There’s been a lot of talk recently about how the Obama campaign had a big technological advantage over the Romney campaign. It is certainly true that the Obama campaign contacted many more voters personally and that Obama beat the pre-election-polls pretty badly (even Nate Silver only had Obama winning by 2.5). There’s also some evidence that these two facts are likely linked:
Two political scientists at Yale, Donald Green and Alan Gerber, went out and did a field experiment, which was a big deal at the time because political science lagged behind other social sciences in using field experiments to measure cause and effect in elections.
The first experiment was that they created a local GOTV [get out the vote] drive in New Haven and had voters get a reminder from a postcard, a canvasser, or paid callers, and then had a control group, who got nothing. And we learn there that the phone call group had no increase in voting, mail had a small increase, and there was a big boost from the in-person contact.
Discussions of the role of technology in politics will surely increase as the country falls under the spell of big data, which has now supplanted chaos, black swans, and tipping points as the most overused phrase in high-brow public dialog.
Although, I’m bullish on the Democratic party’s prospects, I’m extremely skeptical of the idea that we’re likely to have any longterm technological advantage. I read a long excerpt from Tom Edsall’s post-2004 election book “Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power” about how the Rovians were going to crush Democrats with super-genius micro-targeting. I can’t get those excerpts on-line but here’s a blurb from the dust jacket (by John Judis, who is pretty sharp):
“Tom Edsall is the best political reporter in America. His new book, Building Red America, makes a good case for why the Republicans are likely to stay a step ahead of the Democrats over the next few elections. I hope he is wrong, but Edsall, who brings a host of new considerations to bear, is a hard person to argue with.
In retrospect, it was obviously stupid to predict a long-term Republican majority (Edsall argued that one was likely) when Democrats were already winning by large margins among the youngest voters, but I think the emphasis on gimmicky marketing was misplaced, irrespective of that. All the direct mail in the world wasn’t going to convince voters to like the Iraq War or economic stagnation much less convince Latinos that the Republican party doesn’t hate them.
I’m hopeful that today’s Democratic party knows that it needs to treat issues like income inequality and immigration to become a powerful majority, that there’s no smart-ass high-tech way to do it.
Todd
On SyFy, they’re electrocuting some snow lizard.
jon
I’m still getting daily or nearly-daily emails from the Obama campaignfolk. Sometimes they’re informative. Usually they’re just junkmail. But I don’t unsubscribe, because I know that in less than two years I’ll have easy links to give money where it’s needed. And they’ll be more efficient in reaching people with money to give. Not big amounts, but a better return on investment for those who I wish to support. What’s not to like?
I don’t see why conservatives couldn’t do the same thing, but if I could get Koch and Adelson-sized grants I doubt there’s as much push for innovation. Plus, every small dollar contributor probably got three boxes of ammunition last week so they can’t afford to send $50 to some pivotal campaign in Missouri. Obama should announce that he has no intention of limiting the sale of ammunition and do so just before the 2014 midterms.
pamelabrown53
“…there’s no smart-ass high-tech way to do it”.
That’s what I hope won’t be missed in going forward. Obama used every technological means to his advantage but it was always about boots on the ground.
Hunter Gathers
The Republican party would very much like to be able to moderate itself on some major issues. The problem is that the Conservative Movement won’t allow it. They would rather wallow in their own shit than have to give a flying fuck about the people who don’t give them their money or their votes. The Conservative soap opera is an incredibly easy way to make money. If you were a GOP pol, would you rather go left on immigration or surrender a bit on taxes, or would you continue to kiss Shelly Adelson’s ass so you can continue using his donations to your PAC to live high on the hog? Not getting money from creepy billionaires makes it kind of hard to afford super pricey hotel rooms, expensive wine, consultants and TV ads. Why moderate when you can strike it rich being a political carnival barker?
Petorado
At the time, Edsall was pretty wise to think the Republican advantage could endure. They not only had momentum, money, and hot button issues that turned out their base, they also had the religious right providing a lot of boots on the ground for their GOTV effort. But not even in those days of predicting peak wingnut could we have envisioned the degree of Republican insanity we now experience. Nor did anyone see how catalyzing a figure Obama would be and the competence of the election apparatus he would assemble.
Mike G
With the authoritarian Repukes’ love of centralization and top-down command, I predict they’ll focus heavily on a ponderous, Death Star-like IT system for the next election, to the detriment of unglamorous footwork. It will greatly enrich some corporate insiders, and which “nobody could have predicted” will be a big disappointment in terms of results.
quannlace
Eh, this is just another blankie that the GOP is using to comfort itself after the election. Add it to the list:
1. Obama guaranteed more free stuff for the masses.
2. He somehow ‘stole’ the election.
3. They were better at getting out the vote (why that’s seen as something sinister, who knows?) And early voting and extended hours benefit the Dems.
4. People still under the Obama spell.
5. Dem’s unfairly tagged the GOP as anti-women and minorities.
6. White guilt.
Bill Arnold
Sure, the advantage is temporary. However, the 2012 election was amazing in the differences between the campaigns in the sophistication of their campaign data operations. Team Obama had a Chief Scientist (Rayid Ghani).
