Word: strategist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Their only hope is to take away votes from McCain," says one Republican strategist. "They don't need to convince people to vote for Mitt Romney, they just need to make sure McCain doesn't get any help from independents and that hard-core conservatives cast some kind of anti-McCain protest vote." If Romney can eke out a close second, he heads to the primary in Michigan - his family's home state, where his father was governor - in a position to finally overtake McCain, probably finishing off that cash-strapped campaign for good. If Romney loses New Hampshire...
...campaign claims that it needs only a small portion of those voters to seal their victory over Mitt Romney. Currently neck-and-neck in the polls, McCain and Romney are expected to split the Republican vote almost evenly. "A thousand of [independents] could vote for Obama," says McCain media strategist Mark McKinnon. "We only need three." McKinnon is a unicorn himself, having expressed his admiration for Obama last year - and reportedly even hinting that he couldn't be a part of a campaign that ran against him in a general election...
...Asked what appeal he'd make to an independent voter trying to decide between the two of them, McCain reacts with shocked straightforwardness, "Why, national security, of course." Obama strategist David Axelrod is equally firm about what, to him, seems like an easy choice: "Whatever appeal Senator McCain might have, I think the war is a troubling thing for a lot of people...
...notoriously fickle "superdelegates" - elected officials and party regulars who are awarded convention spots by virtue of their titles and positions - who might be reconsidering their decisions to back the candidate who formerly looked like a sure winner. And internally, a round of recriminations is being aimed at her chief strategist, Mark Penn, as the representative of everything about her pseudo-incumbent campaign that has been too cautious, too arrogant, too conventional and too clueless as to how much the political landscape has shifted since the last Clinton reign. One adviser summed up the biggest challenge that faces the campaign...
...possible that the most difficult problem is not Obama; it could be Clinton. How can she retool her message - and her identity as a virtual incumbent - to resonate with an electorate that seems to yearn more for change than any other quality? Says one longtime Democratic strategist, who is close to the Clintons: "Fundamentally, she is who she is; she can't change who she is, and maybe this is not her time...