1.0 Strategy in 2.0 Times
Inside Barack Obama's Southern strategy.
As a well-traveled field organizer for Sen. Barack Obama, Jason Berry lives on Facebook. But it wasn't of much use when the campaign sent him to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. An agricultural region that lies just beyond the gravitational pull of Washington, D.C., the valley is populated by rural Southerners who network the old-fashioned way—face to face. So Berry's first move was to dispatch volunteers with sign-up sheets to the July Fourth fireworks celebration in Winchester, the largest town in the valley. Now he's concentrating on bake sales, barbecues, ag fairs and other get-togethers that remain central to country life. Berry's—and Obama's—goals are two-fold: to register and turn out supportive voters, of course, but also to create a web of locals who will testify to their personal belief in the candidate. "They're character witnesses," says Berry.
Obama needs them—in the valley and elsewhere in the South—if he plans to make good on his pledge to compete seriously below the Mason-Dixon line. It is a region that essentially has belonged to the Republican Party since the 1960s. Even Virginia, which has been turning blue as its Washington-area suburbs mushroom, hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since LBJ in 1964.
Undaunted by history—or the fact that he is a Yankee with a liberal voting record—Obama is committing staff and major TV advertising in three Southern states: Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia. In all three, the theory is the same: to generate a sky-high turnout among young voters and among the region's heavy concentration of African-Americans. Skeptics call the projections unrealistic and the strategy a fool's errand.
Except in Virginia. "It's in play, no question," says Michael DuHaime, Sen. John McCain's political director. This pivotal moment was years in the making. In 1989, the state elected the nation's first African-American governor, Democrat Doug Wilder. A new generation of voters with no connection to the Old South has flocked to the Washington suburbs for defense and high-tech jobs. In this decade, Virginia has elected successive Democratic governors, both of them immigrants to the state. The first, Mark Warner, is expected to easily win a U.S. Senate seat this year; his reverse coattails could help Obama. The current governor, Tim Kaine, could wind up as veep on the ticket. As for McCain, DuHaime points out that the GOP candidate has strong appeal in the state's vast military establishment and among independents in the suburbs.
Smart-aleck analysts declare that Virginia is no longer a Southern state. But that is only half true. Winchester sports a fancy wine bar, but the Confederate soldier statue still stands just down the street. Rebel general Stonewall Jackson harried retreating Union troops through town in 1862. A century later, a Winchester-based political machine, run by the late Harry Byrd Sr., led a "Massive Resistance" movement against integration. Even though Warner and Kaine ran as NASCAR-loving centrists wary of taxes and of gun control, they got whacked in the valley. "It surprises me that Obama's campaign is penetrating here," says Adrian O'Connor, the editorial page editor of the Winchester Star, which is still owned by the Byrd family.
For Berry, the Obama organizer, the key is not to come off as an alien "penetrating" force, but as an unassuming fellow eager to help the locals unlock neighbor to-neighbor sentiments in a region that the GOP has long taken for granted. "There are lots of disgruntled Republicans coming to us," he says. As the McCain campaign counterattacks—calling Obama every name in the book—Berry will have to rely on his new network idea—"that friends will tell friends: we believe in Barack, so it's OK if you do, too."
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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