Winning The White House 2008

What does it take to win the White House? This book helps students understand both the issues and how and why people vote for one candidate. After discussing the dynamics of the primary campaigns, the authors examine three broad sets of issues that play a key role in voting: foreign policy, domestic policies, and the culture wars. This sets the foundations for an examination of regional similarities and differences in voting patterns, as the varying salience and valence of issues-whether general or specific-is explored across and within regions. Special attention is paid to battleground states. Drawing on concepts from political science, this book advances students' understanding both of the field and the phenomenon.

A month-by-month narrative of the 2008 presidential election leading up to Barack Obama's win in November 2008.

In The Way to Win, two of the country’s most accomplished political reporters explain what separates the victors from the victims in the unforgiving environment of modern presidential campaigns. Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News, and John F. Harris, the national politics editor of The Washington Post, tell the story of how two families–the Bushes and the Clintons–have held the White House for nearly a generation and examine Hillary Clinton’s prospects for extending this record in 2008. Based on years of research, including private campaign memos and White House communications, The Way to Win reveals the surprising details of how the Bushes and Clintons have closely studied each the other’s successes and failures and used these lessons to shape their own strategies for winning elections and wielding power. In the case of George W. Bush, the strategic genius is Karl C. Rove, arguably the most influential White House aide in history. For the first time, Halperin and Harris cut through the myths and controversies surrounding Rove to illuminate in brilliant, behind-the-scenes detail what he actually does–his Trade Secrets for winning elections. In the case of the Clintons, the chief strategist is Bill Clinton himself. Drawing on their fifteen years reporting on and interviewing him, Halperin and Harris deconstruct and decipher the Clinton style, identifying the methods that all candidates can use in their pursuit of the White House. The Way to Win takes a lively and irreverent approach, but Halperin and Harris also show the disturbing ways that American politics has become a Freak Show–their name for a political culture that provides incentives for candidates, activists, interest groups, and the news media to emphasize ideological extremism and personal attack. For the first time, Halperin and Harris describe how Freak Show campaigns orchestrated by the likes of Internet pioneer Matt Drudge forced Al Gore and John Kerry to lose control of their public images (with considerable help from the candidates’ own ineptitude) and lose the White House. On the brink of what will be one of the most intense, most exciting presidential elections in American history, The Way to Win is the book that armchair political junkies have been waiting for. Filled with peerless analysis and eye-opening revelations from the trenches, it is a must read for everyone who follows American politics.

In the days after Donald Trump’s unexpected victory on election night 2016, The New York Times, CNN, and other leading media outlets reached out to one of the few pundits who had correctly predicted the outcome, Allan J. Lichtman. While many election forecasters base their findings exclusively on public opinion polls, Lichtman looks at the underlying fundamentals that have driven every presidential election since 1860. Using his 13 historical factors or “keys” (four political, seven performance, and two personality), Lichtman had been predicting Trump’s win since September 2016. In the updated 2024 edition, he applies the keys to every presidential election since 1860 and shows readers the current state of the 2024 race. In doing so, he dispels much of the mystery behind electoral politics and challenges many traditional assumptions. An indispensable resource for political junkies!

Communicator-in-Chief: How Barack Obama Used New Media Technology to Win the White House examines the fascinating and precedent-setting role new media technologies and the Internet played in the 2008 presidential campaign that allowed for the historic election of the nation's first African American president. It was the first presidential campaign in which the Internet, the electorate, and political campaign strategies for the White House successfully converged to propel a candidate to the highest elected office in the nation. The contributors to this volume masterfully demonstrate how the Internet is to President Barack Obama what television was to President John Kennedy, thus making Obama a truly twenty-first century communicator and politician. Furthermore, Communicator-in-Chief argues that Obama's 2008 campaign strategies established a model that all future campaigns must follow to achieve any measure of success. The Barack Obama campaign team astutely discovered how to communicate and motivate not only the general electorate but also the technology-addicted Millennial Generation - a generational voting block that will be a juggernaut in future elections.