The more mundane parts of the data operation were well done as well, from various reports, as well. (Run mostly, and scalably, on AWS.)
Chris
@Mike G:
“What the Empire would have done was build a super-colossal Yuuzhan Vong-killing battle machine. They would have called it the Nova Colossus or the Galaxy Destructor or the Nostril of Palpatine or something equally grandiose. They would have spent billions of credits, employed thousands of contractors and subcontractors, and equipped it with the latest in death-dealing technology. And you know what would have happened? It wouldn’t have worked. They’d forget to bolt down a metal plate over an access hatch leading to the main reactors, or some other mistake, and a hotshot enemy pilot would drop a bomb down there and blow the whole thing up. Now that’s what the Empire would have done.”
– Han Solo debunking an Imperial officer’s claim that they would’ve reacted better than the Rebels to a new threat (expanded universe)
jon
Community organizers are better at organizing communities than are rugged individualists who just want to scam people to amass more wealth. Somehow, they both made out fine according to their own goals.
Win/Win! Both Sides!
jl
I think people like Obama and Dean understand that face to face GOTV is more effective. Obama showed how successful it could be, and rescued it from the taint of a crazy man Dean thing. And same for reaching out beyond ‘safe’ areas to try to convert supposedly intractably opposed demographics.
Question is whether future Democrats will continue, and that is a serious question.
Maybe GOP obsession with Obama being a community organizer is some kind of projection too. They know it is a threat, but don’t seem to know or be willing to counter it. Mailings full of scare fantasies and con pitches seem to work with the elderly and weak minded, if some folks in my family are any indication. Maybe GOP knows that face to face, that is a loser. And their leaders’ natural rich man’s son mindset is to pay a buddy who knows a guy, rather than work at something that takes, you know, actual work.
RSA
It’s easy to overestimate the power of technology, but we can also find subtle and surprising effects. Here’s one example:
Technology can be a multiplier for social interaction, small but noticeable. Of course, this isn’t about any underlying message or policy, just getting people to vote.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
What you say at the end is true, but most people aren’t paying that much attention. I will bet you that 80+% of the country has no idea that the Democrats are talking about a minimum wage increase. I suspect that the reason a lot of the Gen-Y’s are voting Democratic is a lot of them have friends that are black, Hispanic, or gay, and there is one party that seems to be about shitting on their friends.
The best thing about this study is that it shows that most of the efforts of the Democrats next year needs to be in GOTV with people knocking on doors.
pseudonymous in nc
We got postcards saying “here’s your early voting place” and “make a plan to vote early” and “find some friends to go and vote early”, which matched up to the pieces after the election about the campaign’s use of behavioural psychology — which, I suppose, is parsed by wingnuts as “muslimsoc!@list mindcontrol!”.
I think the data/tech advantage is temporary. Political campaigns are, frankly, hidebound — they largely use the same dull people, because you can’t A/B test an election. The DNC got a lot of the 2012 election tech, and in spite of its developers’ desire to have those frameworks made public — especially the rapid deployment stuff — they’re holding onto it because they think it’s somehow magic. That’s cargo-cultism. In 2016 (and even 2014) there’ll be new best practices.
Ultraviolet Thunder
My instinct is that the advantage of tech in national elections is in GOTV. In state and local elections where there’s far less money to spend and little or no media coverage, so called micro-targeting could actually help get the message out to the right people. But that raises several questions: 1) what message? 2) which people? 3) what approach?. These have to be solved with more money and more hard work. So slapping a GUI and an email list on every campaign is not an instant advantage.
Splitting Image
The main advantage the Democrats have at the moment is the fact that the Republicans’ main GOTV operation is run through evangelical churches, which have a stranglehold on the GOP primary process, and do not want competition.
Therefore, any attempt to get more people into the Republican party that is not also focused on getting them into the pews in evangelical churches is a non-starter, regardless of whether the means are high-tech or low-tech.
This situation was great for the GOP when the evangelical churches were expanding at the expense of more liberal mainline churches, but they are beginning to realize that demographic doom is preparing to hit the evangelical churches good and hard. The problem isn’t so much that they can’t duplicate the Democrats’ efforts and cut into their party-ID advantage, but that the GOP’s own base is willing to block the party from doing so.
The Public Religion Research Institute published a graphic about this soon after the election. Mark Silk wrote about it here.
Chris
@jl:
Personally, I think that’s overthinking it. It’s just their usual, long-internalized contempt for something they’ve always thought of as “not a real job, just something those do-gooder emos and hippies get into in college because they’re too dumb to run a business or join the military like a real man would.”
As much as projection and insecurities are a huge part of their ethic, sometimes it’s just simple straightforward arrogance.
jl
@Chris: I’ll pay a guy my buddy at the club knows to respond to that.
Redshirt
One factor arguing against the Repukes catching up is they’re getting progressively dumber. Literally. There’s only so long you can bash education, science, and learning before you’ve evolved down to the dumbest LCD possible.
They’ve got a smart person deficit. How are they gonna make that up given their current proclivities?
