LogFAQs > #985966293

Dio posted...

Obama was a gifted orator the likes we'll likely never see again. If we have to rely on another Obama to ever win then we're well and truly fucked.

Obama didn't succeed just due to skill. He identified the weaknesses of conventional campaigning and he intentionally challenged them.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/11/26/the-relaunch

I asked Obama whether he thought that journalists respect Clinton for being so good at politics. Absolutely. I dont think that he began, at which point Robert Gibbs, his communications director, interrupted to say that the correct word was revere. Obama smiled and added, I think a classic example was when Adam Nagourney writes on the front page of the New York Times an admiring piece about how Hillary has finessed the fact that she voted for the war and gotten people to forget about it. The article, which was co-written by Patrick Healy and published early last August with the headline SLOWLY, CLINTON SHIFTS ON WAR, QUIETING FOES, was hardly admiring. When I asked Nagourney about Obamas contention, he replied in an e-mail, This was a very straightforward and simple story: reporting the fact that Mrs. Clinton had repositioned herself on the war in a significant way, and had done so apparently unnoticed by the press anddare I say?her opponents.

It is often true that political reporting is overly focused on tactics, and, as Obama argues, that coverage of the Clinton campaignits professionalism and organizationhas at times been fawning. Obamas pique at the Times piece was revealing, suggesting a hope that journalists would make the case against Clinton that Obama himself had declined to make; the Philadelphia debate marked the beginning of his realization that neither his surrogates nor the press were adequate substitutes. He had to make the case himself, and so he rolled out his hard-truths theme. The response from Hillary Clinton so far has been scorn. For the life of me, I dont understand what my opponents are trying to achieve, she told the Time columnist Joe Klein. When he asked Clinton about her reluctance to support funding Social Security with higher payroll taxes on the wealthy, she replied, I am not going to support a trillion-dollar tax increase. In explaining why her energy-independence plan is superior to Obamas, she said, Its got to be politically done.