Obama and the 2008 Election Campaign

The Presidency of Barack Obama, 2009-2017

In this course, Dr Clodagh Harrington (De Montfort University) examines the presidency of Barack Obama. We begin in the first module with Obama’s strategy and performance in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries and then the presidential election itself. In the second module, we think about President Obama’s relationship with Congress from his ‘honeymoon’ period in which the Democrats enjoyed majorities in both the House and the Senate through to the aftermath of the 2010 midterm elections which saw the party lose control of the House. In the third module, we move on to think about the relationship between Obama and the Supreme Court, focusing on his appointments and some landmark decisions made by the court during his presidency. In the fourth module, we think about Barack Obama in relation to the institution of the Presidency and consider how his time in office fares against other presidents of the modern era. In the fifth and final module, we evaluate Obama’s legacy, including his historic status as the first African-American president and his major legislative contributions to the United States.

Obama and the 2008 Election Campaign

In this module, we think about Obama’s 2008 election campaign, focusing in particular on: (i) Obama’s remarkable personal background and mixed-heritage, (ii) his surprise victory over Hillary Clinton in the Democrat presidential primaries, (iii) his revolutionary use of technology and social media in both canvassing and fundraising, and (iv) his ability to combine this with more conventional grassroots and face-to-face campaigning tactics.