Kevin Xu on Obama’s Campaign and the 2024 Election: Candidates and Their Times

Zhang Xiaojun speaks with Kevin Xu about presidential campaigns and government work. Xu worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and later in the Commerce Department and White House press office; he uses the tech concept of product-market fit to discuss candidates and their political environment.

Xu says he moved first to Canada at age ten and later to the United States. After government service he studied law at Stanford and worked in technology, including international expansion at GitHub; at the time of the interview he wrote a newsletter and invested.

After graduating in 2008, Xu joined Obama’s campaign as a grassroots organizer in Charlotte, North Carolina. He describes himself then as young and idealistic; after the election he moved to Washington.

He compares a campaign to a startup that must scale rapidly. Field staff canvass and make calls, but also recruit and train local volunteers to expand the organization’s capacity.

Campaigns also need fundraising, media, advertising and polling teams. Fundraising ranges from small contributions by ordinary supporters to larger donors, and campaigns use both external and internal polls.

At its peak, he says, the national operation had at least thousands of staff, with headquarters in swing states and offices in major cities. His Charlotte office had about 100 people at its largest.

A temporary campaign may not need processes as mature as a long-lived company’s, but its goal is aligned: winning the election. Xu calls the candidate a largely fixed product and says the team must find a fit with the national environment and turn support into votes.

He became interested in politics after watching The West Wing and applied online to campaign jobs in several states. North Carolina needed staff, so he took two suitcases to a city he had never visited.

The campaign emphasized voter registration and encouraged expanded early voting. Xu says rules differed by state, and providing more opportunities to vote was intended to reduce barriers for working people.

He began by taking registration forms to supermarkets and libraries and asking passersby whether they were registered, letting them complete their own forms. He then recruited volunteers in his assigned area and built a small team.

A daily evening task was calling potential volunteers, often 100 to 200 calls, he says. The team also entered activity data for headquarters to analyze and use in adjusting its work.

Near the end of the campaign, the candidate and supporters, including musicians and other public figures, held local events. Xu recalls that organizers already had full schedules and also had to recruit attendees.

He rarely encountered the opposing campaign directly, though campaigns had staff who attended and recorded opponents’ public events.

After election day, campaign staff generally need new jobs whether they win or lose. Xu recalls an extra month of pay and health coverage after the victory and being allowed to keep a campaign laptop; many people returned to their previous professions.

Xu believes both candidate and campaign team matter. Candidates can improve their delivery during the nomination process, but a team cannot easily transform someone fundamentally unsuited to the role into a different person.

He attributes Obama’s 2008 victory to several factors: the candidate’s appeal, desire for change after two Republican terms, dissatisfaction with war and the financial crisis near the end of the campaign.

In Xu’s account, Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war and the campaign’s economic message fit the moment. As the first Black presidential nominee of a major party, Obama also drew supporters from many backgrounds.

After the campaign, Xu joined the Commerce Department press office under Secretary Gary Locke and later moved to the White House press office. He says the two government roles totaled about three years.

He describes White House reporters working physically close to the press office and directly approaching staff in that area. Press staff checked wording with policy teams before releasing statements to reporters.

Statements could be proactive or respond to events of the day. He says the president did not personally review every statement; involvement depended on the issue’s importance.

Discussing the 2024 election, Xu says a Trump victory was within his expectations, though its margin and the speed of the result surprised him. He notes that he is not a full-time political analyst.

In his analysis, inflation, inequality and dissatisfaction with family economic prospects shaped voter sentiment. He also connects questions about spending on overseas conflicts to the candidates’ messages.

He believes Biden’s late withdrawal shortened Harris’s campaign and added difficulty for Democrats. This is Xu’s post-election interpretation, not a complete account of the result.

Xu says he did not vote for Trump but understands why some voters like him: his distinctive style and direct language can feel less elitist to them. He adds that many people, including some Republicans, strongly oppose him.

He argues that voters tend to care about household finances, jobs and their children’s lives, and may seek a change in government when pessimistic. He also thinks Democrats should reconsider campaign media strategy.

Xu considers long-form podcasts an important US information channel. Comparing Trump’s lengthy Joe Rogan appearance with shorter television interviews, he argues that the format can create a different relationship with listeners.

Asked whether Obama’s message could still fit the United States in 2024, Xu acknowledges possible personal bias but thinks its optimistic vision could retain cross-group appeal. He also notes Trump’s appeal to some traditionally Democratic voters.

He sees the short campaign as a major disadvantage for Harris, saying voters had limited time to form an impression. He presents this as his own view of that campaign.

Xu participated in campaign or volunteer work in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. He says election day itself was often quiet for staff because most work had already been done, though they remained ready for problems.

For family reasons, he did not spend election day 2024 in a campaign office as before; he planted a tree in his backyard. His subsequent views came from reflection and conversations with friends.

Discussing some Silicon Valley figures’ support for Trump, Xu distinguishes support for Trump from adherence to traditional Republican positions. He says Trump differs from those traditions on issues such as tariffs.

He attributes some technology leaders’ dissatisfaction with the Biden administration to issues including cryptocurrency and relations with tech companies. Trump reached out through podcasts and campaign promises; Xu says he does not know the precise breakdown of Silicon Valley votes.

He calls Elon Musk’s extensive personal campaigning for Trump unusual among technology leaders and discusses friction involving the Biden administration and unions. These are Xu’s interpretations of Musk’s motivations.

Speaking in late 2024, Xu says campaign promises of deregulation and support for cryptocurrency appealed to some in technology, while implementation remained to be seen. He also identifies policy uncertainty as a business risk.

He notes that US antitrust attention to large technology companies spanned administrations. On AI, he sees a 2024 bipartisan emphasis on US competitiveness and competition with China, while policies can still differ.

Xu says both politics and technology require translating broad goals into detailed, repetitive daily work: campaigns win support person by person, while companies build, sell and continually adjust.

He returned to technology after taking computer-science courses at Stanford and because he remained optimistic about its potential benefits.

He argues that technology’s growing role in the US economy has made cooperation and friction with government more significant. AI companies’ early outreach to Washington is one example in his view.

He uses autonomous-driving approvals to illustrate the relationship between technology products and state and federal regulation, citing reports of a possible federal framework. The discussion reflects possibilities in late 2024, not a claim about rules later enacted.

Finally, Xu predicts that Trump’s team would work to carry out campaign promises and cautions against assuming every statement was merely election rhetoric. This was a prediction at the time of recording. Zhang then closes the program.