Obama's Brain Trust

Plouffe began his political career after dropping out of college to work as a field operative for Tom Harkin, staying through the Iowa senator's 1992 presidential bid. He was later hired as Dick Gephardt's deputy chief of staff and managed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2000 before joining Axelrod's consulting firm as a partner. Unlike Axelrod, however, Plouffe is in politics less because of idealism or ideology than a vicious competitive streak.

"David is a very driven Democrat, not a committed leftist or centrist — he wants to win," says Steve Elmendorf, who served as Gephardt's chief of staff. "David is one of the most organized and disciplined people I've ever met in this business. A lot of great political strategists can't manage anything. David is both a good strategist and a very disciplined manager. He doesn't get distracted."

Given how much has gone right with the Obama campaign, it's easy to overlook how flawed its Plan A was. It was a classic momentum strategy: Win Iowa and the rest of the states will fall like dominoes. Just before the Iowa caucus, Plouffe — who, unlike Obama, is a man of few words — rallied the troops with a crisp address, delivered in his stern, pitchless voice. The logic seemed impeccable: "We're gonna win the caucus, then we're gonna win New Hampshire, and on the night of February 5th," he said, cracking his puckish sideways grin, "Hillary's gonna give her concession speech."

Plouffe was wrong about New Hampshire — but instead of digging in his heels, he made a precise and nimble pivot that proved crucial to Obama's victory. Realizing that the momentum strategy was shot, he immediately began deploying operatives to Maine, a state that did not caucus until five days after Super Tuesday — a shift that Clinton failed to make until the morning of February 6th. Thanks to the extra month of organizing, Obama went on to win Maine by 18 points, part of a decisive victory streak in 11 states.

Plouffe had also prepared for the long haul, by crafting a strategy that focused on winning delegates, not just states. "David has got one jones," says Bill Carrick, who worked with Plouffe on Gephardt's 2004 presidential bid. "He has an absolute, insatiable appetite for numbers. Whether it's media buying or polling or voter ID, he will massage numbers, dissect numbers. He is absolutely the quintessential numbers junkie." Driven by his obsession, Plouffe built his own delegate-counting apparatus — a network of operatives positioned inside county courthouses — that could provide him with election-night snapshots of the delegate math without relying on official party pronouncements.

That delegate-counting apparatus turned out to be essential, given the Democratic Party's esoteric and complex rules for divvying up pledged delegates based largely on the differing margins of victory in each and every one of a state's congressional districts. While the Clinton strategy was focused on winning the overall popular vote in big states, Plouffe was parsing data on every district in the country to identify the pivot points that would allow Obama to maximize his delegate haul, even in states he lost.

The strategy paid off after Clinton won the Nevada caucus on January 19th, and the Associated Press went live with a story saying she would take home the most delegates. Jeff Berman, another Gephardt veteran who oversaw delegate-counting for Obama, rushed over to Plouffe at the Chicago headquarters with a giant book of Nevada legal code. "We're going to win the delegates in Nevada!" he said, citing the arcane delegate-selection process in one of the state's congressional districts. Berman knew that Obama had won the popular vote in a key part of the district that still hadn't publicly reported its results, giving him a 13-12 edge in delegates statewide.

"Are you sure?" asked Plouffe.

"Positive," said Berman.