First appeared November 4, 2008

Chicago, Ill — This victory is more than historic. President-elect Barack Obama’s victory marks political progress far broader than race — especially because his campaign de-emphasized it whenever possible.

The tens of thousands of people cheering here in Grant Park, at what is shaping up to be one of the largest victory celebrations in U.S. political history, are not just heralding another barrier broken in America. They are honoring a promise fulfilled — the advancement of a rare political leader who addresses the public honestly, engages his opponents respectfully and communes with his supporters openly. He built an agenda through a participatory politics that empowers organizers and upends civic culture by expanding the electorate.

In political terms, that means that Obama did not win “red states” Tuesday by treating them like red states. He did not energize his base by neglecting it. He did not convert wing voters by pandering to their occupational and cultural identities. After all the soundbites piled up, in fact, it was still Obama who had an actual policy conversation with Joe the Plumber, while Sen. John McCain invoked the everyman as a human prop.

Across the country, people, with their votes and their activism, are embracing the “change” agenda. Some scuffling over credit, priorities and ideology is inevitable, but the basics are clear: end the Iraq war; renew the economy; conquer corruption; prioritize alternative energy; pursue universal health care; and renew our civic life with a politics of good faith. It is ambitious, difficult and long overdue.

Now that the roller coaster that was 2008 has come to an end, we thought it would be fun to look back at some of our most popular, thought-provoking and entertaining posts from The Streak over the past year. This post was chosen by TWI staff as one of the most memorable of 2008. ]]> http://washingtonindependent.com/23443/best-of-the-streak-obama%e2%80%99s-victory-as-progress-not-history/feed 1 http://washingtonindependent.com/17247/breaking-obama-announces-transition-team http://washingtonindependent.com/17247/breaking-obama-announces-transition-team#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:12:18 +0000 Ari Melber http://washingtonindependent.com/?p=17247 CHICAGO, Ill. — Barack Obama is presumably enjoying his first day as president-elect, but he also got right to work.

After an hour at Regents Park this morning, Obama hunkered down in a building near his campaign headquarters in downtown Chicago.  The plan is to spend five hours there, according to aide Jen Psaki. Obama will huddle with aides and also speak on a national conference call to thank his victorious organizers.

Obama also announced a transition team, organized as a 501(c)(4), and a new website, change.gov, to share the process with the public.  John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse are running the effort, and they will draw on this advisory board:

Carol Browner, William Daley, Christopher Edley, Michael Froman, Julius Genachowski, Donald Gips, Gov. Janet Napolitano, Federico Peña, Susan Rice, Sonal Shah, Mark Gitenstein, and Ted Kaufman.

The transition team’s senior staff was also announced, featuring many key operatives from the Obama campaign:

Chris Lu – Executive Director
Dan Pfeiffer – Communications Director
Stephanie Cutter – Chief Spokesperson
Cassandra Butts – General Counsel
Jim Messina – Personnel Director
Patrick Gaspard – Associate Personnel Director
Christine Varney – Personnel Counsel
Melody Barnes – Co-Director of Agency Review
Lisa Brown – Co-Director of Agency Review
Phil Schiliro – Director of Congressional Relations
Michael Strautmanis – Director of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs
Katy Kale – Director of Operations
Brad Kiley – Director of Operations

When Obama entered the building today, he also took a moment to acknowledge the traveling reporters who spent a long night monitoring his evolution from candidate to president-elect.

“Hi guys — did you get much sleep?” he asked, according to a pool report.  One photographer replied “not much,” and a Reuters reporter returned the question. “Not as much as I’d like,” Obama said, just before he entered the building.

The tens of thousands of people cheering here in Grant Park, at what is shaping up to be one of the largest victory celebrations in U.S. political history, are not just heralding another barrier broken in America. They are honoring a promise fulfilled — the advancement of a rare political leader who addresses the public honestly, engages his opponents respectfully and communes with his supporters openly. He built an agenda through a participatory politics that empowers organizers and upends civic culture by expanding the electorate.

