A tale of two campaigns:
First, Obama, as reported in a fascinating and tantalizingly brief piece by Michael Scherer over at Time.com:
For all the praise Obama’s team won in 2008 for its high-tech wizardry, its success masked a huge weakness: too many databases. Back then, volunteers making phone calls through the Obama website were working off lists that differed from the lists used by callers in the campaign office. Get-out-the-vote lists were never reconciled with fundraising lists. It was like the FBI and the CIA before 9/11: the two camps never shared data. “We analyzed very early that the problem in Democratic politics was you had databases all over the place,” said one of the officials. “None of them talked to each other.” So over the first 18 months, the campaign started over, creating a single massive system that could merge the information collected from pollsters, fundraisers, field workers and consumer databases as well as social-media and mobile contacts with the main Democratic voter files in the swing states.
The new megafile didn’t just tell the campaign how to find voters and get their attention; it also allowed the number crunchers to run tests predicting which types of people would be persuaded by certain kinds of appeals. Call lists in field offices, for instance, didn’t just list names and numbers; they also ranked names in order of their persuadability, with the campaign’s most important priorities first. About 75% of the determining factors were basics like age, sex, race, neighborhood and voting record. Consumer data about voters helped round out the picture. “We could [predict] people who were going to give online. We could model people who were going to give through mail. We could model volunteers,” said one of the senior advisers about the predictive profiles built by the data. “In the end, modeling became something way bigger for us in ’12 than in ’08 because it made our time more efficient.”….
The magic tricks that opened wallets were then repurposed to turn out votes. The analytics team used four streams of polling data to build a detailed picture of voters in key states. In the past month, said one official, the analytics team had polling data from about 29,000 people in Ohio alone — a whopping sample that composed nearly half of 1% of all voters there — allowing for deep dives into exactly where each demographic and regional group was trending at any given moment. This was a huge advantage: when polls started to slip after the first debate, they could check to see which voters were changing sides and which were not….
“We ran the election 66,000 times every night,” said a senior official, describing the computer simulations the campaign ran to figure out Obama’s odds of winning each swing state. “And every morning we got the spit-out — here are your chances of winning these states. And that is how we allocated resources.”
…The numbers also led the campaign to escort their man down roads not usually taken in the late stages of a presidential campaign. In August, Obama decided to answer questions on the social news website Reddit, which many of the President’s senior aides did not know about. “Why did we put Barack Obama on Reddit?” an official asked rhetorically. “Because a whole bunch of our turnout targets were on Reddit.”
A much-touted mobile app used by Romney campaign poll watchers to track voters faced hiccups across the country Tuesday that left one prominent conservative Romney critic declaring it on Twitter “nothing short of a failure.”The system, known as the ORCA Project, was intended to give the Republican challenger’s team real-time information so campaign workers could call, text or visit people who hadn’t yet voted in attempts to corral them before polls closed.
Yet dozens of Romney poll workers across the country took to Twitter throughout the day to gripe that they were unable to log in, lost data they had inputted or found it moving slower than they needed to keep up with poll traffic.
Jeffrey Cook, a Romney poll worker from Fort Dodge, Iowa, gave up after eight hours of being unable to log in and tried to provide his data over the phone after the campaign sent out information about a telephone helpline….
“This looks like hundreds and hundreds of people,” said Akbar, whose popular Twitter handle @ali became a central repository for ORCA complaints. “Something’s going wrong. More people are experiencing problems than are saying it’s working.”
That’s damning for a feature of Romney’s digital campaign that was expected to be a blockbuster. Earlier this month, in fact, Romney deputy political director Dan Centinello was quoted by the Huffington Post as saying of ORCA, “There’s nothing that the Obama data team, there’s nothing that the Obama campaign, there’s nothing that President [Barack] Obama himself can do to even come close to what we are putting together here.”
The Obama campaign has a similar app, Mobile Pollwatcher, which had no reported problems on Tuesday
Ahhhh. This isn’t getting old, is it.
One more thing. As ever, it’s never their fault. Conservatism cannot fail. It can only be failed — or betrayed:
In the heat of the election, some pro-Romney tweeters blamed the press for suggestions that ORCA wasn’t working quite right.“Media stories reporting ORCA efforts shut down by hackers are false,” wrote Tommy Duggan, publisher of The Valley Patriot newspaper in Massachusetts. “We just got first-hand confirm[ation] that system worked brilliantly.”
Cargo
I would expect nothing less from a party whose members tend to call me up with tremulous queries on how to get their printers working on their 1998-era Compaq running WinXP.
TenguPhule
Barack Obama: Road Runner
Mitt Romney: Wiley Coyote
Meep Meep, B****s!
chowkster
Well, what was the Romney approach? I am dying to know!
ETA: Nevermind. FYWP
quannlace
I’m looking forward to Peggy Noonan’s next article. The one that’ll follow her “Romney’s rising, rising, quietyl rising…” one.
Tonal Crow
“ORCA Project”? As in “Orc-Republican Consolidation-Alliance Project”? Seems about right.
Count Ulster
Is that one of them newfangled auto-mobiles?
Tonal Crow
“ORCA Project”? As in “Orc-Republican Consolidation-Alliance Project”? Seems about right.
Eric U.
@chowkster: Romney approach was a 404 error. In a way, it was, their web app to tell you where to vote was broken. As reported here
some guy
Team Romney were reading the tea leaves.
Literally, they ordered loose leaf tea, drank the liquid, and then used the leaves to determine which attack ad to run.
amk
Thanks Tom. The comparison literally pales.
El Cid
Let’s have the two campaigns compete in engineering a bridge they then have to drive across. Let the Republicans scream about how they don’t need the media to skew the forces because they know that their support beams are strong enough because whatever and keep saying that until they themselves are in the water under the bridge.
nemesis
We won. Big. Now there needs to be consequences for the gopers. No consequences, no change.
SatanicPanic
Isn’t it odd how Mr CEO ran such a joke campain, but Mr Community Organizer Guy Who Has Never Had A Real Job ran the tightest one in modern memory?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I wouldn’t expect it to sink in, even to those on the right who are into this shit like we are, but wouldn’t hiring people who know how to do this, at the very least hiring people who know you have to find people who know how to do this, be something you’d expect of someone who was going to turn this economy around because of his business experience, as I heard so relentlessly from wishy-washy liberal leaners who, even on Monday, just couldn’t make up their minds. (breathe, Jim, breathe… let go… they didn’t sink the ship after all)
I’m about as far from MBA minded as you can get, but at some point during the last four or five of Mitt’s twenty year quest for the White House, did he never, personally, sit up some night looking at how Obama won first the primary, then the general last time, and scratch out on a legal pad “turn out… ground game… use internets and “computers”… micro-targeting?” and underline it a couple of times for an underling to fill in the details? Isn’t that how Bain worked?
