Yes We (Still) Can summary

After the Gore campaign, Pfeiffer worked a few small campaign jobs – and then he got his big break: being hired as the communications director for the South Dakota senator, Tim Johnson.

When Johnson made an improbable comeback and was reelected in 2002, some reporters called it the best-run campaign in the United States. This made Pfeiffer an in-demand operative, and soon he was working for the top Democratic senator, Tom Daschle. Eventually, Pfeiffer got a call from Obama’s staff.

Small fortunes can be spent coming up with the perfect political message. But these days, a good message, or even a good slogan, can’t be manufactured – it has to be authentic. Also, you need more than words. You need a compelling story.

Central to Obama’s success was the fact that his campaign was his message. Barack Obama himself represented the hope and change that was central to the message he wanted to deliver. In other words, Obama himself was the “Change We Can Believe In” that his slogan referred to. His life and his experience as a community organizer constituted the very fabric of his authentic and inspiring story. It got people to the polls and Obama into the White House.

Back during the Bill Clinton administration, the president implored his communications team to “win the news cycle.” So, if the day started out poorly with a negative news item, Clinton wanted his team to put a positive spin on it or get a good story out so that, when the evening news aired, they’d be “winning.”

These days, this approach no longer makes sense.

As Pfeiffer sees it, while 2014 may have been the year that Trumpism started to emerge, Trump’s tactics of helping to spread fake news began years earlier.

Back during Obama’s first term, Trump encouraged the fake news being peddled by those who doubted that the president was born in the United States. It was a movement known as birtherism. Indeed, the Obama administration had to deal with fake news on a regular basis, so Pfeiffer has some tips to help future Trump challengers deal with his absurd tactics.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare, was another subject where Pfeiffer saw fake news run rampant. One day, Sarah Palin, a former candidate for vice president, posted a story on Facebook, claiming Obamacare was going to allow for bureaucratic “death panels” to form, which would decide which patients would be cared for based on their “level of productivity in society.”

Needless to say, this story was pure nonsense – and, since they’d been involved in shaping the bill, high-ranking Republicans knew it. But it didn’t matter. Jumping on the fake story gained them political points because it made things difficult for the Obama administration.

If you still don’t think that Fox News is biased in favor of the Republicans, check the Fox News Twitter feed and then look at the feed of the Republican National Committee. They’re eerily similar.

For better or worse, Twitter has become a go-to forum for the daily political discussion. You may gripe that it’s ill-suited for nuanced political discussions, but there’s no denying its power in shaping the conversation.

Pfeiffer was in the hospital during that regrettable Twitter slip-up because his blood pressure was through the roof. Six years in the White House had left Pfeiffer with moments where the left side of his body would tingle and he’d lose the ability to move his leg.

He tried to work through it, but it was clear that every time he got into a heated discussion or a tense situation, he ran the risk of having another debilitating episode. Given the nature of his work, this was hard to avoid.

Like many others, Pfeiffer was pretty confident that Hillary Clinton would win. As Obama had said before the election, no other candidate in history had been as qualified for the job as Clinton.

Looking back on it now, however, it’s clear that there were five important issues that contributed to Clinton’s loss, though Pfeiffer missed them at the time.