In political terms, that means that Obama did not win “red states” Tuesday by treating them like red states.  He did not energize his base by neglecting it.  He did not convert wing voters by pandering to their occupational and cultural identities.  After all the soundbites piled up, in fact, it was still Obama who had an actual policy conversation with Joe the Plumber, while Sen. John McCain invoked the everyman as a human prop.

Across the country,  people,  with their votes and their activism, are embracing the “change” agenda. Some scuffling over credit, priorities and ideology is inevitable, but the basics are clear: end the Iraq war; renew the economy; conquer corruption; prioritize alternative energy; pursue universal health care; and renew our civic life with a politics of good faith.  It is ambitious, difficult and long overdue.

Security appears more onerous than usual.  One person told me they knew people who got in line at 4 p.m. and were still waiting four hours later to get in. Some gates did not open to the public until 6 p.m.  But those who made it inside are boisterous, from what I could tell from a recent walk around the grounds. People cheered wildly at the news that Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes were in the Obama column, according to CNN and MSNBC.

For what it’s worth — very little — the press here is convinced Obama will win by a lot tonight.

Traveling aides told me they’re just happy that their two-year national tour is over.  Several reporters sheepishly said that no matter what happens, they just hope this race is called early tonight.  One person is circulating an “off the record” election night pool for press people who want to play the odds, but few seem psyched to play. No one is listening to the CNN pundits droning on the big screens here. In fact, I’m most struck by the general blase attitude in the cavernous white tent the Obama campaign built for its high-tech, high-priced “press file.” Writers and bloggers without $900 to spare are stuck on a set of bleachers outside, sans power or heat.

Organizers work in Missouri today. The Obama campaign has been uploading pictures of its GOTV operation in real time. (Credit: Obama Flickr.)

Now, maybe I’d like to augment this post with the contrast of excited supporters filling the fields here, but first, most people have not arrived, and second, we can’t really get close to most of the audience areas.

Earlier today, however, I visited a local field office packed with volunteers making calls to Ohio and Pennsylvania — and there was zero exhaustion there. People were pumped, reading off their calling scripts, posing for pictures in front of homemade Obama signs, and trading excited plans for election night.  I can’t see them here at Grant Park, but I know they’ll be here tonight.

There’s a small strip of coveted real estate between the stage and the largest bank of TV cameras I’ve seen on the campaign trail this year. The rest of the crowd will fill out a huge aisle of the park, facing the stage at something like an 80-degree angle. Most will watch tonight’s speech on JumboTrons dotted throughout the park. (There are almost no attendees here yet.)

In the press filing center, CNN is playing on two big screens, and about 100 reporters are milling about the half-empty tent. People are buzzing over some early, unreliable exit polls that suggest Obama leading in virtually every key state. As Laura just posted, exit polls are hardly a basis to buzz in any direction.

Meanwhile, Obama has been (finally) relaxing — he played basketball with friends and returned to a nearby hotel at about 5:10pm.

Obama backstage with David Axelrod at a Florida election rally on election eve. (Credit: Obama Flickr.)

“Think you can win Indiana?,” a Wall Street Journal reporter asked Obama at the event.

“I think we can win Indiana, otherwise I wouldn’t be in Indiana,” he replied.  That sounds fair, though the state had the makings of a good Election Day trip even if Obama was not competitive.

The Illinois senator chatted with supporters and voters at the hall, according to the pool report: “Barack Obama stopped in at the UAW Local 550 Union Hall in Indianapolis. The room was set up with Obama posters and calling stations. About a dozen volunteers were making calls from their cellphones. Obama talked to at least 10 voters.”

Then the report details some of those conversations:

“Michael, this is Barack. How are you?” “I’d like to get your vote. Don’t be discouraged if there are some long lines.”