Chris
@Splitting Image:
One of the problems with tapping a vein of voters based like (Republicans with evangelicals) is that it can be a double edged sword. By getting the support of a certain kind of voter, you also earn the ire of the people who don’t like these voters.
Tapping into the black vote in the mid-20th century was good for Democrats at first, until it pissed off so many white people that black support ended up costing more votes than it brought in. I think the same’s beginning to be true of Republicans and evangelicals as the public’s opinion on social issues turns our way.
Del
All the technology in the world isn’t going to help the GOP survive the fact that their message is fundimentally inpalpable to an ever-increasing portion of the population. Gen-Y (millenials, echo boomers, whatever) trend towards strongly being against racism, homophobia, sexism, plutocrats, and religious bigotry. Those 5 traits/groups define the GOP, and if they really thought that they could use simple GOTV to win they wouldn’t be pushing so hard to disenfranchise. I won’t say conservativism is dying, but I won’t hesitate to postulate that the national aspirations of the GOP are. The only way they can remain solvent is to game the system and they know it.
pamelabrown53
@Redshirt:
“They’ve got a smart person deficit. How are they gonna make that up…”?
I’d say initially they’ll offer a king’s ransom and buy the talent. But they’d be only buying half of the success: IMO, they’ll focus on technology and message messaging rather than anything substantive.
So, yeah Redshirt, I guess I ultimately agree with you and the republicans reactionary “proclivities”.
jl
@Redshirt: I think the GOP ‘dumbness’ is also a product of desperation. Their dream world has not worked out and they cannot adapt.
In the last two days I have read that the House GOP can’t meet their zero deficit goal without social insurance ‘reforms’, actually cuts, that hit one of their prime demographic targets that they promised to protect (55 to 64 year-olds desperately hanging on to retirement).
Ryan’s budget plan assumes that health care reform is repealed. Even Chris Wallace had to cold tell him that was stupid.
Now Jeb ‘the smarter one’ Bush has started off his long march to 2016 by confessing that he is a clumsy transparent opportunistic flip flopper on immigration. Hmmm… lemme see… when is that last time the GOP had a problem with that. Can’t put my finger on it.
I think quite a few of the 47.2 percent who voted for Romny minus the 27 percent dead enders can spot dumb and desperate, without even getting to Science.
Chris
@pamelabrown53:
Well, it’s not enough to buy the talent. Then, you have to listen to the talent.
I mean, why did Romney, Rove and the rest of the people at the top believe so hard that the election was in the bag? Yeah, maybe the people running the campaign at the lower level were scamming them, but IMO it’s also probably that they knew they’d get fired on the spot if they ever told their bosses the unpleasant truth. That’s the kind of people the higher-ups have become.
cat
The Democratic party will keep a long term technological advantage because you are making the mistake of thinking the Democratic voters and Republican voters are the same ethnographic groups trying to be reached by the another ethnographic group that composes both the Dem Party operatives and GOP Party operatives.
You don’t have 1 group trying to reach 1 other group. You have two groups trying to reach several dozens groups.
Based on what I’ve read of the Obama campaign IT effort they were one or two generations from cutting edge technologies willing to take risks to win. The GOP IT group was stuck in the early 2000’s and more focus on being friction and getting their slice of the campaign spending.
Without a major shift in the GOP Establishment the grifters will keep trotting out established solutions that aren’t up the tasks of millions of “personal touches” to keep up with Dems.
This is assuming the Obama 2012 campaign doesn’t keep being overly controlling about the control IP created by their engineers. The kind of people who can do these things and are willing to do it for political reasons won’t work with you a 2nd time if you don’t share their principals on freedom of ideas.
Older
Obama turns out people who are willing to work for him, not just attend big-ticket “breakfasts” and talk snotty about folks on the other side. I remember the first Obama campaign — “Send me five dollars!” — and a lot of people did. These were the people who had little money, but they were still receiving the usual kind of donation mail, you know, where they start out asking for $100, or maybe $250, for the “sustainer” level, and work their way down to $25 for the “piker” level, and the people getting the letters don’t even have $25 that they can spare.
I was, and still am, one of those people. But damn it, I could spare $5, at least right after pay day. Obama enlisted my support, not just because I agreed with things he said, but because he acknowledged my existence, as a reasonable adult and a voter, who didn’t have a lot of money. He knows we’re here, and the other guys don’t.
Bill Arnold
Re “Tipping Point”, from liartownusa,
“Overfull”, and “The Power of Several”
(Liartownusa is funny.)
Villago Delenda Est
We can’t expect the Rethugs to be as brainlessly incompetent as the Rmoney team was in the last election. There are plenty of Rethug operatives who saw that and were screaming in pain at the MBA cluelessness of it all.
MomSense
So as someone who spends considerable time phoning and knocking on doors–the technology does help. The more I know about the voter before I contact them the better.
GOTV is really the final phase of the campaign. By the time we get to GOTV we have already done considerable work to identify and persuade those folks.
WereBear
True; powerful, but limited.
I think it’s a generational thing; “printed on paper” has an authority to my older relatives that my nephews can’t believe. What will happen to their precious mailing lists as these older generations die off? I can’t see younger people falling for the same scams; we are talking about people born in the Thirties, for heaven’s sake. They just don’t think the way people born in the Eighties do.
