Why did Obama win the 2008 election?

There is a message board that I visit and a school teacher from New York gave his analysis of the 2008 election, which I thought was informative.  I asked the questions on November 5, 2008 and he provided the answers.  I think the main reasons Obama won are that Bush was unpopular, people were excited for a black President, and Obama does sound inspiring sometimes.

Why was Obama elected?
Why is Bush so unpopular among Obama's voters?
Why did red states turn blue?
Why did people vote for him, while disagreeing on issues, or not even knowing the issues?
Do most people want us out of Iraq?
Do most people want more government involvement in the economy?
Do most people want us to have discussions with our enemies?

A)Why was Obama elected? He got more votes. Why?
1) More money. Much, much more money. I'm not sure the excess cash gave him the victory, but it surely increased his margin.
2) Overwhelming support from the black community (and I can't blame them)
3) More articulate and attractive than his opponent.
4) Strategically smarter than his opponent (politically, anyway)
5) Not in Bush's party, and Bush is terribly unpopular.
6) Unashamed media bias, with detailed reports on the financial history of Joe the Plumber, but nary a word about the daily stupidities uttered by Joe the Biden.

B)Why is Bush so unpopular among Obama's voters? Depends on the Obama voters.
1) Black voters are convinced Republicans are racist (and we have not done near enough to fix this problem)
2) Young voters are against the war (see #6), and think a black president is a cool idea.
3) Bush is conservative, Dems are liberal.
4) Bush shed his white collar, Harvard educated background to embrace the image of a Texas hayseed. They look down on anyone who refuses to bow to "coastal culture."
5) Bush is rhetorically challenged, which his opponents mistake for stupidity.
6) Bush does what he believes is right, and is at peace with those decisions regardles of the polls. This makes him appear distant, or ill informed, or uncaring, but more importantly, it kept him from effectively using the bully pulpit to build popular support for what he's done (I bet less than 1 voter in 10 knows Bush was greeted by adoring masses when he visited Africa).
7) I know of no President who did not wear out his welcome after 8 years (even Reagan, to a lesser degree).
8) Bush does not concede the superior enlightenment of the Europeans.

C)Why did red states turn blue? They were, mostly, swing states.
New Mexico switched because there are many hispanics, who were alienated by the Republican efforts to stop illegal immigration.  Virginia and North Carolina's demographics have been changing as northerners move down south. Also, they have a substantial black population (Wyoming, not so much).  Iowa? McCain hardly put up a fight.  Florida? Not sure. Hispanics would be my guess, but that state is going to be a bellwether for a long time. Expect it to go with the winner for the forseeable future.

D)Why did people vote for him, while disagreeing on issues, or not even knowing the issues?
Most people are ill informed. They have busy lives and concerns that may not leave them the time that some of us have to ask these questions and dig into the issues. And the issues themselves are often complicated, so that even the informed voters will have a hard time telling which candidate's ideas are really superior.

E)Do most people want us out of Iraq?
Bush failed by making Iraq about WMD's (something I strongly warned against, but he wasn't listening, likely because he was not in earshot). He failed to adapt quickly to insurgent strategies. He failed to remove Rumsfeld before the 2006 electon. And he still can't make the case for being there as well as I can (and he won't put me in front of a mic). And the media, I think, felt guilty about not challenging Bush more during the run up to the war, and, since many of them are left-leaning, saw this as their chance to "make a difference" as the media did in the 60s with Vietnam.

F)Do most people want more government involvement in the economy?
Like wolves stuck in a trap, they just want the pain to stop and don't much care if they have to gnaw off their foot to do it. The simple truth is most people don't have a consistent philosophical world view about government involvement. They just have a "what gives me more" mentality, and the outlook is usually short term. If the government is providing more, they will vote for more government.  That said, the majority of voters were against the bailout, but they did not have a candidate on their side.

