Obama Was Right All Along

The same theory of politics, and life, for 20 years.

In August 2000, a 38-year-old man wandered around the Democratic National Convention, trying to get someone to let him on the floor of the Staples Center, or get him into a party, or just talk to him. Barack Obama had just lost a primary for Illinois’ first Congressional seat to former Black Panther Bobby Rush, and had lost it badly: Obama would later say the campaign went so poorly that, halfway through, “I knew in my bones that I was going to lose. Each morning from that point forward I awoke with a vague sense of dread, realizing that I would have to spend the day smiling and shaking hands and pretending that everything was going according to plan.” (He lost 61 percent to 30 percent.) Stinging from such a resounding loss, Obama went to Los Angeles for the DNC to “get back on the horse.” And nobody noticed him, or cared that he was there.

“I fly out there on whatever connecting flight that was the cheapest and get to the rent-a-car place and present my credit card and the credit card’s rejected. No more money,” Obama would later tell David Axelrod on his “The Axe Files” podcast. “My friend would try to get me into some of the after-parties after the convention and bouncers would be standing there saying, ‘Who’s this guy?’ And ‘He doesn’t have the right credentials.’ I felt as if I was…