US elections: Barack Obama juggernaut 'will crush John McCain'
By Toby Harnden in Des Moines, Iowa
21/05/2008
Senator Barack Obama has established a battle-tested 50-state grassroots organisation and fundraising “juggernaut” that will crush John McCain in November, according to his senior advisers.
With the Illinois senator declaring himself “within reach” of the Democratic nomination after achieving a majority of the pledged delegates - those allocated by vote - on Tuesday, his campaign has already pivoted to preparing for the general election against Mr McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Although publicly heaping praise on Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s Democratic rival, and carefully avoiding putting pressure on her to drop out before the final states vote on June 3rd, the Illinois senator’s staff is impatient to launch a full-scale offensive against Mr McCain.
But they believe that the ferocious fight Mrs Clinton has put up has helped them build an organisation of unprecedented strength.
“I don’t think John McCain realises what he’s in for,” said one adviser. “We’ve created a juggernaut,” said another, “and it’s going to overwhelm him.”
They cite their internet fundraising operation, the grassroots organising network that secured victory over Mrs Clinton by winning a series of caucus states and hundreds of thousands of idealistic young volunteers as crucial advantages over Mr McCain.
Democrats have attracted colossal numbers of new voters - in just seven primary states in March and April, some one million new party members were registered.
At Mr Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago, the focus is firmly on the general election. Even on primary day on Tuesday with contests against Mrs Clinton in Kentucky and Oregon a large sign in the open plan office announced: “Countdown to Nov 4th -167 days”.
Joe Trippi, a Democratic consultant who pioneered some of the successful grassroots and internet techniques when he ran Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004, said that John McCain is already in “deep, deep trouble” because of a poor organisation and an anaemic fundraising total of about a fifth of the $500 million raised by Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton.
“Obama’s got the strongest organisation in history because of what he’s done with the internet and plugging volunteers into the paid organisers operation. McCain’s team is in a shambles. He has no organisation and no grassroots fundraising operation.”
More than 100 staff and volunteers, the majority of them in their 20s and dressed casually, work in the Obama headquarters, leased from the consulting firm Accenture on the 11th floor of a downtown skyscraper.
The atmosphere is akin to that of an internet start-up company - relaxed but with an earnest calm. Only a handful of senior staff have glass offices and there is none for Mr Obama himself, who drops in every time he returns to Chicago.
Although Mrs Clinton scored a 35-point victory in Kentucky, Mr Obama’s comfortable double-digit win in Oregon put him a whisker away from securing the Democratic nomination. On Thursday, he begins a three-day trip to Florida, a key swing state that is a must-win for Mr McCain.
Mr Obama has quietly begun to take over the Democratic party. Paul Tewes, who masterminded the Iowa victory in January that stunned Mrs Clinton and set Mr Obama on the path to the nomination, is expected to expected to run the party during the general election.
There have also been overtures to key members of Mrs Clinton’s staff.
David Axelrod, Mr Obama’s chief strategist, is understood to have held talks with Patti Solis Doyle, a senior Clinton adviser who was ousted as her campaign manager in February.
Mr Obama’s advisers believe he can win in states such as Iowa, Colorado, Virginia, New Mexico and Missouri that President George W. Bush won in 2004, though they concede they have work to do in Michigan and Florida, where he has not campaigned extensively because their primaries were disallowed by the party.
“We’ve become a very tested organisation, “said Robert Gibbs, Mr Obama’s communication director and his closest aide after Mr Axelrod. “We’ve built organisations in every place int his country. We don’t have to start building anything from scratch.
“Once we become the nominee, that’s going to be tremendously important for the fall [autumn] because as we’ve seen in the last two presidential elections, it’s all about turnout. We think we can not only expand the map in terms of the states in play but also expand the electorate within each one of those states.”
Mr Obama’s campaign team has been remarkably stable with his inner circle of Mr Axelrod, Mr Gibbs, David Plouffe, the campaign manager, and others remaining unchanged.
In contrast, Mr McCain has sacked or lost a string of senior aides, when his campaign ran out of money and virtually collapsed last July and again this month when at least five advisers left because of conflicts over their lobbying for businesses and foreign governments.
This week, Mark McKinnon, Mr McCain’s media adviser, stepped down because, as he said last year, electing Mr Obama would “send a great message to the country and the world”.
Mr Trippi said: “Obama has been battered, beaten, screamed at, yelled at, kicked and - nothing, totally unflappable, his staff’s unflappable, no schisms. McCain has imploded twice. So you have to have more confidence in Obama’s ability to put a team together and keep it together.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/democrats/2002809/US-elections-Barack-Obama-juggernaut-%27will-crush-John-McCain%27.html 
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