2008--The Campaign Year that Was--Highlights, Month by Month

Presidential Election years are the best for political junkies like myself. This year was perhaps the best one I have ever seen, with the endless drama on all sides of the political spectrum. Here's a recap of my favorites. Feel free to share yours at the bottom:

January:
On the Democratic side, it was astonishing to see Barack Obama win the Iowa Caucus. We assumed he would just sweep through the remaining elections, but then the tide turned, and Hillary Clinton took New Hampshire, Nevada, and Michigan & Florida (to be disputed later)

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee won Iowa, and it looked for a little while like it would be a Huckabee/Romney battle. Then McCain won New Hampshire, South Carolina and most importantly, Florida, and really knocked Romney back on his heels. By the end of the month, you could see McCain really had the inside track, but Romney and Huckabee still had life. Rudy, Fred Thompson, and the others were fading fast.

February:
Super Tuesday was like the Super Bowl (although I enjoyed the actual Super Bowl very much--Sorry Pats fans!). Again, the huge surprise was the fact that Obama had played the Clinton Machine to a virtual tie, and seemed to have the momentum back. By the end of the month, the Obama mobile seemed to be close to unstoppable.

Romney won a lot of states, as did Huckabee, but McCain really came out of Super Tuesday the big winner on the GOP side. Romney quit the race, and once the mid-Atlantic states voted, it was all but over. Huckabee stuck around, just 'cuz...

March:
Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, Hillary Clinton had found her path to victory--as the representative of the working class stiff. She took the Ohio and Texas (well, kind of...) primaries, and started to lay the ground work for arguing that she should be the Democratic nominee.

McCain went to Iraq, and got Sunnis and Shia confused. A few times. Then he came home, and hung out with Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, shooting pool, I guess.

April:
Hillary Clinton started to really amp up the campaign, and some nasty comments that Obama's Pastor had made about America, the government, etc, started to get out in the public domain. And Obama had his own issues relating to working class Americans. The tide had turned, Clinton won Pennsylvania by 10 points, and it really seemed as if she could make the case for the nomination.

But Obama had done one important thing during that time. He gave a speech on race, and showed what kind of leader he would be, handling problems, and revealed some of his views on race. It was a moment that may have saved his campaign, and allowed him to fight on.

McCain went on his "Service to America" tour through his old stomping grounds, from Annapolis to Virginia, to Florida, back to Arizona.

May:
The Democratic elections seemed to be just endless. Obama won NC, and fought Clinton to a standstill in Indiana, which put him up for good in the delegate count. But Clinton was making a case for Michigan and Florida to be counted too, and that technically, she had won the popular vote. It was getting a little nasty.

McCain gave some speeches, I think?

June:
The Democrats finally settled the nomination issue, kinda. Obama won the delegates, and was the presumptive nominee. Hillary Clinton gave a very gracious concession speech, and John McCain also gave a speech, intending it to be the first shot across the bow of the General Election. It turned out to be a "learning moment" for the McCain campaign. Don't try to go toe-to-toe with Obama on speeches. McCain's speech was brutal to watch, and it almost immediately put him in a hole going into the Summer. McCain would have better moments...

July:
McCain's campaign was scoring some points on Obama's lack of experience. They dared him to travel abroad, in the hopes he would look naive. In many respects, Obama looked very Presidential, but the Berlin speech was seen by some as over the top, and presumptuous. Still, Obama led in most polls, going into the Olympics and the Conventions in August.

August:
The Democratic Convention was a typical love-in, with a grand ending at Obama's speech at Invesco Field in Denver. The bounce from that speech should have been enormous. But McCain's announcement of Sarah Palin as his VP candidate threw a wet blanket on the whole matter. It was one of the truly brilliant moves of the campaign, or so it seemed.

September: This was really the tale of two months:
The first half saw the rise of Sarah Palin. She gave a tremendous speech at the convention, and had Republicans buzzing at the thought of a new, attractive, female version of their hero, Ronald Reagan. McCain had taken a small lead in the polls, and all seemed well.

Then the bottom fell out. The stock market crashed, McCain started to react in anything but a calm, rational manner, and Sarah Palin's interviews with the major networks started to reveal a high gloss facsimile of a real candidate, without any real substance behind it. By the end of the month, Obama was up by close to double digits, and would never really be challenged again.

October:
This was really the month of the debates, where most observers got to see how the candidates could handle questions, the "big stage" and each other. It seemed the majority of the country was upset about the economy, and all of the drama of the current administration, and wanted Obama, but really wanted to see him in this setting first. While most talking heads thought McCain did well in all three debates, Obama won the polling for each debate, primarily because of his demeanor, and his message of change.

We were introduced to some new terminology as well: Joe the Plumber, Bill Ayres, Joe Sixpack, Maverick, and the rest of the catchy, kitchy phrases were all used, in an attempt by the Republicans to narrow the gap. Palin continued to hammer away at the President, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Her credibility seemed shot with everyone but the party faithful. And McCain seemed to get increasingly bitter and nasty, as he started to see the reality of November 4 coming.

Still, it just didn't seem possible that this country could elect Barack Obama. Had he really beaten Hillary Clinton months earlier? The Republicans hadn't beaten a Clinton in over 25 years! Yet this skinny, former community organizer from the south side of Chicago had managed it. And to beat the Maverick? The Republican campaign machine? Seemed impossible. Yet here we were, on the eve of the election, and there were NO signs that the McCain campaign could pull this off...

November:
The election was almost a letdown, considering that the previous two had gone well into the night, the next week, and in 2000, all the way to the Supreme Court. The world knew, by 11pm EST, that Obama had won.

The rest of the month was a fast shift to pocket book issues. People saw their savings continue to vanish, and jobless rates skyrocket. Obama received high marks for putting together a cabinet that was smart, pragmatic, and centrist in ideology. But issues still abounded. Where was the current President, anyway?

December:
So far, the two major highlights have been the Auto bailout, which could be something we point back to as the beginning of the slide into Depression. We shall see what happens here. Also, we have been watching as an Illinois Democratic Governor put money and greed ahead of the public good, in trying to sell the Illinois US Senate seat. This seems to be a ball of string, about to be unwound. While Obama seems to be coming up clean in the investigation so far, it remains to be seen whether his team was totally above board on this.

So there you have it. A year of highlights for an election of the ages. I am almost disappointed that I have to face 2009 with no promise of a caucus or primary on the near horizon. But there are plenty of other issues to come. The inauguration is only 5 weeks away...