What to Learn From Obama's Success and How's He Gonna Do That?

The success of Obama doesn't lie in is oratory skills and it's a big mistake to think otherwise. Last I checked "I Have a Dream" was a speech full of hope but with little detail on how we were going to get there.

Before anyone says "but he wasn't running for president," no but he was asking people to break the law and put their neck on the line "hoping" that would bring about a better day.

If pundits want to study the success of the Obama campaign you need to look no further than the massive political machine he's built and the very methodical way he's gone about attacking this race, that's where the story lies.

Mind you Obama has taken on and beaten the best political machine the democratic party has had in the past 20 years. The only one that has managed to deliver the White House in the last 30 years. The lesson to be learned isn't that giving inspirational speeches is how you win elections but that running a 50 state strategy is how you win elections and how you win BIG. In Nebraska the governor said, "Hey no one comes and visits us out here. The first person who does gets my vote. Obama visited and Clinton didn't"

He made every state matter. LISTENED to folk and won them over because he paid attention to them and because he knows how to inspire folk to be better than what they have been. Not only that but he used technology in a way that no campaign has done before and he understood the very basic idea of cash flow: it's better to have thousands of small donors give over time than it is to have big corporations or big donors give all at once and then when your well runs dry have no where to turn to for a new influx of cash.

As far as substance. I've never heard anyone complain about a politician so much as I do Obama. His Texas speech was full of policy initiatives he wanted to accomplish. As much as any politician's would be. But now the complaint is "how's he gonna do that?"

Come on. Did anyone ask JFK how he planned on putting a man on the moon? No. it was enough that he said it was gonna happen and he made it happen.

Part of what's going on is that (unlike George W. Bush) Obama (if he wins the general) would really be going in with a mandate from the people and if his coattails are as long as I think they are, a super majority in the house and the senate. That will make much of what he wants to do a hell of a lot easier and much harder to oppose for fear of losing your congressional seat.

I'm not real sure what more the guy needs to do. Hell Hillary hasn't anywhere near lived up to the standards that anyone seems to set for Obama...but hey Black folks have always had to work harder just to prove that they're just as good.