Interesting tidbits abound, like Axelrod's lack of forsight and vision when it came to Obama's potential, Obama's persistence in pursuing Axelrod for a lead position on his political team, and Axelrod's role in persuading Obama to aim for the Presidency in 2008.
Most revealing of all may be the amount of strategy that was put into making a black man acceptible to white voters. It seems that in this campaign Barack Obama's blackness has often almost been beside the point in this contest, especially when compared to predecessors like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. But, as Zengerle highlights, that air of post-racial, post-partisan politics was indeed well-crafted. Of Axelrod's work on the 1989 mayoral race of black state senator Michael White:
Axelrod believed the other crucial vehicle for winning his candidate the votes of Cleveland's white residents was what he's called "third-party authentication"--in other words, endorsements from respected individuals or institutions that whites put a lot of stock in. "David felt there almost had to be a permission structure set up for certain white voters to consider a black candidate," explains Ken Snyder, a Democratic consultant and Axelrod protégé .
Axelrod, it seems, has developed the winning formula for black candidates to grab freely from the white electoral pool:
The self-described "keeper of the message" for Obama's presidential bid has taken the lessons he learned from his mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns and made them cohere into something that approaches a unified theory of how to elect a black candidate--emphasizing biography, using third-party authentication, attacking with an unconventional sideways approach, letting voters connect to the candidate by speaking to them directly in ads, and telling voters that supporting the black candidate puts them on the right side of history.
There are many, many revealing and fascinating bits in the piece. If you want to know how we got to this moment, read it.
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