You may wish to include a section on the Democratic primaries, and how it influenced the development of Obama's field organization. The lack of substantive disagreement between Hillary and Obama on most major policy issues also made it easier for Obama to unify the party base once the main issue in the general election shifted to the economy.
I think this is probably THE most important issue in this campaign. Given the unpopularity of Bush and the fact that Democratic positions matched the majority of Americans on the major issues of the campaign, this should have been an easy win for any generic Dem. However Obama being black, inexperienced, and new to the political scene swung the pendulum back to the GOP quite a bit IMO. Malicious rumors about his religion weren't exactly helpful either, nor were some of the truths (Wright).
But the Democrats managed to save their candidate by forcing him to run a nationwide primary all the way through the early summer. This gave Obama a tremendous ground game advantage in every battleground state and it offered a wider base of supporters to solicit monetary contributions from. It also made the McCain camp nervous in places like North Dakota, Georgia, Montana, and Nebraska. Obama was able to push the McCain campaign into defending these states because of his strong primary performances.