The same dialogue continued with a voter named Cindy. “Hi Cindy … I’m in Indiana trying to gear up and make sure everyone is going to vote.” “OK,” he said. “Grab some of those folks who haven’t voted yet.”

One of the volunteers asked Obama to call his wife, and he said he would call wives if there were any “mixed marriages.” “I’ll call your wife if she needs persuasion,” Obama said.

Volunteers were vying for Obama’s attention. “I’ve got one!” someone yelled out, meaning he had a live voter on the phone. “OK, I’ll be over there in a second,” Obama said working the room.

“Hello, Richard, are you going to vote? … OK, you’ve got to make sure to get everyone out.” He told a voter named Pam, “We just think right now what this country needs is some change, especially on the economy.”

He talked to another voter about his plan to make college more affordable. A volunteer said he  had a voter named Michelle on the phone. “Michelle? I’m used to talking to girls named Michelle.” “Michelle, I hope I can count on your vote,” he said.

This is all symbolic campaigning, of course.  The candidate is not actually trying to persuade individual voters by talking about changing the economy.

Instead, the conversation is a simulacra created and presented to reach other voters — a symbolic representation of voter interaction designed to affect TV audiences elsewhere.

It’s probably bad luck to quote Baudrillard on Election Day, but these “b-roll” photo ops are one of those times when the simluation of reality trumps the actual reality. ”The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none.”  It’s true, even if you won’t find that in a pool report.

Obama GOTV literature today.

“I feel great and it was fun, I had a chance to vote with my daughters,” Obama told reporters later on the airport tarmac, “I feel really good.”

Another reporter asked if Obama felt “sentimental.”

“You know I’m sure I will tonight – that’s when polls close,” he said, just before the campaign plane departed for Indiana. “The journey ends but voting with my daughters, that was a big deal. I noticed that Michelle took a long time though. I had to check to see who she was voting for,” he added.

Obama voted at Beluah Shoesmith Elementary School. With more than 50 state and local judges on the ballot, the Democratic presidential nominee spent quite a bit of time at the booth. NBC’s “Today Show” carried a live feed of the long ordeal, and, at one point, an anchor felt compelled to tell viewers that voting did not usually take that long, so people should not be dissuaded from turning out today. A pool report detailed the family scene:

Michelle, Sasha and Malia accompanied [Obama]. Malia went into the polling booth with Michelle and Sasah hung out in her own polling booth looking very grown up. She then looked on as Obama cast his ballot. Later, she hugged Obama’s leg looking impatient… Michelle took longer than Obama to finish her ballot. She did not look up from the ballot at all, while Obama grinned occassionally at his daughters.

With seamless timing, the Obama campaign had Sen. Joe Biden cued up to vote for the cameras as soon as Obama left the booth.

Meanwhile, it seems there will be no footage of President George W. Bush voting today. Both nominees ended up running against the incumbent. Bush already voted by mail to avoid being seen today — and maybe further damaging the possibilities of Sen. John McCain.

Below are the main pages that greet visitors on both sites, taken from an early morning screen grab:

Obama’s aides have turned over the entire site into a call to action. The bright, urgent message enlists people to punch in their zip code and volunteer, or at least see what’s happening in their area. There’s basically no other option.

Sen. John McCain’s page is a different story. It feels like MySpace, automatically playing a video as visitors log on and overwhelming people with a packed menu. There are six different options for getting involved — probably overkill for Election Day — and the top priority is a request for people’s email. It is too late, however, for a campaign to get much out of new supporter emails. The next priority is a persuasion message, which is odd. Election day is about mobilization, not winning people over on message. You drop GOTV fliers on Election Day door-knocking, for example, not health-care white papers.

Sen. Barack Obama’s site pulled about three million unique visitors last week, about double McCain’s take, and today both sites should draw plenty of people searching for last-minute information. Whether voters find any useful, targeted information, of course, depends on what the campaign organizers provide.

Come to think of it, maybe those organizers have “actual responsibilities” after all.