The last couple of days were really busy, but today I had some time to get a game of The Political Machine 2008 in.  I thought it would be a fun opportunity to make an AAR while I was at it.  I played a quick game with just 21 turns, and after some thought I decided to take on Barack Obama.  I didn't want to us one of the default characters, so I went through and made my own candidate from scratch.  Who would make a better candidate than myself, right?

I customized my candidate to my liking, giving him a more conservative and traditional leaning than my opponent. 

Starting in my home state of Florida I immediately set off to deploy some Campaign Headquarters in some key states for me.  Those would be Texas, California, and Ohio.

Obama seemed to follow that strategy for the most part, but after a few speeches and fundraisers in those states I moved on to some other battleground states.  New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan are states I built Consulting Offices in.  For my strategy I wanted to keep a constant eye on the polling data, so that is the view I kept for nearly the entire game.

Building up until the later turns of the game.  I tried to balance speeches, advertising, and fund raisers.  I chose to run ads, mostly radio or TV, only in significant states or ones i was having trouble with like New York.  New York was definitely a tough state for me, and probably the one I spent the most time in. 

By this time I had some significant special interest needs, so I sought some endorsements, mainly from business and taxpayers unions.  In the states I was having trouble with it didn't hurt to drop some smear merchants and PR consultants in.  Other states that were more moderate I made sure to keep a speech writer on hand.  If it came down to it, I was prepared to launch some intimidators as well.

The national polls between Obama and myself were fairly close, and staying nearly even given the margins.  My final tactic was to hit Obama with gas prices.  State polls were showing this was an important issue across the board, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to shore up my base, and win over some independents as well.

I hit Obama with ads about him supporting high gas prices, and did several speeches on the gas topic too.  I also tackled some interviews that really seemed to fortify my base.  That seemed to work as some of my moderate states seemed to turn in my favor.  Just a few more turns of that and it was time for election day!

In the end I took out Obama with both the popular vote and electoral college.  I won most of the states I was shooting for, with the exception of California.  New York was very close, but I seemed to pull it off with some last minute campaigning in the last turn.  Overall, I had a blast playing even though it was a short game.  I can't wait until the weekend to go head on in the campaign.