Tonal Crow
@El Cid:
Democrat: Let’s first determine how much of what type of traffic the bridge must support, and design it with a standard safety factor.
Republican: Why are you wasting my tax dollars on know-nothing ivory-tower academic sockialism? Building a bridge is just common sense. Move over, stop denying God, and let me build it.
Democrat: That would be most unwise.
Republican: You libtards is all the same. Now hand me that there drywall and some screws. I’ll have it up in no time!
dmsilev
@SatanicPanic: Well, if you look at the kind of company Romney ran and the kind of campaign he ran, there are certain similarities.
Like the grifting. Romney’s campaign seemed to be, above all, well optimized for extracting campaign contributions from donors and shunting as much of it as possible into the pockets of campaign consultants. Pretty much the same business model as Bain.
Tonal Crow
@nemesis:
Yes indeedy. As Rush says, “Elections have consequences!”
Southern Beale
Probably the most accurate statement I’ve read about the RW freakout.
I almost feel sorry for them. Almost. Not quite.
Comrade Mary
I didn’t see the “More” link after the Republican approach setup at first, but hey,that picture summed things up nicely. Needed more beanies with propellers on the top, though.
chowkster
Read this on Politico yesterday: Someone from Romney campaign joked, “Orca is dead on the beach with a harpoon through its stomach”
NotMax
Scenes I’d like to see when they make the TV movie (from inside Romney campaign HQ):
“Hey, Fred, you’ve used computers, right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Okay, then. here’s some notes about something we decided we need for Mitt. Oh, and we need it up and running by tonight. So get right on it, huh?”
PsiFighter37
Does anyone have written confirmation of Mittens spilling tears? I really, really want to hear a story about it.
I may be enjoying the schadenfreude way too much.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Anybody with professional experience dealing with these issues can tell you that (A) it is a huge problem that has a negative impact on almost everthing the enterprise in question is trying to do, and (B) actually solving the problem in as little as 4 years is a major triumph both technically and from a managerial standpoint.
Ruckus
I first saw the post as ending at the second pic before I noticed the more tag.
I primarily didn’t notice more because I was LMAO.
That pic is perfect to explain the entire conservative box of bullshit. Several centuries behind the times and still wondering why they can’t get anywhere.
scav
Maintaining and getting into place infrastructure before the storm hits and logic / math geekery and investing in quality (not least-cost) data structures? I am gong to hurt myself laughing this hard.
no, not bitter in the least, why do you ask?
cosima
Maybe we had the absolute suckiest of Obama’s re-election campaign team here in my area of Denver — it was a disaster and I wouldn’t ask them to organize a PTA bakesale.
On more than one occasion I was sent to doors that volunteers had been to just the day before. Why was I asking them to fill out VR forms when they’d just done it? Would my time not be better spent going to a neighborhood where people hadn’t been contacted the day before, or, on better canvass efforts, two whole days before? It was infuriating.
And don’t get me started on the “persuasion” efforts… what a waste of time. With over 200,000 voters in Denver County who were inactivated by our Sec’y of State, we desperately needed to reactivate voters, not try to talk fence-sitters into voting for Obama — save that for later! This was not a state that needed “persuading,” it was (is, still) a state with hundreds of thousands of voters who were unaware that they were inactive, and needed to be reactivated, encouraged to get it done then get to the polls.
I am going to take a little (or a lot of) credit for reactivating voters in my area of Denver, and even at big events like the Pride parade, Juneteenth, etc. I was beyond annoyed to find our OFA person training VR canvassers and not telling them about the inactive issue — what a waste to ask people if they’re registered to vote without also asking them to see if they’re active or inactive! I made up a flyer, printed it on bright blue paper (at home), English on one side, Spanish on the other, and thousands were handed out. If someone said they “knew” they were active, I told them to check anyway, and if they were, great, then pass it on to your friend. I handed out far more of those than Obama lit — they were non-partisan, and applied to a whole lot of people. Even if they hated Obama they still needed the information.
I suggested contacting schools to get voter reg tables at back-to-school events. Couldn’t get our OFA office to give a rat’s. So I did it myself, then lo & behold it became a concern of the OFA office.
I don’t know who the fabulous geniuses of Obama’s re-election campaign were, but they weren’t here in my swing state heavily-Latino neighborhood. David Axelrod can give me a call and I’ll be more than happy to tell him who were the biggest drains on our efforts. I feel like we made it here in Denver in spite of those people, not because of them. The local Dem groups were (and are) amazing, energetic and helpful beyond words. OFA = awful.
trollhattan
Good god I want to marry that second painting.
Taco was here crowing about ORCA as recently as Monday. Seems appropriate. UNLIMITED CORPORATE CRASH.
fuddmain
Even if ORCA worked flawlessly, I don’t think they had enough boots on the ground take advantage. For example, I saw some Romney fool bragging about how they knocked on 75,000 doors in Ohio last Sunday. An Obama Jedi replied that they had knocked on 376,000 doors that same Sunday in Ohio.
Petorado
Romney’s electronic data operation may have fizzled, but at least they had the brains to launch a victory website for the election’s inevitable outcome. Money well spent. Just think how astute this guy’s operation would have been had he been elected.
redshirt
Amercia! Buy it or Leave it!
Jeff Spender
I have an acquaintance on the Facebook who was a college fellow of mine.
He got into the ROTC and since then he’s been…well, I guess he’s been transformed into the typical right-wing army guy. Patriotism this and army that and stuff.
He was having several sads that Obama won, talking about how he was going to have reduced pay and the deficit was going to explode and all that.
I couldn’t help but add, “We also plan to seize the means of production and institute Sharia law after we take your guns away.”
JGabriel
So glad Romney didn’t get elected.
I mean, if this guy couldn’t even coordinate the use of a functioning database to get himself elected out of Randian enlightened self-interest, then how well was he going to coordinate a disaster response scenario?
That tells us all we need to know about Romney’s alleged data-driven approach. We dodged a bullet, folks.
.
