Ezra:
One interesting takeaway of last night's results is that it doesn't seem to be Obama's charisma that's really responsible for his huge, gamechanging wins in Iowa and South Carolina. It's his organizing. The basic pattern seems to be that when he can really focus on and organize a state, he can boost what would be a basic victory into an astonishing triumph. When he can't -- when he has to campaign in a more glancing, media-driven way -- he either squeaks by, wins normally, or loses altogether. But for all the talk of the guy's cosmic electability, his results are uneven, varying wildly even across demographically similar states, and all sorts of voters seem perfectly immune to his charms.
As someone who spent the last few days working obsessively for the Obama campaign, I find this funny. I guess I always thought this was obvious. Obama's a community organizer at heart, so he's trying to build a movement, not run a campaign. That's why his speeches, for example, always begin with what Ezra called "movement boilerplate." I think that's an unfair critique of last night's speech - last night he was speaking to members of the movement about their victory, not to uncommitted voters - but it does raise what may be a critical question going forward.
In the smaller states, Obama's movement approach has been and should continue to be successful. In fact, in caucus states his approach may become the new textbook for how to win big. But if he's going to win this nomination, he's going to need to win either Ohio or Texas, and then go on to do well in PA. With 5 weeks to prepare for PA, that shouldn't be a problem, but in the others time is tight. And here Ezra might be on to something. In those states, it might help significantly if Obama were to flip his approach - in Ezra's words, to "begin leading with the appeal to the unconvinced, not the paean to his movement." He's been honing his critique of the Clinton years these past few weeks, but going forward I think he needs to make it much more explicit.
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