carol leigh let me start with you.what point did the obama campaign, did the obama team begin to think about how they wanted to position themselveses and how did they do it? >> very early. they-- the first step that they took was to determine that they were going to run in a terrible economy, and they needed a message that would be sailiable, regardless of what was happening in the economy, so they settled on this notion that they wanted to make the election about a choice, where voters were going to look and decide which candidate was going to stick up for them. and that's why the president hammer on the middle class message. that was an early decision. >> woodruff: even before they knew who their opponent was. >> exactly. their opponent they always assumed was going to be the economy essentially. as time moved on and they figured it was definitely going to be romney they zeroed in on him. and there were a couple of pivotal moments throughout the campaign and one came december of 2011, where a bunch of the president's