Del
@WereBear: Come now, we’re not completely skeptical/pessimistic bastards. Well… maybe a bit.
gene108
@Redshirt:
I don’t think the pros, who run campaigns are stupid. The GOP base that wants a pound of flesh from Presidential candidates is another matter.
The people running campaigns have lost the ability to focus the base, which turns sure shot Republican wins, like Delaware would’ve been if not for that ” not-a- witch” winning the Rep nomination.
I think the Republicans are far stronger than Democrats/ liberals realize.
Messaging/ tech/ GOTV differences will converge over time, as leaders advantage gets copied.
What makes the GOP so strong is they have a solid base of operations in the original Confeferate states and the Mountainwest. This will always give them disproportionate representation in Congress.
They can occasionally latch into statewide offices in “blue” states – Brown, Corbett, Christie, et al – in ways Dems can no longer manage in “red” states.
All Reps need to be resurgent are some Dem miscues and they can flip the difference of the battleground states for the White House.
No Drama Obama is about as scandal free
politician as I ‘ve ever seen and the Dems still have a lot of work to do to retake the House and state governments.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
Let me tell you from personal experience that there is more than a dash of “community organizing” in the life of a junior officer placed in a leadership position of a small unit. Motivating and developing your troops is a huge part of your job at the platoon level. You have NCOs to help you do it, but you have to set the tone, and you have to develop some of your soldiers into future NCOs by taking risks on them doing things on their own without you looking over their shoulder.
I’ll never forget an episode where I placed a newly minted Sergeant (E-5) in charge of my Radioteletype team to find a place to site his rig, which was in an M577 command track. I then took off on a bunch of errands. 12 hours later, I come back, and I see this tank recovery vehicle pulling the RATT track out of some muck…my sergeant misjudged the ability of the soil to support his track, and had gone and gotten a nearby tank battalion’s recovery vehicle to pull it out of the muck. He rather sheepishly told me that he had hoped to have it out before I got back so I’d never know…but what impressed me the most is he got motivated enough to look for help outside the unit so he’d not disappoint me. He did exactly the opposite by showing so much initiative to make things right again.
MattF
It’s always something– a technological advantage, racial solidarity, free contraceptives. Somehow, the commentariat just doesn’t have the vocabulary to say “Democrats are winning because they are right.”
kmeyerthelurker
I was one of those people who went door to door. This was something way out of my comfort zone, but the current incarnation of the Republican party scares me enough to do it. I think it that the experiment got it right, it is much more effective than any of the other methods. While I spent a lot of time knocking on the doors of empty houses, when I made contact it was generally with good results. I could provide polling place info, tell them when EV ended, and generally say “This election is too damn important and too damn close. We’ve gotta have everybody in if we’re gonna win this thing.” Course, we keep getting our asses handed to us in the midterms, so it’s two forward one back.
Republicans aren’t trying to copy our GOTV, they’re just re-writing the districts and passing electory college trickery at the state level. 2010 was a disaster, a trouncing in a census year. That one election has done more harm to this country, especially at the state level.
TGC
The GOP’s technology problem is a symptom of it’s larger problem: demographics. They don’t use social media as much because they were using FOX and talk radio. Their base is older so they reach out them using outlets older people use: TV, radio and church. People on SS and Medicare aren’t on Twitter or Facebook like young people are. Even if the GOP catches up to the Democrat’s tech advantage, who do they reach out to? The Democrats are more tech savvy because their base is younger. Both parties operate in accordance with their demographic make-up.
The Democrats lost their majority when white Southerners who were pissed about the CRA and desegregation along with white northerners who were pissed about busing and affirmative action started voting Republican. In other words they had a demographic problem. Now the people of color that Democrats had nurtured relationships with over 30 years are the fastest growing and youngest segments of the population. The Democrat’s demographics problem is over and the Republican’s has just begun. Getting more tech savvy won’t fix that.
WereBear
I’ve been exploring the whole Gothard/Quiverfull/Pearl pit of muck by reading the experiences of those who have escaped. Now the sex scandals are starting, and they are about to deal with a Death Star level of membership loss as the word spreads and people wake up.
For decades the GOP had a entire GOTV mechanism at their beck and call, with people willing to give their last dime and knock on a lot of doors. And they had the stamina of their convictions. But I see the whole house of cards starting to wobble, and the next few decades are going to be different.
Habit. That’s what they’ve got left.
John Dillinger
If personal contact is best, then I think we shouldn’t have a problem with Wayne LaPierre’s fear campaign. If he gets Republicans too afraid to answer their doors, they are never going to get that personal contact from the Rubio/Jeb/Christie/Paul Ryan Gosling canvasser, and will be less likely to vote.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, for what it’s worth, I think there’s more than a dash of “community organizing” involved in business too – at least if you actually want the business to run well. It applies to pretty much all human activities. Which is why the hyper-individualized ethic of today is making such a mess.
catclub
@WereBear: “I can’t see younger people falling for the same scams.”
Well, maybe not EXACTLY the same scams.
Any particular reason for thinking human nature has changed?
