"THE INVISIBLE HAND . . .": OBAMA SMOKES TO VICTORY IN VA & NC BY BUMMING CIGARETTES

October 2009

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

OBAMA SMOKES TO VICTORY IN VA & NC BY BUMMING CIGARETTES

By Philip Morris NEWPORT NEWS

So how did Barack Obama turn North Carolina and Virginia BLUE? In a revealing look at the Exit Polls in VIRGINIA & NORTH CAROLINA it was the SMOKER VOTE that put Virginia and North Carolina in the BLUE.

Mr. Barack Obama campaigned in Tobacco country promising CHANGE and SMOKERS in NC & VA took Obama's mantra inside the voting booth. Seventy-Five percent (75%) of Smokers in NC & VA chose Obama over McCain. "There have been a couple of times during the campaign when I fell off the wagon and bummed one, and I had to kick it again," Obama tells the November issue of Men's Health. However, in researching this story Philip Morris has learned that Obama was telling only part of the story, the truth of the matter is that it was strategic move to bum cigarettes off typical smokers in rural Virginia and North Carolina. In discussing this matter with a Senior Adviser of the Obama campaign, who talked freely on the condition the advisor's identity would remain secret, stated that, "President-Elect Obama at beginning of his presidential campaign had a meeting with his top campaign advisers and in that meeting Mr. Obama circled the state of Virginia and said, 'if I win Virginia, uh, (pause) I will uh, be the uh, uh, the President,' so a strategy was devised in that secret meeting by seeking a demographic that crossed all voting groups in Virginia and that demographic was Smokers." The Senior adviser continued, "You see, Smokers are black, white, republicans, democrats, independents, old, young, male, female, etc. , so we developed what the Obama campaign termed Burn Baby Burn or BBB for short, to secure the smoker vote in Virginia." "Our BBB strategy was simple, as you know, McCain held a significant lead in both Virginia and North Carolina after the Republican National Convention, so the Obama campaign implemented Burn Baby Burn."

"On the campaign trail in Virginia, Mr. Obama would puff a cigarette while he spoke of change, or Mr. Obama would bum a cigarette from a typical smoker on the campaign trail stopping to puff and inhale while he connected with the bitter Bible-thumpers." "The polling reflected that it was working, by mid-October Obama was leading outside the margin of error in Virginia." BBB worked so well the campaign deployed the strategy in the heart of Dixie, North Carolina & Tobacco Road." "The success we had in North Carolina is exemplified by that chance encounter with Joe, Joe the Smoker." "At one point we had Mr. Obama jogging down Tobacco road with a Marlboro Menthol dangling from his mouth ( Mr. Obama brand of choice is anything Menthol: Marlboro, Kool, Newports)." The Senior Adviser continued, " Obama was jogging with some reporters and a cameraman, when he saw a typical bitter, rural, white, smoker playing catch with his son in typical small rural front yard, so Obama stopped and began to chat with the typical white person named Joe, and while they were talking Joe asked, 'Mr. Obama I am all out of smokes, can I have your smoke and I will vote for you?'" As you know, Mr. Obama took one more puff from the Marlboro Menthol Light and gave it to Joe the Smoker and as they say in Tobacco Road McCain's chance of winning went up in smoke." "Joe the Smoker puffed that menthol down to its last ash and smokers across Virginia and North Carolina realized Obama was a true smoker just like them and he would even give his last smoke to win a vote."

I contacted the McCain campaign in regard to this story and a top adviser within McCain's inner circle confirmed that by late October that the polling data within the McCain camp showed a shift in smokers going for Obama. "The McCain campaign even developed an ad showing McCain smoking while as a POW, but by then it was to late and Senator McCain dumped the ad."

I wanted to get the smokers take on this story, I found a group of six typical Virginia smokers smoking outside their office-complex. All six smokers voted for Obama. My question was easy, why? All of them agreed because Obama is just like us he is a smoker and he promised Change. I continued, what type of Change did he promise? They all were silent and looked at each other and then one of the male smokers responded, "well if the President can smoke in the White House, he is going to change it so we can smoke inside again." All the smokers shook their head in agreement, and I asked, did Mr. Obama say that? "Well not exactly, but that is what he is going to do."

In January 2007 Fox News Anchor Josh Gibson ran the story of Obama's "Dirty little secret," and talked of Obama's cigarette smoking. Mr. Gibson asked the question, "Would you vote for a smoker as President?" The answer is Yes, Virginia and North Carolina have decided that there is a new Marlboro Man and his name is Barack Obama.