G)Do most people want us to have discussions with our enemies?
Like many bad ideas, it sounds reasonable on first blush. I'm guessing, in normal life, if you disagree with someone, you don't jump them as they get out of their car. We are all taught at an early age to talk out our differences, that fighting is "bad" or at least a last resort.  The problems is that, I think, too many people assume our enemies share our values, and, more importantly, value peace.  I've long maintained that peace is a problem. Too many people want peace. Peace is not a goal. If peace is a goal, then you will give up anything to have peace, and that includes nuclear weapons in Iran and Iraq. To me, freedom is a goal. To have freedom I must have security from my enemies, security from my government, and the ability to protect myself. And that, in turn, brings peace.

Here is what another person on the message board had to say:

I’ve been trying to get a handle on what went wrong in this election, and have noticed that the overriding characteristic of this election cycle has been the sheer irrationality of the voters combined with the stunning realization that it hasn’t made any difference at all what information has come out about Obama, or what McCain has said on the campaign trail, or even what comes out of Obama’s mouth (“I want to spread the wealth around.”) — it just doesn’t make any difference.

The question becomes: “Have we seen this before?”
The answer, I believe, is yes: Jimmy Carter vs. Gerald Ford - 1976.

The same dynamics that applied to that election seem to apply in the extent case: voters are acting irrationally to punish an administration previously in power whom they felt betrayed them in some egregious way. Just as Ford was punished by voters for Nixon’s Watergate sins, McCain is being punished for Bush’s mishandling of the Iraq war, the financial crisis, and many other lesser perceived offenses.

It didn’t matter that Ford had nothing to do with Watergate, that he was an experienced, capable (if not inspiring) leader; it also mattered not that his opponent was an untested peanut farmer governor of the hick state of Georgia (apologies to all competent, educated Georgians), and a compulsive micro-manager, just as it doesn’t matter that McCain spent more time in the Hanoi Hilton than Obama has spent in the US Senate, that Obama has no record of achievement or major executive experience while McCain has a long, even bipartisan, history of getting something done in the US Senate, or that Obama has kept huge swaths of his history obscured from scrutiny and is almost surely a neo-Marxist in his political outlook.

It doesn’t matter, because in both cases — today, and 32 years ago — the voters went berserk and acted irrationally, immune to any evidence or rational arguments, bent on "punishing" a previous administration even if it requires shooting off their own foot to do so. If either Carter or Obama were caught in bed with a live boy AND a dead girl, it would matter naught, and thus, in the end, it doesn't, and didn't matter what McCain or Ford did.

Carter was a feckless clown, and basically incompetent as a president — leading his fellow Democrats, who seized control of Congress along with him, to impose policies that assured the US of another 4 years of stagflation, oil shortages, massive unemployment, and mandatory thermostat settings, while they decimated the US National Security capabilities, including, but not limited to turning the clandestine side of CIA into an adult version of the Boy Scouts.  Wouldst that Obama were only that bad.

The lesson here is that that this election was not about ideology; Obama's victory does not signify a radical change in the electorates' ideological preferences. It means that they thought Bush and the Republicans needed a thrashing, and that McCain was the most convenient club with which to clobber Bush, and Obama was more than happy to use McCain to apply the beating.

And here are more of my thoughts:

131 million people voted, which was a new record.  Obama received 52.9% of the popular vote compared to 45.7% for McCain.  The 7.2% margin was the largest since 1996, when Clinton beat Dole by 8.5% and that year Clinton received 379 electoral votes, which is slightly more than the 365 votes Obama won.  A higher popular vote percentage was achieved by the winner in 1988 when Bush received 53.4% of the vote against 45.6% for Dukakis.

If Obama had kept his campaign promise to work with the Republicans, then he might have turned out to be okay as a President.  He does deserve credit for having a great get-out-the-vote program and for being the first black President.  I hope this has a positive impact on the black community, both in their behavior and in their voting habits (so they aren't so much in lock step).

The polls were actually right, as opposed to 2004 when they exaggerated Kerry's performance.  This result disproves the notion that the first black President would be a Republican.  I find it disturbing that a man with his background could become President.