Some people are gullible. In scams where you only need a response rate less than 1% to make a fortune, the scams will continue and the gullible will be found. I find it possible to imagine gullible persons of almost any age.
catclub
@MattF: Somehow, the commentariat just doesn’t have the vocabulary to say “Democrats are winning because they are right.”
I would put the unsaid but obvious conclusion as:
“Democrats are winning because they are more popular.”
WereBear
@catclub: Of course, but it’s strange how much of the GOP rhetoric is still raving about hippies and commies; the pressing concerns of these young voters’ grandparents.
Nimble, the GOP is not.
Redshirt
@kmeyerthelurker: I agree with all your points, and that’s why I think 2016 is SO critical. I’ve been motivated by two primary forces over the past 8 or so years: Barack Obama, and hatred/fear of the Republican party.
Once Obama leaves the arena, will Dems still be able to inspire and rally people to give money, effort and time to the degree BO did? I’m not sure at all. Hillary, maybe. The rest? Not sure.
And thus a chance for the Repukes to claw their way back to power.
pamelabrown53
@Chris: Great point: they (the republicans) have to listen to their talent. Just maybe they’ll listen to fighting the last war because they are clueless to the big picture: it’s all about using cutting edge technology in service to boots on the ground.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@WereBear:
Earlier in the week I received a forwarded winger email whose premise was that docking four US aircraft carriers side by side at Norfolk was Obama’s way of purposefully setting us up for another Pearl Harbor. Even if such an attack was to occur it would leave us with “only” seven active Carrier Battle Groups.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Email is bullshit. OFA in particular is annoying as shit. Some people might like it but I do not. Phone calls are bullshit, straight to voicemail and straight to the bitbucket afterwards. Direct mail I’ll read only to see who’s lying about who. In that sense, direct mail is frequently the most informative, although not perhaps in the manner the sender intended.
I will always answer the door and talk to a canvasser, though. I would say “with the GOP ones it would be a quick conversation” but I’ve never had one. Never. Not in 30 years of voting. The people who come to my door during election season are always Dems. And those conversations are usually pretty short. “Sir, are you voting for Barack Obama…” “Straight ticket. So’s my wife. Everyone else on the street is a Republican. Give ’em hell. Good luck.”
Tonal Crow
It is a Democratic conceit that voters make most of their decisions based upon policy. The fact is, they don’t, instead deferring to emotion. This (along with Republican gerrymandering) is why poll after poll shows that majorities of voters prefer nearly all of the Democrats’ policy positions, and yet Democrats barely keep their heads above water. Policy affects voters at the margins; emotion affects them at the core. Until Democrats can win the emotional war (as they have done with gay marriage), it’s going to be difficult for them to consistently win elections.
gene108
@kmeyerthelurker:
2010 wasn’t a fluke. The Republican heavies, put a lot of work into winning those state elections. They planned it out. They got backers at the local level to fund Republican candidates and they went aggressively after down ticket races that normally get no attention at all.
The DNC got rolled; out worked and out strategized. The Republicans are just resting up, given the fact they have a 10 year “firewall” in the House to keep any economic progress from happening and/or if progress does happen, like in the 1990’s, they can share the credit, despite doing nothing constructive to contribute to it.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/22/former-rnc-chairman-signs-on-with-2010-election-effort/
http://rslc.com/_blog/News/post/REDMAP_2012_Summary_Report
The second link is to the Republican State Leadership Committee’s report about the effectiveness of the 2010 strategy.
The guys running things for the Republicans are anything but stupid. They are Machiavellian in their desire to seize and administer power for their benefit and the benefit of their patrons.
The base occasionally throws the Democrats a bone, but electing O’Donnell’s, or have an Akin shoot his mouth off, but by and large writing off the Republicans as doomed to demographics, etc. is wishful thinking.
Their lust for power will keep them relevant for generations.
A Democratic Presidential candidate with a few skeletons in his/her closet that “shock” the American public, will be all that’s needed for the Republicans to retake the White House.
Think of it like the 2000 Presidential election, with the Republican candidate running to “restore honor to the White House”, without the buffer of a booming economy to help persuade the masses what the Democratic candidate proposes has a chance of working.
…
Tonal Crow
It is a Democratic conceit that voters make most of their decisions based upon policy. The fact is, they don’t, instead deferring to emotion. This (along with Republican gerrymandering) is why poll after poll shows that majorities of voters prefer nearly all of the Democrats’ policy positions, and yet Democrats barely keep their heads above water. Policy affects voters at the margins; emotion affects them at the core. Until Democrats can win the emotional war (as they have done with gay marriage), it’s going to be difficult for them to consistently win elections.
gene108
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Oh common, how can you feel safe, unless the U.S. has as many or more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined?
eclecticbrotha
@pamelabrown53:
This. The tech wizardry was about finding out how to maximize the effectiveness of the same, old fashioned community organizing the GOP mocks.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@gene108: Dems with any sense of self-preservation need to make sure that Gavin Newsome does not become governor of California, and does not get any farther in politics, period. If he does, he will run for president. And he is a mix of young Ted Kennedy’s substance abuse issues, John Edwards’ infidelity issues, and a real-life version of the Onion’s version of Joe Biden rolled into one walking scandal. He would be an utter disaster for the party and keep us out of the White House for decades.
