Barack Obama Becomes First Black Candidate To Head Major-Party Ticket

AAPP: " Hillary and Bill were playing checkers, while Obama Wins the chess game. "

It was a strategy based on delegates. As noted by the WaPo writers Johnathan Weisman, Shailagh Murray and peter Slevin, Obama minimized Clinton's delegate hauls, while going all out to crush her in states where Dems rarely venture. It was a strategy based on delegates.




Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, appear before supporters in St. Paul, Minn. (Linda Davidson/Post)

A Strategy Was Based On Winning Delegates, Not Battlegrounds

Almost from the beginning, Hillary Rodham Clinton's superior name recognition and her sway with state party organizations convinced Barack Obama's brain trust that a junior senator from Illinois was not going to be able to challenge the Clinton political machine head-on.

The insurgent strategy they devised instead was to virtually cede the most important battlegrounds of the Democratic nomination fight to Clinton, using precision targeting to minimize her delegate hauls, while going all out to crush her in states where Democratic candidates rarely ventured and causes that were often ignored.

The result may have lacked the glamour of a sweep, but tonight, with the delegates he picked up in Montana and South Dakota and a flood of superdelegate endorsements, Obama sealed one of the biggest upsets in U.S. political history and became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to wrest his party's nomination from the candidate of the party establishment. The surprise was how well his strategy held up -- and how little resistance it met. More HERE