BEHIND HOPE, GEEKS
First pass seems to suggest an interesting windfall of both being in the right place at the right time and having the wherewithal to capture the flag, including a math expert at or near center stage.
Man and machine appear to have operated without much grit in the wheels, in a somewhat decentralized way. It's hard to say more at this time (books are being written, though).
WHO'S YOUR DADDY?
If you haven't been paying close attention, here are the folks, as fingered by TIME, because we might hear more these names:
Some — like chief strategist David Axelrod and adviser Valerie Jarrett — came from Chicago and had advised Obama in earlier races. Axelrod's business partner Plouffe had worked in former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt's operation; deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand, who oversaw the field organization, had come from former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle's. Daschle's former chief of staff Pete Rouse served that same role in Obama's Senate office, from which the candidate also brought aboard communications director Robert Gibbs, who had briefly worked for John Kerry. Obama tapped the business world as well, filling key operational posts with executives who had worked for Orbitz [Kevin Malover?], McDonald's and other firms.
Here's AP on the delegate-math guy at the center of the snip-ship strategy:
The research effort was headed by Jeffrey Berman, Obama's press-shy national director of delegate operations. Berman, who also tracked delegates in former Rep. Dick Gephardt's presidential bids, spent the better part of 2007 analyzing delegate opportunities for Obama.....
A more subtle change was the distribution of delegates within each state. As part of the proportional system, Democrats award delegates based on statewide vote totals as well as results in individual congressional districts. The delegates, however, are not distributed evenly within a state, like they are in the Republican system.
Under Democratic rules, congressional districts with a history of strong support for Democratic candidates are rewarded with more delegates than districts that are more Republican. Some districts packed with Democratic voters can have as many as eight or nine delegates up for grabs, while more Republican districts in the same state have three or four.
The system is designed to benefit candidates who do well among loyal Democratic constituencies, and none is more loyal than black voters. ...
Just a note: the delegate-distribution is an interesting insight, so I highlight it, but the full impact of it doesn't seem large enough to say that it was anything more than just one among many contributing factors.