MikeJ
@cat:
I’m less scared about Obama hoarding the tech than I am about Not Invented Here. Nobody who wants to be president wants to win it because Obama won it for them.
I’d be willing to bet that the campaign who the ’16 Dem nominee will be overly controlling and really not understand the tech.
Tonal Crow
@MikeJ:
This is one of several reasons that I fear Hillary. (Some others are that she’s too “third way”, too much of a reflexive hawk, and a less-than-terrific manager (see, e.g., Mark Penn)).
jl
@gene108: I agree that is a serious short and medium term threat. But that is exactly why the topic of the post is so important. Mobilizing enough people to do face to face, door to door, election work is an important tool in the Democratic response.
My one disagreement with you is that I do not see how the GOP approach is a decades long threat. The Senate cannot be gerrymandered. The way the House districts are apportioned, you can gerrymander more red districts, or gerrymander safer districts. You can’t have more safer red districts. And that is leaving aside the GOP demographics problems, which will make gerrymandering their way to success even harder.
Something like basing electoral votes on House districts is a serious threat, but the local/national tensions in such a scheme seem to have put it rest for now.
? Martin
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
These serve completely different roles. Email raises money. Door to door gets voters. They both suck at doing the job of the other.
And OFAs emails are remarkably effective.
CarolDuhart2
@Forum Transmitted Disease: I’m not too worried about that. We Democrats have shown we can do a pretty good job of vetting candidates. And in Gavin’s case, the skeletons are not only out of the closet, but walking around.
Also, I think it takes a higher amount of scandal to shock folks anymore. We’ve survived Edwards, Bubba’s scandal and Kennedy just fine.
CarolDuhart2
@Tonal Crow: I’m sure that that really won’t be a problem. Folks like to win, and Obama has found a winning formula, so the 2016 candidate will hire as many Obama alums as possible. Even Hillary will prefer to hire them instead of those old losers. And speaking of those old losers, one of Hillary’s problems was that she hired folks who were her husband’s advisors instead of doing the hard work of hiring people on her own. Obama gives her the opportunity to let those folks down gently by hiring his people instead.
The real problem will be hugging too closely to the formula and not upgrading it to current political realities instead.
Chris
@CarolDuhart2:
Yes. Let’s not repeat Gore’s mistaken belief that Clinton would be a liability in the campaign…
Mike in NC
The Beltway Buffoons get it wrong again.
CarolDuhart2
@Chris: I remember that election, and Gore’s distancing himself from Clinton wasn’t the only problem. We had absolutely no ground game whatsoever, the tech was horrible, and Gore, like Kerry four years later, took Federal Funds instead of the unlimited funds available elsewhere.
Lieberman didn’t help either. He was the most uncharismatic running mate ever with little ability to relate to the rest of the base.
Clinton had pretty much hollowed out the DNC. Both Chairpersons were essentially seat warmers who helped fund Clinton at the expense of congressional and Senatorial Seats and who paid little or no attention to local parties.
How bad was it?
Wikipedia:
McAuliffe was an impressive fundraiser; he raised $578 million, and the Democratic Party emerged from debt for the first time in its history
gene108
@jl:
I don’t see the state level Democratic Party getting it’s act together in most of the original* Confederate states and in the Mountainwest, in places like Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho.
The GOP will have 20+ safe states in the next 2-3 Presidential elections. The election math is about the same the same as Bush, Jr. faced in 2004, though due to failed Republican policies it maybe harder to swing independents in Ohio and Florida.
If you look at the three Republican Presidential wins, in the 1980’s, Reagan (twice) and Bush, Sr. (once) each got over 400+ EV, while the Democratic challenger barely carried over 10+ states, at best (with Mondale only carrying Minnesota and D.C., if I remember correctly). I don’t see the Democrats fielding that kind of dominance in 2016 or 2020, which is what will be needed to really break the “right-centered nation” conventional wisdom and move the direction of the country leftward.
I don’t think it’s possible to make any kind of prediction beyond next couple of elections for like say the 2032 Presidential election, too much can change. As long as the Republicans have a safe 20+ states, they really don’t have a reason to change. They can hold out waiting for a Democratic screw up, in order to take control of government again.
As long as Republican electoral math gives them about 200 EV from the start, they are still going into Presidential elections with a real mathematical chance of winning. A weak Democratic candidate and a strong Republican candidate can easily give the Republicans a narrow victory and a narrow victory is all they need to claim a mandate and do what they want to muck up government.