Villago Delenda Est
Rmoney 2012 – Set sail for fail!
jibeaux
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Some of these people I assume you could hire, but it’s been pointed out, I don’t remember where I read it last, that the whip-smart cutting-edge social scientist academics, the PhD types you want crunching these numbers and mining the data and whatevering the whatever? Turns out they’re not all that interested in helping Republicans. Might have something to do with a generation of being called overpaid unemployable ivory tower sissies, etc.
mamayaga
This is of a piece with the weird American myth that businessmen can do things more efficiently than can government or non-profits. From inside experience with all three ways of getting things done, nothing beats private business for inefficiency and waste, not to mention corruption. Like the whole W administration, the Romney campaign clearly demonstrates the stupidity of this myth.
trollhattan
@PsiFighter37:
One really, really hopes for a “Game Change II–the Willarding.” I hope to wallow in the gooey spectacle that is his decade-long futile pursuit of a coronation.
Bokonon
@Ruckus: And the GOP party faithful are told, “push the fail-wagon harder and faster! Faster! Faster! Wooden wheels and sails is the morally correct and constitutional approach! We will soon be achieving racing speeds and WINNING!”
On the other hand, those big wooden wheels may go slow, and the fail wagon may ultimately lose the race, but you can sure hurt a lot of people very badly by running over them while lumbering to the finish line (or a ditch).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PsiFighter37: If one of the Mittlets is arrested for drunk-and-disorderly, sob-screaming at a bunch of people in a bar in Boston “You messed it up for Daddy!”, I have to start going to church again. I made a deal with the universe. The script is optional, even the arrest, I just want video on Gawker or TMZ.
LanceThruster
Everytime I read Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, it makes me glad I left the faith. His latest email.
What a maroon.
—
Community Organizers Needed
November 7, 2012
Bill Donohue comments on the election results:
In 2007, Barack Obama told Planned Parenthood that the first thing he would do if elected president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). Because of opposition from many quarters, including the Catholic League, the bill never got to his desk. But it may now come back, and if it does it could mean that Catholic hospitals would be required to perform abortions lest they lose federal funding.
The fate of the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that would force Catholic non-profits to pay for abortion-inducing drugs is sure to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Enough of the serious stuff—it’s time to have some fun, especially on this rather dreary day. We can’t wait until FOCA and the HHS mandate are thrust upon us, so we need to act now. Accordingly, we need to hire and train people with specific credentials. Here is my job description:Community organizers needed immediately
• No prior experience—in any job—is needed
• Chicago residents preferred, especially those from Hyde Park
• Membership in churches that promote racial divisions is a plus
• A passion for helping the poor must include opposition to school vouchers and support for more food stamps
• Long-time associations with urban terrorists preferred
• An apologetic stance on America’s heritage is a must
Send all resumes to Bill Donohue. References are optional though preference will be given to those who list attorneys who have defended suspected terrorists, or who have at least heard of Eric Holder.
Raven
There was a strong write-in campaign in opposition to that moron Paul Broun here in Athens. Here’s and article from DG’s old rag:
The write-in votes were a hodgepodge of hundreds of often-misspelled real local residents, celebrities, fictional characters and abstract concepts. A few examples: Bacon, Batman, Bertis Downs, Beyonce, Big Bird, Bill Nye, Brian Brodrick, Burning Bag of Dog Shit, Captain Jack Sparrow, “Carl” Marx, Darth Vader, Democrote, Doc Eldridge, Doritos, Doug McKillip, George Bush, Guy Fawkes, Gwen O’Looney, Jarvis Jones, Jay-Z, Hugh Acheson, Led Zeppelin, Michael Stipe, Randy Macho Man Savage, Ron Paul, Russell Edwards, Satan, Science, Spongebob, Stephen Colbert, Taylor Swift, Vermin Supreme, Yoda, Zelda and Zell Miller.
#And, of course, that perennial write-in favorite, Mickey Mouse.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The Marquis du Mittens had peasant boys to do that ignoble work crap for him. He had a dressage event to attend, don’t ya know.
NotMax
@Jeff Spender
Good on you.
Had a similar encounter, and replied that Obama’s secret plans to shut down all the overcrowded FEMA camps and sell the land and facilities to the U.N. would save enough money to wipe out the deficit.
Hill Dweller
The ’12 Obama campaign was arguably the best run ever, but, aside from these post-mortems, the media repeatedly covered the respective campaigns as if they were equals.
The Republican party is intellectually and morally bankrupt, but all you’ll get from the media is “both sides”.
fuddmain
@PsiFighter37: Tear ducts were never installed.
JoyceH
Schadenfreude – it’s not just for breakfast anymore. Day two of I Can’t Stop Grinning.
Saw a clip of Glenn Beck, urging his followers to… buy farmland. Tried to picture Beck fans attempting to farm. Grinning so big it hurt.
Read a Post article about the election aftermath, learned that the Romney Transition Team had till Friday to clear out their offices and turn in their cellphones. Beaming. NO ONE is saying “President-Elect Romney”.
And when you read the right’s reactions to this election, you get a sense that they’re not going to figure out what went wrong by 2014 (if ever) – so Yay.
BTW, I’m so behind on the memes. I watched Obama’s speech and I didn’t even notice flag-head lady.
Chris T.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No, the trick Bain Capital relied on was the fact that the money game is rigged. It was one “heads I win, tails you lose” situation after another, and all they had to do was keep flipping coins.
Villago Delenda Est
@LanceThruster:
And that is why Donohue is FAIL.
Sun Tzu laughs the laugh of Joseph Stalin enslaving Eastern Europe when he sees crap like that…the denial that your adversary can possibly defeat you…and this, after he’s kicked your ass twice.
Raven
@NotMax: I have detailed a couple of time that my half brother got all fucking nasty with me about an AMF Allen West FB post. I just talked with my real brother and he’s pretty sure it was the teabagger wife, not the dude. It’s helped bring me down a bit because I have been fucking raging.
The Ancient Randonneur
President-elect Romney thanks you.
mr_gravity
@SatanicPanic: sweet.
askew
Two things: I like that Obama’s pollster is pushing back on the “It’s Demographics Stupid” talking point. The media needs to get that the GOP can’t fix their problems with throwing up a couple of token minorities. They need to fix their policies to attract more diverse supporters.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/obama-pollster-president-won-on-values-not-demographics
And why is no one talking about the fact that Puerto Rico just voted to become the 51st state? That should be huge news.
Bokonon
@cosima: As a fellow Denver area resident … thank you for doing all of this, Cosima. Even if it was an uphill battle. You made a difference.
It was REALLY REALLY important, and the only effective way to push back on Scott Gessler’s attempts to churn and burn the voting rolls.
ThresherK
@Tonal Crow: I’m expecting that last line to translate into “I’ll pick up some day-laborers to put it up in no time”.
Leaving Texas
@SatanicPanic: No one who has ever known a CEO or worked in a massive corporation is surprised. The disconnect between the image and the reality of these people and places is stunning when seen up close.