It's time the citizens of the United States take back America, and we all need to do our part. Winning the White House in 2008 is your essential guide to grassroots democracy. Political activist Vernon Lucas Albright provides strategies to win the White House in 2008 by exploring different ways to generate committed public service. Albright discusses grassroots campaign approaches designed for twenty-two battleground states and includes the Ten Basic Tenants needed to win elections. He also examines voter behavior, the grassroots potential of bipartisanship, political interest groups, and historical political strategies. With the wide availability of technology such as the Internet, cell phones, and personal computers, the average American citizen has the opportunity to be part of regional and nationwide movements. You can prevent the further decay of yeoman democracy; keep "town meeting America" from slipping further into history, and put America back in the hands of the people.

Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House is Published in the USA as Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. The American presidential election of 2008 was as riveting a spectacle as modern politics has ever produced. The meteoric rise and historic triumph of Barack Obama. The shocking fall of the House of Clinton - and the improbable resurrection of Hillary as Obama's partner and America's face to the world. The mercurial, at times erratic, performance of John McCain. The mesmerizing and bewil­dering emergence of Sarah Palin. In 2008, the battle for the White House became blockbuster entertain­ment. Everyone was watching. But despite the wall-to-wall media coverage, remarkably little of the real story behind the headlines has yet been told. Race of a Lifetime pulls back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns. How did Obama convince himself that, against enormous odds, he should be, and could be, the nation's first African-American president? How did the tumultuous relationship between the Clintons shape - and warp ­Hillary's supposedly unstoppable bid to return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? What drove her husband's loss of composure and devastating political miscalculations? Why did McCain put the unknown, untested governor of Alaska on the Republican ticket? And was Palin merely as out of her depth as she appeared - or troubled in more unsettling ways? Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story and packed full of exclusive revelations, Race of a Lifetime answers those questions and more. Vivid and novelistic, fast-paced and character­ driven, this is a tour de force: an intimate, often hilarious, sometimes shocking portrait of the quest for power.

Best-selling author Larry J. Sabato once again brings together the nation''s most perceptive analysts and shrewdest observers of American politics to analyze our most recent election: the historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States. This revealing new book by Larry Sabato and his team of experts contains exciting coverage and trenchant commentary on the most stunning election of our time. Peeling back the layers of the political, social, and demographic trends that helped thrust Barack Obama into the Oval Office, the authors of this book toss aside conventional wisdom about 2008 and substitute thoughtful, deeper - and until now, ignored - interpretations of the events and environment that elected our new president. Features - Includes contributed chapters from some of the foremost analysts and scholars who had a front row seat for the campaigns and election, including Justin Sizemore, Rhodes Cook, Alan Abramowitz, Bruce Larson, Michael Toner, Diana Owen, Jeff Gulati, Michael Cornfield, Alex Theodoridis, and Susan MacManus. Each author presents different perspectives on the results, and the resulting mosaic gives readers a comprehensive outlook on the election. - Provides complete and engaging analysis of the most important issues and events leading to Barack Obama''s election, including the political environment for Republicans, the impact of federal election law, state and party rules, the conventions, the impact of "traditional" and "new" media, and the use of new technologies. The authors avoid trendy, tired, and overused political commentary and instead focus on pragmatic research and analysis with practical applications for the reader. - Features original chapters written by Larry Sabato, a nationally renowned election scholar and commentator. - Connects the reader with additional sources of information and opinion beyond the content of the book. - Offers as much for the classroom as it does for the casual reader. Table of Contents Introduction Larry Sabato 1. Conventions: The Significance of an American Institution Justin Sizemore 2. The Election of Our Lifetime Larry Sabato 3. From Republican Lock to Republican Lockout Rhodes Cook 4. How Obama Won and What It Means Alan Abramowitz 5. The Congressional and Gubernatorial Candidates Bruce Larson 6. The Impact of Federal Election Law in 2008 Michael Toner 7. Media in the 2008 Election: 21st Century Campaign Diana Owen 8. The New Media Environment and the 2008 Election Jeff Gulati 9. New Technology and the 2008 Election Michael Cornfield 10. Did the Rules Decide? Alex Theodoridis Conclusion Susan MacManus About the Author Larry J. Sabato is the founder and director of the Center for Politics and the Robert Kent Gooch professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is the author of more than twenty books including Feeding Frenzy: Attack Journalism & American Politics, The Sixth Year Itch: The Rise and Fall of the George W. Bush Presidency, and A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize our Constitution and Make America A Fairer Country.