*Virginia and North Carolina didn’t join the CSA, until Lincoln tried resupplying Fort Sumter. Texas is getting their state level Democratic party back in order, from what I’ve read, but I don’t expect immediate results. Florida is a “purple” state thanks to people moving in from up north. State level democratic parties in the other states – South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia – are a mess and not able to mount effective opposition to Republicans.
fuckwit
I learned this in 2006 by beating a $2million campaign with $12k of donations. The internet can be a force mutiplier, to use another over-used phrase, but ultimately politics is a contact sport. It’s about people talking to people, and getting together with people. The new generation of progressives get this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and then some. Matt Yglesias did a post a while back on how the giant empty states– two Dakotas? Montana and Idaho? why? — were created by post Civil War Republicans to outweigh Southern Democrats in the Senate. I don’t think Madison would have approved of that, much less the even greater disaprity there is today.
fuckwit
I learned this in 2006 by beating a $2million campaign with $12k of donations. The internet can be a force mutiplier, to use another over-used phrase, but ultimately politics is a contact sport. It’s about people to people, and getting together with people. The new generation of progressives get this.
? Martin
@gene108:
South Carolina is more purple than people realize for the same reason. He did better there than in Indiana.
CarolDuhart2
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And they are still empty for the most part, not even having 2 representatives. I doubt that for decades they will outweigh the Eastern States.
As for 200 sure EVs for the Republicans, I doubt it. Florida will definitely tilt blue once a combination of immigrants and more liberal retirees have a higher percentage of the vote. The old wingnuts have only a decade or so left before they empty out the strongholds. At that point, they will need a more diverse clientele-and that clientele votes Democratic.
Arizona was seen as a possibility by Obama. Georgia is a decade away, so is Texas. If high speed rail ever really gets going, I predict a lot of Marylanders and Virginians will move into North West Virginia and make that state purple. And water is an issue with much of the South, so I expect a reverse move back into the north where there is at least some water and cooler weather.
And Reagan for all his faults, was charismatic. None of the Republicans poised to make a run have it.
Gex
The myriad of inexpensive ways to send electronic messages (text/audio/video) is ever growing and ever cheaper. We’ve long since passed the amount of campaign spam that Americans might actually pay attention to. There’s such an onslaught that none of it gets any attention. At best, the stream of messaging might give people a hunch as to what politicians are talking about.
Boots on the ground will always have maximum value. Because people are emotional, not rational, and you can’t transmit emotion electronically as well as you can transmit it in person. Further, investing in the time to individually meet with people makes a huge impression. And if I recall correctly, there were lots of follow up visits.
Community organizing. Kind of a key skill to have in a democracy, eh?
gene108
@Chris:
Considering (a) Bush, Jr. was running to “restore honor” to the White House, (b) maybe upwards of 5% of liberals had disowned Clinton and vowed to vote for Nader and (c) a VP always has an issue of coming out from under a sitting President’s “shadow” and being his own man, I’m not sure what Gore could’ve done differently in terms of his approach to the Clinton White House. He wasn’t going to reach liberals, so went to the right.
To me Gore’s mistake was not embracing himself. Instead of trying to appear animated on T.V. or change his “boring” style, he should’ve been proud of being a wooden, robotic, policy wonk. Bush, Jr. could barely talk coherently, but this was sold as a “guy you’d want to have a beer with” charm, while Gore’s attempts to reinvent himself kept coming off badly.
Also, too Clinton was toxic in the South. After carrying Arkansas and Tennessee in 1992 and 1996, Gore lost both those states. Hell, Clinton/Gore carried Louisiana in 1992.
I think the biggest difference between 2000 and 2016 is the fact the Republican bag of dirty tricks has come to light, given the De Lay prosecution, Franken’s Lies, and the Lying, Liars Who Tell Them, Brock’s revelations on right-wing media, in Blinded by the Right and probably some other cases of corruption and works about Republican dirty tricks I’m not aware of that weren’t circulating in 2000.
I don’t think these books and cases make a big difference for the MSM, but it did give the Left something to rally behind and Democrats – from Franken, in 2008 to Obama in 2008 and 2012 – realize how hard they have to work to beat Republicans and that Republicans aren’t going to be “nice”.
There are let downs, like in 2010, but I don’t see Democrats running away from Republican taunts, like they did in the 1980’s and 1990’s, when they totally lost control of defining policy goals.
Helen Bedd
@Chris:
Pretty sure Han Solo meant to say “What the Empire would have done was build a super-colossal Yuuzhan Vong-killing battle machine. They would have called it Orca or something equally grandiose.”
gene108
@? Martin:
I’ll believe it, if Democrats can sniff a win at the open Congressional seat vacated by Scott.
As it is there is one Democrat in South Carolina’s congressional delegation.
That isn’t a recipe of a state about to turn purple to me.
Eli Rabett
@jon: You have no idea how bad it is. Uncle Festus spends all of his dough buying right wing bling that they pitch at him. Take a look at this video from one of the marketing pitches. Rick Perlstein was right
“The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began. . “
gene108
@CarolDuhart2:
W.Va would be purple or blue, if the Democrats ran a white man for the White House, without any transplants.
GregB
I think the GOP has lost their mojo and have been steeped in their cultish ideological muck for too long.
As a matter of fact I bet they didn’t crunch their House numbers out beyond the next election and will find that the slightly weaker GOP districts they created will end up flipping much sooner than they planned.