Villago Delenda Est
What this all boils down to, ultimately, is that they can’t believe a ni*CLANG* can beat them.
They constantly underestimate Obama and his team. It’s just not possible for some fucking ni*CLANG* to defeat them. Just not possible.
Unpossible. Abso-fracking-lutely unpossible, I tells you!
Anon
Obama also posted a direct appeal on Election Day to Reddit. It was a very popular post, and can be found here. The way he phrased it was pitch perfect for Reddit.
FormerSwingVoter
HAHAHAHAHA
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/08/karl-rove-american-crossroads_n_2092523.html
“WTF Karl??? We bought this election fair and square!”
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: TWICED!
Roger Moore
@Tonal Crow:
Republican: Let me call Tim Pawlenty. He knows bridges!
Mike G
Who could have predicted that the party of magical thinking, authoritarian ideology, privilege and arrogance at the top and denying science when it contradicts their pet fantasies, would lead to such crap results.
Anyone who remembers the Bush Assministration could see the same pattern of egotism, delusion and mental laziness. Bush and Rmoney both have the con-artist mentality, the smug surety that the system is rigged in their favor and always will be.
scav
@Chris T.: day to day slog of building and maintaining and improving a specific company in a specific industry / setting is miles different from reading a few spreadsheets, and flipping “assets” after arranging clever loans. Slash and Burn Capitalism rather than the more agricultural long-term tending to business type.
Schlemizel
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I was thinking the same thing. I have consulted for a ton of companies who are eyeball deep in databases that should and could talk to each other & reduce the total number of DBs, the amount of time spent with them and provide better data. Not a single one of them is even willing to try to tackle the issues. These great corporate geniuses just throw more money at the problem.
Too bad the Obama team couldn’t just be forklifted into some of the Federal agencies to perform their magic!
JPL
@PsiFighter37: I had assumed it was Ann who delayed the concession speech.
Brendanyc
This is terrible of me, but I want to throw a little cold water. I am gloating, too, but i don’t want us to think that the well-funded and deeply-supported right wing will always make such stupid mistakes. they have enough money and enough fervor to hire someone to figure this out, fix it in plenty of time before next cycle, and so on. And to build a better ground game and the rest. they are not going to go to sleep. or go home to cry–well, maybe for a day or two.
these guys scare the piss out of me, and they have spent this last year building these machines–super PACs, not-for-profit, state party orgs, etc. that will come back to haunt us. i sure hope the Dems have someone as inspiring as O (say, HRC, for example) to nominate next time, ’cause it takes an enormous amount of red-blooded enthusiasm to overcome these plutocrats.
i know Rove looks like a fool on the Jon Stewart replay (terrific piece!), but he is not a fool. either is Murdoch. and those evangeliests!–holy cow, don’t ever underestimate them or their wing-nut-ery.
let’s enjoy this day, but let’s not ever let our guard down.
Brendanyc
This is terrible of me, but I want to throw a little cold water. I am gloating, too, but i don’t want us to think that the well-funded and deeply-supported right wing will always make such stupid mistakes. they have enough money and enough fervor to hire someone to figure this out, fix it in plenty of time before next cycle, and so on. And to build a better ground game and the rest. they are not going to go to sleep. or go home to cry–well, maybe for a day or two.
these guys scare the piss out of me, and they have spent this last year building these machines–super PACs, not-for-profit, state party orgs, etc. that will come back to haunt us. i sure hope the Dems have someone as inspiring as O (say, HRC, for example) to nominate next time, ’cause it takes an enormous amount of red-blooded enthusiasm to overcome these plutocrats.
i know Rove looks like a fool on the Jon Stewart replay (terrific piece!), but he is not a fool. either is Murdoch. and those evangeliests!–holy cow, don’t ever underestimate them or their wing-nut-ery.
let’s enjoy this day, but let’s not ever let our guard down.
NonyNony
@PsiFighter37:
It’s really kind of funny to me. In ’08 when McCain/Palin lost I was relieved on so many levels – that we were done with the Bush years and moving back to a President who was sane, that Palin was kept from being a bad heartbeat away from the Oval Office, that John “Bomb Bomb Iran” McCain was being kept away from any decisions more important than what Sunday Morning Bobblehead show he’d appear on next week – but I didn’t really enjoy watching McCain and Palin lose. It didn’t make me happy to think that they had just seen a lifetime of hopes and dreams (or a summer of hopes and dreams in Palin’s case) washed down the drain, never to have a chance for a second try.
But damn – this year is different. There is just something about Mitt Romney that makes me not only happy that Obama won, but also happy that that overprivileged, company destroying, smirking asshole has finally for once in his life been told NO! That he wasn’t able to lie and buy his way into office on the back of his daddy’s good name and his daddy’ money. And that he was denied his “rightful place” as the President by an overwhelming turnout of average, middle class people across all ethnicities just increases my joy.
I dunno. I rarely take pleasure in the misfortune of others. But for some reason for Mitt Romney I’m willing to make an exception.
rlrr
@mamayaga:
This is of a piece with the weird American myth that businessmen can do things more efficiently than can government or non-profits.
People who believe that obviously have no business experience…
Booger
Did the Baby Jeebus have databases? Did the Founding Fathers have databases? Where in the Constitution does it mention databases? Did John Galt have a database?
Point, Set, Match, bitches…QED, RMoney Must be the president.
Villago Delenda Est
@FormerSwingVoter:
Meanwhile, Kkkarl’s bank account in the Caymans needs to annex another set of islands to hold all the loot he’s extracted from his marks.
LanceThruster
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, it’s just a flesh wound.
xD
Jay in Oregon
Tom Levenson @ Top:
GODDAMMIT, MATH! STOP RUINING THINGS!
Kyle
@El Cid:
My bridge will hold up despite not bothering with commie math calculations or a pointy-headed librul-indoctrination engineering degree because JESUS loves me best! And if you question this, you hate Murka.
Linda Featheringill
I’ve looked in several places today and get the impression that the Republicans actually believed those Dream Numbers. From the Big Contributors down to the Little Idjits. There have been suggestions that even the Romney inner circle believed them. Hell, even Rove looked like he couldn’t believe that Obama took Ohio last night.
I find that strange.
[These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.]
Schlemizel
@Raven:
Letter to the editor in todays fish wrap from a poll worker. She complained about the ‘joke’ votes as they all have to be hand counted. I did feel sorry for her, after a long day at the polls to have to count several hundred ballots by hand would be a PItA.
rlrr
@Villago Delenda Est:
“His power lies apparently in his ability to choose incompetent enemies.”
