[5] They intensified after both Obama's decisive victory in the race for senator and John Kerry's loss in the concurrent presidential election in November 2004, even though he told reporters then that "I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years.

[9] Many people in the entertainment community expressed readiness to campaign for an Obama presidency, including celebrity television show host Oprah Winfrey, singer Macy Gray, rap artist Common, and film actors George Clooney, Halle Berry, and Will Smith.

[10] In December 2006, Obama spoke at a New Hampshire event celebrating Democratic Party midterm election victories in the first-in-the-nation U.S. presidential primary state, drawing 1500 people.

Obama's economic advisors included chief Austan Goolsbee, who has worked with him since his U.S. Senate campaign, Paul Volcker, Warren Buffett,[23] health economist David Cutler and Jeffrey Leibman.

[34] On August 1 when making his foreign policy speech Obama created controversy by declaring that the United States must be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, with or without the consent of the Pakistani government.

Commentator Bill Maher, who was highly critical of such questions about Obama's patriotism and called it a "non-story" nonetheless referred to the incident as "[t]he first genuine controversy of the presidential campaign.

[43] In late October 2007, two months before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Obama began directly charging his top rival with failing to clearly state her political positions.

[53] The Oprah-Obama tour dominated political news headlines[54] and cast doubts over Clinton's ability to recover her recently lost lead in Iowa caucus polls.

Obama told the students, "I've made some bad decisions that I've actually written about," noting that his "drinking and experimenting with drugs" accounted for a lot of "wasted time" in high school.

[73] At the Democratic debate at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire, on January 5, Obama, Clinton, and Edwards all battled over who best exemplified the buzzword of the campaign, "change".

[102] In his victory speech that night, he said, "Tonight, the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina.

[110] Obama won 13 of 22 states on Super Tuesday (February 5, 2008): Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, and Utah.

[124] Obama's campaign accused Hillary Clinton's team February 25 of circulating a photo of the Illinois senator donning traditional attire – clothing worn by area Muslims – as a goodwill gesture during an overseas trip.

During the February 21, CNN-Univision debate in Austin, Texas Obama responded to the accusation by saying, "The notion that I had plagiarized from somebody who's one of my national co-chairs, who gave me the line and suggested that I use it, I think is silly."

According to the Dayton Daily News, "Sen. Barack Obama packed the Nutter Center like a rock star ... painting himself as a man who will cut through petty partisanship and bring real change to Washington.

[164] Just hours prior Obama's remarks in San Francisco, he spoke in Silicon Valley at another private event, and expressed a much more nuanced understanding of the second amendment and rural America.

[195] On July 6, 2008, during an interview with Fox News, a microphone picked up Jesse Jackson whispering to a fellow guest: "See, Barack's been talking down to black people ...

In particular, the possibility of one candidate gaining more pledged delegates from primary and caucus wins, but losing the nomination to the other due to the decisions of superdelegates, made some Democratic leaders uncomfortable.

"[204] African American superdelegates previously pledged to Clinton, found themselves under pressure to switch to supporting Obama's candidacy; one example being John Lewis, a noted leader of the Civil Rights Movement, marcher in the Selma to Montgomery marches, US Representative from Georgia, and superdelegate, who formally switched endorsements to Obama on February 27, 2008;[205] Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. suggested that those staying with Clinton might face Democratic primary challenges in the future.

[217] Then, on December 26, conservative activist Ted Sampley, co-founder of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, posted a column suggesting Obama was a secret Muslim, heavily quoting Martin's original press release.

[237] In February 2008, the Tennessee Republican Party circulated a memo titled "Anti-Semites for Obama" that featured his middle name and showed a picture of him in African clothes while on a trip to Africa.

[244][245] After negative media coverage and a drop in the polls,[246] Obama responded by condemning Wright's remarks, ending his relationship with the campaign and delivering a speech entitled "A More Perfect Union" at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Ian Brodie (Chief of Staff in Stephen Harper's Prime Minister's Office), during the media lockup for the February 26, 2008, budget, stopped to chat with several journalists and was surrounded by a group from CTV.

On March 4, 2008, Harper initially denied that Brodie was a source of the leak—but he appeared to be referring to a diplomatic memo that described the key conversation between an adviser to Obama and Canada's consul-general in Chicago, Georges Rioux.

Harper asked the top civil servant, Clerk of the Privy Council Kevin Lynch, to call in an internal security team, with the help of Foreign Affairs.

It was released on February 2, 2008, and was a straightforward, star-studded endorsement by a range of actors, musicians, and other celebrities, led by Grammy-winner will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas, singing the actual words of an Obama speech after the New Hampshire primary.

[294] At the end of March 2008, Obama became the first candidate to open a double-digit lead in his national Gallup daily tracking poll results since Super Tuesday, when his competitor Hillary Clinton had a similar margin.

[318] Alan D. Solomont, who led a group that raised $35 million for John Kerry in 2004, signed on with the campaign, saying Obama "is the sort of person America wants in the White House right now.

Much of her fundraising was furthermore ineligible for primary-contest spending, and her campaign is projected to have ended the month in debt by over eight million dollars, one-quarter of that being unpaid fees to consultant Mark Penn.

[338] On June 3, 2008, after the Montana and South Dakota primaries, Barack Obama secured enough delegates to clinch the nomination of the Democratic party for president of the United States.