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![]() Both candidates were bidding to become historic “firsts”-the first African American president or the first woman president.īut Obama had three crucial advantages that enabled him to eke out a narrow victory for the Democratic nomination. ![]() Overall, Clinton won twenty primaries to Obama’s nineteen, including victories in most of the large states, notably California, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Other contenders for the nomination, including Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, had already dropped out because of their poor showings in the initial round of primaries and caucuses.įrom February through early June, Obama and Clinton battled fiercely through the remaining primaries and caucuses. Edwards finished a distant third in the state where he was born and dropped out of the race on January 30. Black voters, convinced by the Iowa results that whites would vote for an African American candidate for president, gave him overwhelming support in South Carolina and in subsequent primaries. In the next important test, Obama opened up a narrow lead in the nomination contest by defeating Clinton handily in the South Carolina primary, 55 percent to 27 percent, on January 26. Clinton rebounded to win the New Hampshire primary five days later, edging out Obama by 3 points and crushing Edwards by 22 points. He became the co-frontrunner in the race by winning the crucial Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008, defeating both Edwards and Clinton by an 8-percentage point margin. Former Senator John Edwards, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2004, was also widely regarded at the start of the campaign as a stronger candidate than the inexperienced Obama.ĭrawing on his online base of supporters, Obama initially surprised political pundits by matching Clinton and besting Edwards in campaign fundraising throughout 2007. Initially, however, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton opened a strong lead in the polls, even among African American voters and leaders who admired her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and did not think Obama had much of a chance to win. (After he was elected, OFA was recast as Organizing for America for the purpose of rousing public support for Obama’s legislative initiatives.) With Axelrod again at the helm, the campaign developed a strategy for winning the Democratic nomination that relied on assembling the same coalition of blacks and white liberals that had enabled him to succeed in Illinois, with an additional focus on young voters. Relying heavily on the Internet, the Obama campaign mobilized Obama for America (OFA), a massive grassroots organization of volunteers and donors. Obama announced his presidential candidacy on February 10, 2007, at a rally in front of the Old State House in Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln had given his famous “house divided” speech in 1858. According to annual National Journal evaluations of senators' legislative voting records, Obama ranked as the first, tenth, or sixteenth most liberal member of the Senate, depending on the year. After spending a low-profile first year in office focusing on solidifying his base in Illinois and traveling abroad to buttress his foreign policy credentials as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama spent much of 2006 speaking to audiences around the country and mulling whether to run for president. “Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.Obama’s election to the Senate instantly made him the highest-ranking African American officeholder in the country and, along with the excitement generated by his convention speech and his books ( Dreams from my Father, brought back into print, joined The Audacity of Hope on the bestseller list), placed him high on the roster of prospective Democratic presidential candidates in 2008. The ensuing partisan battles led George Washington to warn of “the baneful effects of the spirit of party” in his Farewell Address as president of United States. Federalists coalesced around the commercial sector of the country while their opponents drew their strength from those favoring an agrarian society. ![]() The Federalists, led by Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton, wanted a strong central government, while the Anti-Federalists, led by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, advocated states’ rights instead of centralized power. Friction between them increased as attention shifted from the creation of a new federal government to the question of how powerful that federal government would be. Political factions or parties began to form during the struggle over ratification of the federal Constitution of 1787.
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