— Crow T. Robot
Litlebritdifrnt
I was talking to the husband of a OFA poll worker the day before the election. She had been at a training session all day and he said that the organization was just amazing. Each poll worker had a database of registered voters in the precinct. As voters came in to vote they were checked off in the database. The poll worker would then generate a list of people who voted in 08 but had not yet voted. That list would be printed out and given to a volunteer who would then take it back to OFA HQ for the other volunteers to start making phone calls or knocking on doors to make sure that the voter intended to vote and if not why. If it was a matter of transportation or something they had a bunch of folks ready to give them a ride to the polls. Like I said the organization was truly amazing.
General Stuck
I guess this passes for right wing introspection and sober analysis to develop a plan to be the onslaught of darkies upon the republic.
In other words. Turn up the bullshit to where they can’t hear themselves think from us preaching the wingnut gospel. And by all means practice the reach arounds while stabbing poor folk in the wallet, and talk about baby jeebus more, this time with love and (cough cough- concern). You can’t change the leopards spots, but you can sometimes paint them in crayon.
Southern Beale
@Schlemizel:
Citizenshippin’ is hard work. We have plenty of “joke” candidates whose votes don’t have to be hand-counted, too. Here in Tennessee we re-relected Scott DesJarlais, the family values guy who pressured his mistress to have an abortion, and was found cheating on his wife and mistress with another woman. Family values, y’all!
Raven
@Schlemizel: The joke, in this case, was unopposed, that’s why the write-in!
NonyNony
@Linda Featheringill:
Oh yeah – they bought it hook line and sinker.
See here’s the thing that I’ve discovered in the last few days or so – they were POSITIVE that the likely voter models the pollsters were using were WRONG WRONG WRONG. The 2008 election had historic high turnout for African Americans, Latinos, Women and other minority voters. The muckety-mucks in the GOP had convinced themselves that the low turnout among these groups in 2010 was a sign that the those voters were temporary and would not be coming back to Obama in those numbers this time around.
Let that sink in – they were convinced that 2010 was the “true” demographics of the 2012 electorate. This wasn’t a con that they were running (except against themselves) – they actually believed that the off-year Congressional election that led to a Republican sweep was the “real” electorate and that blacks, women, Latinos, and everyone else who voted for Obama in 2008 were not going to bother to show up to vote this time around.
It was stupid. They completely ignored Obama’s 2008 GOTV machine and it’s impact on turnout (probably because they believe their own myth that people voted for Obama because it was a “novelty” to have one of “those people” elected President and that now the novelty had worn off).
wrb
I can’t resist posting this classic clip of ORCA blowing up.
The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds
Liberty60
@Villago Delenda Est:
Of all the memes I ever saw on rightwing blogs, this by far was the most pervasive; that Obama was in over his head, incapable of so much as zipping his fly without help.
But not just Obama personally; they are constantly salting their posts with images of how “urban” areas re this miserable hellhole of dysfunction and corruption, crime and disease.
In their world, any majority-minority city or neighborhood is by definition the 3rd World, and only exists by charity of the white areas.
The concept of capable, hardworking, bright and succsessful dark skinned people stuns and confuses them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Linda Featheringill: Rove is generally thought to have been Suskind’s blind “We make our own reality” source, and IIRC he’s the one who talked about “you have math, we have THE math” in 08. Like most celebrity strategists, Rove’s reputation is bloated. His ‘genius’ consists of having played the lowest common denominator well enough to get a likable (never to me, but apparently to enough) buffoon close enough to steal, then re-elected by the narrowest margin in history by people who largely believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, this against two candidate (and I like and admire them both greatly) were almost tailor-made to fail in modern TV political culture.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Schlemizel:
I do this stuff professionally, so speaking from a couple of decades of experience I can say that the barriers to pulling off a DB consolidation are huge and they are mostly not even technical. Just bringing in a bunch of whizz kid DBAs and software architects isn’t going to cut it. In a large organization the really hard parts of a project like this are cultural and organizational. It is easier to pry gold coins out of the hands of a Glenn Beck fan than it is to get people to give up their old comfortable and familiar databases and spreadsheets that they use to get shit done, and passive-aggressive resistance is a force of nature to be reckoned with, located somewhere between electro-magnetism and the strong nuclear force in tems of its ferocity.
I’m hugely impressed that the Obama team and the DNC managed to pull this off.
Schlemizel
@Southern Beale:
True enough! Sorry to hear that slimeball won.
peorgietirebiter
…and that’s why I’m renting the limo before I’m asking the most popular girl at school to prom, not getting the best limo is a REAL possibility.
Alex S.
Winners write history. The losing campaign suddenly did everything wrong, the winning campaign did everything right. I am a bit underwhelmed. The Obama campaign lost 10 million voters. And Ohio was closer than expected. It reminds me a bit of 2004, when Kerry was supposed to be the world’s biggest loser and the Bush guys geniusses. But in the end, the result depended on a single state.
qwerty42
Tom,
I always like your selection of paintings, but you might have wanted to go with The Raft of the Medusa for your Republican selection. And yes, I am enjoying this. Does that make me a bad person?
Litlebritdifrnt
@NonyNony:
I am just happy that I won’t have to suppress the urge to vomit every time someone said “First Lady Ann Romney”. The very idea of watching her smug, condescending face sneering down her nose at the little folks would have made me want to hurl.
@JPL:
Yeah, me too, as they say around here she was probably madder than a wet setting hen.
japa21
@FormerSwingVoter:
Which explains why Rove was so frantic when Fox called Ohio for Obama. He knew the phone calls he was going to get and the demands for explanations. Sure he has money to bank, but hard to use when you have concrete shoes on and are at the bottom of the river.
Also, for those who watched Kelly go to the Fox room where they crinched the numbers and did the Ohio call, did you notice the grins on the faces of those guys when they said they were absolutely confident in the Ohio call? They really enjoyed seeing Rove go bananas.
Schlemizel
From our friends at reddit:
Is anyone really surprised? No black man has ever lost the presidential election. Odds were in your favor, Mr. President.
there is that stupid grin again – if that thing stays on my face another day I’m afraid it might be permanent.
Elie
@cosima:
Sorry that you had such a horrible experience with OFA. Glad you were able to overcome it.
