I think you're being a little unfair on Obama. His campaign was no more expensive than McCains and traditionally the Republican's have always been the bigger spenders so it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that the McCain campaign were to also go that way. Also to compare Obama to Blair is a little unfair as if you had watched the televised debates (More 4, so you may not have seen them) you would see that much of McCains policies defied logic and common sense and Obama did not exclude possibly raising taxes an election losing statement (in the US even more so than here).
The black vote was split between Hillary and Obama during the primaries, but Obama won over more of the swing voters and also the women's vote, which is very high and women did not like Hillary all that much because of Iraq and appalling health care stance during her husband's presidency. Hillary also lost the vote to Obama for couple of other reasons, namely she supported the dodgy Iraq war (that so many are now against) and she has spent a lot time backtracking that and it wasn't the first time she'd done that in her senatorial career.
Obama also ran a campaign that actually inspired people to go and vote and voter turnout for this election is one of the highest it has been for decades. Percentage-wise he had a better turn-out than the '97 UK election.
As for playing on his youth, McCain also did that by playing on his "experience" stressing his longevity and as his record isn't that great, perhaps less experience isn't such a bad thing. Obama was not that much younger than Clinton was when he took office and Clinton did have a successful presidency. He took office after 12 years of Republican rule so if anything Blair modelled his campaign on Clinton's rather than Obama on Blair's. By the way in the primaries there was a Republican candidate who was older than McCain who was wiped out very early and part of McCain's campaign was effectively stating a version of 'at least I'm not as old as him'
I think it's going to be an interesting 4 years when Obama takes office in January and an interesting time to see how the US will re-define itself both in terms of domestic policy as well as foreign policy.
The black vote was split between Hillary and Obama during the primaries, but Obama won over more of the swing voters and also the women's vote, which is very high and women did not like Hillary all that much because of Iraq and appalling health care stance during her husband's presidency. Hillary also lost the vote to Obama for couple of other reasons, namely she supported the dodgy Iraq war (that so many are now against) and she has spent a lot time backtracking that and it wasn't the first time she'd done that in her senatorial career.
Obama also ran a campaign that actually inspired people to go and vote and voter turnout for this election is one of the highest it has been for decades. Percentage-wise he had a better turn-out than the '97 UK election.
As for playing on his youth, McCain also did that by playing on his "experience" stressing his longevity and as his record isn't that great, perhaps less experience isn't such a bad thing. Obama was not that much younger than Clinton was when he took office and Clinton did have a successful presidency. He took office after 12 years of Republican rule so if anything Blair modelled his campaign on Clinton's rather than Obama on Blair's. By the way in the primaries there was a Republican candidate who was older than McCain who was wiped out very early and part of McCain's campaign was effectively stating a version of 'at least I'm not as old as him'
I think it's going to be an interesting 4 years when Obama takes office in January and an interesting time to see how the US will re-define itself both in terms of domestic policy as well as foreign policy.
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