The coming 2014 mid term election will end up being much worse than they expect.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Clinton also had Perot and two of the weakest opponents ever, and the realignment of conservative Democrats to the GOP grew stronger through the nineties.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
The unifying element of Republican rhetoric and policy is that they hate helping people. They are the party of assholes. Rich assholes, racist assholes, hypocritically pious assholes…
JoyfulA
@gene108: There were 2 Dem congressmen in SC prior to redistricting.
gene108
@CarolDuhart2:
Obama is the first candidate, since public financing of elections became on an option, to not take Federal matching funds. Bush, Jr. took matching funds, as well. He just had raised, at the time, what seemed like an incredible $300 million dollars that was well over the $150 mil+ that Gore and Kerry each raised.
Obama is a fundraising juggernaut never before seen in American politics and may never be seen again.
People thought Bush, Jr.’s then record amount of fundraising would be hard to beat, but Obama stonecold crushed the hell out of it in 2008.
Having enough money to bury McCain, several times over, and match the unlimited spending of right-wing billionaires, post-CU, has been a competitive advantage Obama had over his Republican challengers that no Democrat ever had; Republicans almost always won the fundraising battles post-Watergate to 2008.
gene108
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Much like the 2010 Republican wave election, this didn’t have to be inevitable. The Democrats got out played and didn’t realize it, until the post-mortem of the 2000 election.
A lazy MSM, that assumed right-wing criticism of their “liberal bias” was accurate, decided to reprint lies from right-wing rags, instead of doing actual journalism or just saying “why does this past business dealing matter to affairs of state now?”, helped give legitimacy to Republican attacks against Clinton.
Clinton had his baggage, with the view of being a “draft dodger” and DFH, in minds of many Americans, but he was also incredibly charismatic and could connect with voters.
The GOP went after him with everything they had, so he couldn’t rebrand the Democratic Party, after the disarray of the 1980’s, as being the Party that “feels your pain” and will help you.
bcinaz
Turd Blossom snowed a lot of us on the left, for the simple reason that he somehow got Bush re-elected to an office he clearly was not qualified to hold, and didn’t win in the first place.
Sometimes freakish luck is mistaken for something else.
Suzanne
@WereBear: Concur. I was born in 1980, and I worked in advertising for a while. It’s incredible how the younger generations are almost immnune to ads in some way. When you grow up drowning in propaganda, none of it has much effect. Stats prove that the average person has to see an ad nineteen times before they even remember seeing it, to say nothing of being convinced or persuaded by it. The Obama people know this.
SiubhanDuinne
@Frankensteinbeck:
“Honey? Does this Republican Party make my asshole look fat?”
Patricia Kayden
@quannlace: It is perfectly fair to tag the GOP as anti-minority and anti- women.
Look at all the anti-choice legislation that GOP-dominated states have enacted. And look at all the hostility directed against President Obama on stupid grounds (birther nonsense, demanding to see his college transcripts, claiming that he’s a socialist/fascist/worst than Hitler, etc.). And Romney telling Latinos that they needed to self-deport didn’t help either.
It’s clear that the GOP is a White male party. And that’s who they are going to have to depend on for votes. Good luck with that.
M. Bouffant
Ain’t got time to make no apology
Jebediah
RE: post title:
DougJ, Friend of Hamas, I am perpetually impressed by the breadth of your music-themed titles. Stooges FTW!
Bill Arnold
@jl:
You can also create extremely safe blue disricts, removing blue votes from play. (I didn’t realize this until well after people starting talking again about the 2010 gerrymandering, doh.)
xian
@Redshirt: maybe they can start chugging Brawndo? It has electrolytes.
xian
@jl: Ryan squared the circle! By, uh, keeping the Medicare savings from Obamacare, but also, like, repealing Obamacare, but not accepting that the CBO scores Obamacare as reducing the deficit so… Wolverines!
xian
@CarolDuhart2: Lieberman was worse than uncharismatic. He rolled over and showed his belly to Cheney in debate. He undermined Gore in Florida. He was a disaster.
JoeC
BTW, I’ve had this Iggy Pop quote in my sig for a while…
Barry
@jon: “Obama should announce that he has no intention of limiting the sale of ammunition and do so just before the 2014 ”
Opposite, remember – Obama should start rumors about some secret investigations of ammunition makers.
Sondra
It has been my experience that the best way to influence the number of people voting is personal contact. That is really only possible if the groups are broken down to the smallest number of individuals that one person can talk to at any one time.
It means that there has to be a very large number of “boots on the ground”. Tech. support is only useful to identify the voters in a particular area. It’s also useful for list keeping and updating voter information and mass printing of election materials etc. But in the end, it is always a person speaking to another person, helping with registration, getting people to the polls and explaining how the ballot is printed and what technique is needed to make the ballot count.
This is a very time consuming effort and there is one other important factor, the candidates themselves. They must learn to be gracious to the people who helped them win.
The newly elected people must take the time to thank their” boots on the ground”in person. Sending out a mass produced e-mail will not inspire us to ever work that hard to elect them again. This goes for smallish and medium sized donors as well.
Getting people elected is not a one way street. We who are politically active need the same kind of support that we give to the people we are bringing to the polls. To me this seems to be a NO BRAINER folks! That’s why Obama’s team has been successful – they do not push you out of the door at the end of a campaign with a pat on the head and an “attaboy”.