I experienced an extremely organized and effective get out the vote from the OFA team here in Northern VA. Extremely well organized. Yes, we hit SOME people more than once — when they weren’t home the first time or second time and to interact meaningfully at other times. We were debriefed after every trip out and people who did not want to be contacted again were removed from our data. The whole approach was to target folks and get them out to vote without pissing them off or being otherwise counterproductive to that end. I had a great time talking with the people who ultimately put VA in Obama’s column and I KNOW that campaign team was a huge contributor to that success. Remember also — they/we were volunteers — VOLUNTEERS
Mike G
@Schlemizel:
Repukes don’t do quiet competence.
Swaggering arrogance covering for a neglected misfiring infrastructure, and a ruthless attack machine, is more their style.
japa21
@Alex S.: What single state? Even if Obama doesn’t win Florida, which he will, and even if he had lost Ohio, which will have a higher spread than currently, he still wins.
ETA: My bad. See you were referring to 2004 not this year. But losing 10,000,000 votes was actually to be expected. What was impressive was Latino and youth vote grew and AA stayed the same.
redshirt
@Raven: Heh. I did not vote straight Dem – I did vote for Angus King (I). But every other Dem I could find I voted for, having no idea who some of the people were. But one judge election was unopposed with a sole Republican running. In the past I would have voted for the R just cuz. This time I wrote in for the first time: Bane.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Schlemizel:
Well, we could have elected him to another four years to attempt to straighten some of them up.
rlrr
@Linda Featheringill:
I’ve looked in several places today and get the impression that the Republicans actually believed those Dream Numbers.
Insane wingnut on Facebook predicted on Monday afternoon Romney would get 52% of the popular vote and win big in the EC. On Tuesday night, he posted it was down to Ohio and Florida – Wrong: Obama wins without either.
NonyNony
@Schlemizel:
This could be solved if every elected office line on a ballot had a line for “No thank you – I don’t want to vote for any of these clowns” that could be automatically tabulated.
The freaking State Senator of our district ran unopposed. Republican of course (go Ohio Democratic Party). So I basically had two choices – write something in to show my protest about being offered no alternative to our lovely Republican Senator, or skip it and not vote for that office at all. I chose to skip it because our electronic voting machines make write-in votes a PAIN IN THE ASS (probably on purpose). If there had been a “No thank you” line I would have cheerfully chosen that rather than contemplating reading the instructions again for how to make that write-in button work.
Southern Beale
Hilarious Daily Caller memory hole, from Aug. 2012:
Ha ha ha ha ….
Rachel Maddow nailed it last night when she said for the good of the country, Republicans need to wake the fuck up and stop living in their self-imposed alternate universe.
dm
@SatanicPanic: At least since his foreign tour I’ve been wondering if Bain Consulting created the Bain Capital gig for Romney to get the barely competent fellow away from their customers and spoiling their reputation as management consultants.
Suffern ACE
The sad fact is that it can be replicated and won’t be an advantage in 4 years. The good news is that at least I know my donation didn’t go to something worthless, like inspiring peggy noonan’s gut feelings.
Dan
The problem probably wasn’t with the software, it was that the only people who wanted Romney to win were at least 70 years old.
Lost passwords, lost data, total confusion… Sounds like a help desk for Jitterbug.
Bubblegum Tate
They neglected to include Ali Akbar’s full title. It’s Convicted Felon Ali Akbar. He’s presently threatening Civil War on Twitter and attacking his “detractors” (some other wingnut organization that he apparently defrauded). Good times.
Villago Delenda Est
@NonyNony:
Steiner’s group will save Berlin. Bank on it, libs!
Kyle
@japa21:
Here’s hoping that a big chunk of the unaccountable Citizens United foreign slush money that KKKarl received came from Russian mobsters and other unsavory types that tend to be rather inflexible on the matter of collections.
butler
@Brendanyc: All good points. One of the things I am worried about is the mindset that because Rove and his Super Pac ilk didn’t win this time it means that this big money can’t ever win. But of course they won’t go away, they’ll just come back again with even more dirty money and need to be opposed even harder. I guarantee they are already planning their strategy and contributions for 2014.
Xecky Gilchrist
@General Stuck: it means breaking the public-school monopoly, influencing public schools even while we work to diminish their influence, sending our best and brightest young writers and actors into the lion’s den of Hollywood, working to reform higher education and breaking the ideological hammerlock of the hard Left on faculties
Hoo boy, good find. Building a majority has to begin with acknowledging reality, and I’m not seeing much of that in this plan.
redshirt
@Dan: “Do you have the Microsoft? Where’s the Microsoft, mother?”
Also too: That sail car is kickin’ rad. I now want a sail for my truck. And a flag I can raise and lower from the cab (Jolly Roger, natch).
Mark S.
@FormerSwingVoter:
That was the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever read (well, not really, but still):
Shit, Rove should work for the NY Yankees. “We wouldn’t have scored those two runs in the ALCS without spending $250 million on our roster.”
That’s pretty much admitting the GOP is a lost cause. Why would anyone ever donate another penny to these losers again?
Elie
@mamayaga:
I second that — absolutely. I KNOW why Rove and Romney were surprised. Anyone working in corporate America nowadays knows you can’t tell these people anything that they don’t want to know. Period. That the business interests sunk millions into this pig in a poke, Romney — without using common sense to see how well the campaign was recruiting more people to its side and just taking Romney’s word on anything — they fully deserve to be robbed of every dime. Anybody who could hear that asshole and his surrogates talk for two seconds and think anything was going on upstairs, deserves to be “had”
Soylent Green is FReepers
@SatanicPanic: this. Now they just need to take the same organization and grow the org downticket.
jibeaux
For 15 full minutes of liberal wonk heroin, just mainline Maddow from last night. Tbogg, HuffPo, I’m sure many others have it up. Just soak that goodness in, it’s all legal now.
Chris
@NonyNony:
Same here.
I didn’t hate McCain. I did hate Romney. Had him pegged as a worthless asshole all the way back in 2008 when I saw the video of him with the medical marijuana patient. His entire campaign was in the same spirit, plus I got the impressiom that he, like Palin, was reality phoning in his performance and doing the absolute bare minimum he thought he needed to win. Then the fall came with the 47% video and the Benghazi moment (especially the Benghazi moment – State Department brat here) which really put me over the edge.
I am delighted the man lost, and I am delighted that the world finally slapped him in the face with the fact that there are some things he can’t buy.
catclub
I am reminded of a report I heard on the radio about a great school, that could not maintain that greatness, because every teacher was giving 110% and working hard because they were relatively independent. The lesson for me was, if it takes a hard working genius at every position, in order to have a successful enterprise, then the job is too damn hard and normal people will fail at it.
So here, Obama won with a far superior ground game, against an incompetent ground game. How much did he win by? 25%, 35%? No, he won by a gnat’s whisker.
