VP candidate, McCain's campaign had taken a turn towards the negative. Already accused of having forsaken his pledge to run a clean campaign, the pre-RNC campaign's negativity was nothing compared to the histronic vitriol that was to some afterwards.

The polls now show, as I think history will, that going negative at the height of his popularity was a huge mistake for McCain. The base, already energized by Palin's nomination, simply loved the attacks and have taken those attacks to new, embarrassing levels all on their own. But the undecided voters who weren't quite willing to take McCain & Palin at their words were turned off by the attacks. As McCain's numbers slipped, he ramped up the attacks, which only seemed to make the numbers slip further. The conclusion seems clear: exhausted after over a year and a half of campaigning, voters are sick of election silliness, and want badly for candidates to get down to business.

If McCain had stayed true to his pledge to run a campaign free of the smears that sunk his own candidacy in 2000, he might have fared significantly better in post-bailout America. If he had stuck to explaining to America why he was a good candidate instead of merely why Obama was a bad one, he would have a leg to stand on now. Republicans can whine that hindsight is 20/20, but the fact is that Obama has already defeated character assassination campaigning once, knows how to weather the such attack, and looks poised to do it again.

2. Keep Your Message As Simple As Possible

In principle, one could argue that because McCain's campaign has degenerated into "Obama is bad," he has in fact kept the story simple. But in practice, McCain's smears of Obama require nothing short of a conspiracy theorist's attention to detail to hold together. Sticking to the "Obama is too liberal" line might have been effective, but building a campaign around a complicated web of guilt-by-association requires not merely implying those relationships, but feeding a complicated narrative to the public, which the McCain camp has not been successful in doing. As a result, confusion reigns, and McCain's own supporters can't seem to keep his caricature of Obama straight.

In practice, this lesson's meaning has changed. In the primaries, Obama made great inroads into traditional conservative areas by framing himself as an anti-Washington populist ready to shake things up and bring serious reforms. He was rightly criticized for selling a polemic rather than a policy. Now, Obama's speeches are all nuts-and-bolts policy talk, in which he explains the solutions he plans to bring in the face of this crisis. Nevertheless, Obama's core message remains the same: the system is broken, both parties are to blame, and I want to change how the system works. Replace "the system" with any specific policy (taxes, energy policy, foreign policy), and message continues to work. Obama's positions have grown more complicated but have also remained consistent in a way that voters who can't remember policy proposals will still hold on to. They key here is to have a single message that resonates through every line of every speech.

McCain has failed to present such consistency. Two major flips now plague him: one is his now-infamous "fundamentals" statement, which has been repeated ad nauseum by the Obama camp and the media. The other is McCain's total silence on Obama's associations in the second presidential debate, which disappointed the base and proved to many undecide voters that the attacks were merely a political ploy. As long as McCain projects different messages for different audiences, or tries to tell one story himself while his surrogates tell another, his message is out of joint, and it will only hurt him.

3. Anyone Who Aims For A Narrow Victory Should Prepare For A Narrow Defeat

McCain's fundraising position has admittedly been difficult. Presumably to save money, he made the early decisions that red states were red states no matter what, and left them basically undefended. As recently as a few months ago, McCain had only a minimal ground game in states like Indiana and North Carolina. Indeed: his whole strategy could be summed up as "the Bush States plus one." So long as McCain held most of the Bush states and flipped one more for safety the job would be done. In other words, McCain aimed for a narrow victory.

Obama, by contrast, was aiming for a landslide from the very beginning. He set up shop in Montana, the Dakotas, and Alaska, as well as more competitive states like Indiana, Colorado, North Carolina, and Missouri. He locked up Iowa early on and has never let McCain get a piece of it. Relying on an energized volunteer base (which we'll say more about in a moment), Obama took the 50-state strategy and pushed it harder than many experts (including Democrats) though possible or prudent.

The result of this push is more nuanced than most people realize. Yes, Obama has conceded certain states and essentially closed up shop in them. But what he has also done is build a mobile network of volunteers. Hardcore volunteers who helped consolidate states like Washington, Oregon, and Iowa are now traveling to the battleground states; hardcore volunteers from the states he is sure to lose are also free to travel. By fully leveraging the flexibility of social networking, he now has immense resources from all 50 states (ranging from donations to manpower) focused surgically on the battlegrounds. The secret of the 50-state strategy is not that it happens everywhere, but that it happens using people from everywhere

By giving voters in safe-blue and safe-red states things they can do to help win the contested states, he has created force-multipliers that have given him a shot in states no one seriously thought he could win as recently as July. By effectively aiming for a landslide, Obama has made such a landslide possible, even before the crisis pushed he polls in his direction.

4. You Can Run A Shoestring, Grassroots Budget On A Massive Scale

Much has been made of how Obama's campaign structure is both unprecedented and efficient. As corny as they sounds, things like volunteer house parties have been tremendously effective in getting people involved who have never done so in the past. Obama has given the volunteers part-ownership of the campaign, and as a result can rely on their activism without having to cut them a paycheck.

