2007 Obama campaign memo detailing how to defeat Hillary Clinton surfaces

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

As the summer of 2007 turned into fall, presidential candidate Barack Obama was trailing in the national polls behind Hillary Clinton, "the pundits were pouncing, and donors were panicking," David Axelrod, his top strategist at the time, told Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker.

With a Philadelphia debate and the Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner ahead, the Obama team decided in October the frontrunner's main vulnerability was her character, and Axelrod — along with campaign manager David Plouffe, pollster Joel Benenson, deputy communication director Dan Pfeiffer, and strategist Larry Grisolano — put together a memo that Axelrod said was "written for a big Come-to-Jesus meeting, at which Obama wanted us to review the strategy and lay out our plans."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.