If I were a GOP operative I would look at that and say: If we get a little competence, and they get a little less lucky, and we can win in a walk.
So I can laugh happily now, but they might actually learn from the experience. And they don’t have to learn much to do a LOT better than they did this time.
RedKitten
Just reading the Reddit stuff for Obama, and the ending of a post of his two months ago cracks me up:
You have to love a man who is aware of all internet traditions.
handsmile
I think I may actually expire from Schadenfreude. It’s as if the intertubes have been turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet or a Brazilian rodizio restaurant. I’ve not even spent much time here at BJ over the past two days, stuffing myself with the Schadenfeast on offer elsewhere.
From today’s tasting menu: Wonkette’s “A Children’s Treasury of Job Applications for Defeated GOP Wingnuts”:
http://wonkette.com/489318/a-childrens-treasury-of-job-applications-for-defeated-gop-wingnuts#more-489318
and The Guardian’s: “Obama Victory: Best GIFs and Memes” including the earthly departure of Bishop Willard:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/nov/07/best-us-election-night-gif
Both Brad DeLong’s blog and Media Matters have tubs full of wingnut tears and spittle.
But perhaps best of all was The Colbert Report from last night, one of the most brilliant episodes I’ve ever seen. Pure unadulterated genius. It will be rebroadcast tonight on Comedy Central at 7:00pm (EST) and there’s always HULU who for those know how.
Anya
@cosima:
My understanding is, that was actually by design. Also, sometimes the household has two or three registered voters, so you have to make a personal contact with each individual to make sure they voted.
We did the same thing in Ohio and as long as the person was still on the “not voted yet” list, we went back. Each time they got a new voter list they removed the ones who voted. Where I canvassed I found this to be helpful. In the last day, we knew who didn’t vote and we bugged them to death until they voted. As one of the OFA coordinator told me, contacting people more than once does not lose you votes. Just remember they were only contacting sporadic voters not people who regularly vote at every election. So, a little nudge is what the GOTV gods ordered.
Roger Moore
@Brendanyc:
Maybe, maybe not. Remember that Citizens United is strictly a free speech decision. Outside groups are free to speak their minds (i.e. buy advertising) but they’re still restricted from spending money on things that can’t be fit under the category of free speech. IOW, UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH can’t be spent on improving Orca; it has to come out of party or candidate funds, which are more limited.
There’s also a serious question about who would do the implementation. One of the things that came out during this election is that Republicans are having a hard time getting the very best people to do a lot of this stuff because their ideology drives a lot of talented people away. Meanwhile, the Republican party has become an obvious target for grifters, meaning that any campaign is going to have to work very hard to find the actual talent that is available. And the Democrats are already ahead, so they can focus on improving an existing system rather than building the whole thing.
Michael
@japa21: Colorado was the tipping point state with a 4.5 % MOV. Obama had plenty of breathing room
Kyle
Shorter Repubs:
We lost because we didn’t TURN RUSH UP LOUD ENOUGH.
Never interrupt your opponent when he is in the middle of making a mistake.
LanceThruster
On the other hand, they don’t have to go completely Galt as Michelle Bachman was returned to Congress by her constituents (must be something in the water).
That’s got to be good for something. Maybe she can maintain an outpost toehold in the vast DC wasteland for the inevitable/eventual reconquista.
Wolverines!!
Bubblegum Tate
Oh, and this is a great exchange from Ali Akbar’s Twitter feed:
Akbar:
Follower:
Akbar:
Follower:
Fucking irony, how does it work?
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am a bleeding heart liberal so I actually feel sorry for the Mittlets.
SatanicPanic
@Leaving Texas: Your average winger is either unfamiliar with these things, or grossly unaware of their own incompetence.
Democrat Partisan Asshole
@askew: Because it is not going to happen for a decade, not until we can redistrict and stand a chance of getting the House back, and that doesn’t happen until after the next census. Thanks for sitting out in 2010, liberal purists!
The task of admitting them as a state falls to Congress, and there’s a rather large coalition of folks in Congress who are not going to allow another several million Hispanic voters into the country, along with 5 guaranteed Dem House members and 2 guaranteed Dem Senators, without a fight to the death.
scav
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Mabel down in accounting, who after 50 years has finally learned to structure her spreadsheet so it looks exact like a word doc is indeed fun to try to convince. Still, all those little workarounds actual users have had to develop after the last whiz-kid genius came through and built a structure that made sense to him in an abstract sense instead of the listening to the needs of users can’t be easily written off. Hairball both directions, and sometimes the most valuable data is exactly the stuff they had to shoehorn in with great effort into a non-documented part of the structure. I wonder if the rolling, really up-and-running-every-four-years nature of campaigns didn’t make it a little easier for them. Not sure. from a pure data-geekery perspective, I would love to learn more.
LanceThruster
@catclub: Thank goodness (FSM) that the goppers don’t know what it is that they don’t know. I suspect they’ll be working quite hard from this point on not to find out, also too.
Villago Delenda Est
This is so very sweet.
An excerpt:
The office at 585 Commercial St. was largely packed up by the close of business Wednesday (one aide said it looked like it had been sacked by Visigoths), but some staffers will return today to remove their things.
quannlace
Roseanne Barr came in 5th in the presidential election.
Seriously.
She got about 50,000 votes..
Soonergrunt
Here’s some real geeky schadenfreude: Orson Scott Card had a melt-down.
Gracie
@Raven: I wrote in Eric Cartman. He’s infinitely more compassionate, intelligent and reasonable than Broun, right?
Roger Moore
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Maybe this was an exceptionally easy case, then, since it sounds as if the demand for consolidation came from the users rather than from above. That gives you instant buy-in for a working solution, rather than the kind of passive-aggressive resistance you’re describing.
LanceThruster
@General Stuck:
The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in ths one.
bcinaz
Isn’t there some old war adage “Know your enemy, know yourself?” Seems the Romney campaign didn’t know either very well. Really, they saw this giant weak spot as a huge advantage over ‘anything the Obama campaign had’. And seemed to remain clueless about Os strength right down to their faulty polling and self-delusional narrative.
LanceThruster
@bcinaz:
Does that mean his inauguration plans are off?
Yutsano
@Soonergrunt: Mmm…the sweet sweet tears of Breitbart’s FIL.
BENGHAZI!! Also. Too.
(I wish I didn’t have a meeting at work today. Otherwise I’d say to hell with it.)
Xenos
@Villago Delenda Est:
I wonder if he has found a way to cool them out. I suspect they may not be in the mood to cool out much.
catclub
@bcinaz: And this is a model for future political success (having really incompetent opposition) that may be difficult to repeat.