There isn't any reason, in principle, why this strategy can't work for the Republicans. Indeed, this sort of community organizing was once the backbone of the Republican machine. But McCain's campaign has had tremendous difficulty energizing its supporters to do more than vote. By spending most of the campaign treating conservative voters as a "safe bet" that needn't be courted, McCain has squandered an opportunity to build a national network of volunteers who are willing to do the thankless, grueling work of canvasing, phonebanking, and getting out the vote. In short, McCain took his supporters for granted. He hasn't learned how to take the self-powered dynamo that is social networking and get it to spin his campaign's wheels in the way Obama has.

Given McCain's fundraising disadvantage, he could have moved from securing the nomination (which he did far earlier than the Democrats) directly to laying the groundwork for the general election. He could have quietly fanned the flames among the conservative base before the media was scrutinizing his every statement. Instead, he focused on raising money and missed the opportunity to court the kinds of campaign volunteers he wouldn't have needed to pay.

5. An Air Game Won't Beat A Ground Game In A Prolonged Conflict

As a military man, you'd think McCain would understand that air power doesn't win hearts and minds. To belabor the military analogy, a campaign is like an occupation. Both candidates' campaign are an obnoxious presence that are trying to win our support and (failing that) to shape our behavior. TV spots are like bombing runs: impersonal, abrupt, even shocking. Community volunteers are like occupying soldiers: they can either put your best foot forward or your worst, but you at least can put a face to the process and relate to it in a personal way.

McCain spent huge amounts of money leading up the RNC on TV spots, because funds raised for the primary were about to expire, and he needed to get the money out the door before it had to be returned. Imagine if McCain had spent that money setting up offices and building networks. But no, McCain hoarded the money and then spent it all on a burst of ads whose impact was as brief as his RNC bounce. Coupled with his new negative direction, many of these ads have even hurt his image rather than helped it.

Republicans (voters and politicians alike) have grown to take their ground game superiority for granted. Instead of working their asses off getting out the vote like they did for Bush in 2000 and 2004, they simply assumed other conservatives would carry the torch and stayed home instead. Now, many people are saying it's too late for McCain to make up the ground game gap. He can't ease fresh volunteers into greater and greater involvement in the time remaining, while Obama has been doing just that since the primaries.

6. Momentum Matters

One thing that Obama has been criticized for in the past and is being praised for now is his consistency. Faced with the scandal du jour, Obama doesn't let his core message get derailed. He has dismissed "political distractions" since the inception of his campaign, and the Obama campaign seems to understand that Americans aren't quite amnesiacs: they notice when you change tactics.

By contrast, McCain is making the same mistake Hillary made: changing course every time the wind shifts. While Palin's selection as VP is the most-often criticized gamble the McCain camp made with relatively little consideration, his campaign has been riddled with examples of abrupt course changes. From the bizarre "suspension" of his campaign (which didn't stop him from continuing to campaign on television), to the jarring juxtapositions at the RNC, to his 180-degree turn on regulating the financial industry, McCain has not looked calm or confident. While the Obama train has stayed on its tracks and pushed forward despite the 24-hour (and shrinking) news cycle, McCain hasn't been able to present a coherent enough campaign to keep all of his supporters on the same page, much less reading the same book.

7. Hone Your Reflexes

Obama's ability to respond to criticism has been uncanny and is, increasingly, precognitive. The McCain camp, by contrast, has been ready to close its doors to the press rather than face questions it can't handle without preparing in advance. For example, Obama has repeatedly and personally refuted the Ayers attacks, even doing so in surprisingly hostile contexts (such as his interview with Bill O'Reilly). McCain, by contrast, seems unwilling to even say the name "Keating" himself, relying on others to weakly rebut those attacks, if they do so at all.

While Hillary was slow and uncertain in her response to criticism, McCain has been silent or dismissive. While Hillary seemed to respond to crises by committee, McCain has responded with a mix of consternation and non-comprehension. Obama's campaign seems to have the answer to an unexpected turn of events almost instantaneously, as though the campaign as (gasp) thought about potential problems in advance. McCain, by contrast, seems unwilling to consider that things might go badly, and as such is unable to adapt to the inevitable unanticipated crises every campaign must contend with.

Final Thoughts

Short of something calamitous (or Democrats getting lazy, or unprecedented voter suppression), Obama will very likely win the election in a landslide. In that event, we can expect the Far Right to throw up their hands and explain that their smug bragging and high-fiving in the post-RNC environment was completely justified, and that this economic crisis has "stolen" the election from them. They will act as though nothing they or John McCain could have done could have staved off the crisis (which they will place at the feet of liberals exclusively), and that McCain's victory was "assured" before-hand. And, I now argue, they will be wrong.

Whatever McCain & Obama's merits and weaknesses, there is little question that Obama has run a better campaign than McCain, and that much of McCain's now-imminent loss lies at his feet. By running a 20th-century attack campaign, McCain has demonstrated that he doesn't understand the growing power of social networks or the desires of most Americans. He will be, in the end, a true maverick: someone who ignores both conventional wisdom and current evidence and goes his own way, regardless of the consequences.

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