All that stuff about a demographic wave, but still needing a virtually perfect GOTV program (and a simultaneously incompetent one on the other side) to actually use it, makes me nervous.
LanceThruster
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s a freakin’ miracle, I tells you…along the lines of the SLC Gulls.
Villago Delenda Est
@Soonergrunt:
I wonder what color the sky is in Card’s world?
Mike G
@Bubblegum Tate:
Not to mention 85% of housing is managed and developed by the government.
Ooo, soshulizm!
beltane
Here is a schadenfreude Tumblr http://whitepeoplemourningromney.tumblr.com/
dm
@Litlebritdifrnt: Well, you know how the Republicans kept talking about “Chicago machine tactics”? Keeping track of who hasn’t voted yet, getting them rides to the polls if they need one — those are also “Chicago machine tactics”.
jibeaux
@Bubblegum Tate: It’s really quite fun watching them come up with countries to threaten to move to. Anywhere you’d want to live has universal healthcare. Eventually they’re going to say Somalia just to shut us libs up.
LanceThruster
@Soonergrunt:
How can he write “You go along with the big lie every day” and not be talkig about FAUX Noise?
Leaving Texas
@quannlace:
Take a look at the presidential ballot for Maryland. Neither Roseanne nor Santa Claus got a single vote.
NonyNony
@Democrat Partisan Asshole:
I hope you’re joking – liberal purists who decided to stay home and dress like a clown on election day instead of voting had about as much impact on 2010 as my choice of beer on Monday night had on this year’s election (a nice Columbus Brewing Company Oktoberfest that I can highly recommend to anyone in the Central Ohio area who likes decent beer, BTW).
What was missing in 2010 that was there in 2008 and 2012? Obama’s freaking GOTV machine. Also state Democratic Parties do not take local non-presidential elections seriously. And they need to – Republicans take every freaking election seriously and that’s why they clean up.
If the Ohio Democratic Party had had something like Obama’s GOTV machine in 2010, it’s likely that Ted Strickland would still be governor of Ohio (he lost by a whisker in what was otherwise a Republican wave for this state).
japa21
@Soonergrunt: Delusional is too kind a word to describe that crap.
Xenos
@catclub:
Luck is important, so thank whatever deitie(s) you are inclined to thank. We could never have won in 2008 without the W disaster, and we probably could not have pulled off 2012 without the folly and arrogance of Mitt. Then again, if the GOP were not so disastrous, foolish, and arrogant, the stakes would not be so high in the first place.
Caliph Garrett
@Villago Delenda Est: Were there keys missing from the keyboards?
NonyNony
Jeebus. I just saw that Atrios linked to this:
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/08/15024793-the-last-days-of-romneyland?lite
Which includes this bit:
Interesting choice of words there, don’t you think? I wonder how many of them truly thought they were buying shares of a Presidency this year, instead of contributing to an election campaign? And I wonder how much pro quo they expected for their quid.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Villago Delenda Est:
From your link
What a miserable sack of shit Romney is. Couldn’t even pay for one last cab ride home. Says it all doesn’t it.
Villago Delenda Est
@NonyNony:
Well, they expected massive tax cuts as the pro quo, for one thing.
That’s gone.
These assholes need to be taxed into penury. Isn’t going to happen, but a guy can dream.
Ruckus
@NonyNony:
I seem to recall there was a movie once with the whole premise being a line to vote for – None of the Above.
Mark S.
@beltane:
Okay, I’m really enjoying that waaaaaaay too much.
danimal
@NonyNony: IIRC, the Romney campaign fought a bitter fight in Nevada to remove “None of the Above” from the available choices on the NV ballot.
Roger Moore
@Xenos:
I think it involves a name change and black market plastic surgery.
Shadow's Mom
Having worked behind the scenes in the data realm for OFA, the one significant criticism our team had was the failure of OFA HQ to leverage the growing Latino demographic with targeted calling lists.
In California, we were encouraged to identify volunteers with strong Spanish language skills, but we were never provided access to phone lists targeting the communities for which these skills could be put to use. This despite repeated requests from phonebank coordinators and the data team
A bundler friend of mine managed to get Latino lists by reaching out to OFA_FL, which took direct initiative to create its own Latino outreach lists.
Overall, though the targeting calling was impressive and allowed us to quickly pull both volunteer recruitment lists (or differing priorities for likelihood to engage) as well as the call lists used for outreach to the battleground states.
I am so glad that I volunteered and played my small role in the process.
22over7
@beltane:
Wow, look at all those white people.
I’m feeling marginally hopeful, in that almost nobody is talking about the GRAND CONSPIRACY that allowed Obama to be elected (well, Orson Card above hinted at it, but phrased it as more of a cool kid’s table thing). Most of the posts I’m reading takes the election results at face value.
A few are even considering the possibility that republicans might have to change. A bit.
But overall I’m with the rest of you. I’m bathing in sweet, sweet tears of despair.
Mike G
@Villago Delenda Est:
Rmoney always reminded me of Cloudesley Shovell, the Royal Navy admiral who in 1707 had a sailor hanged for daring to assert that the fleet was off course on approach to the English Channel; hours later, all the ships ploughed into the Scilly Isles and sank.
cosima
@Elie & Anya
Our volunteers were fabulous — but we didn’t have many of them. The same few people week after week, month after month, until the last 2 weeks. The paid OFA staff — not organized, not focused, no clue whatsoever. Mostly college kids who had no idea what real voters’ needs & wants are.
This is a really densely populated area. I was completely gobsmacked by the fact that I would be given a list to walk/canvass that someone had just done the day before, or, on good days, two days before. Enter the data! They filled out a VR form — take them off! It was so frustrating.
I completely understand trying to reach more than one voter in a household, and sometimes, when people aren’t home trying again. This was way beyond that. This was literally talking to people who had already completed VR forms the day before or two days before with a different OFA volunteer.
If they didn’t have time to enter the data they should have kept track of what areas had already been canvassed and sent someone to a different area the next day. And I guess that’s where the “geek” part of this comes into play — there may have been a great program in place to purchase voter data, determined who was a D or I, who was inactive, but it wasn’t implemented well in our area. *Note, I do not live in Stapleton, and I know the OFA head there is fabulous, the other areas I know nothing about at all.
The two other neighborhood leads in this area had been hugely involved in the 2008 election efforts, and said this was night & day, astonishingly unorganized & morale-crushing, and we often took it upon ourselves to get things done. On so many occasions when we relied on the OFA people it turned out that our efforts became counterproductive (canvassing in already-covered areas rather than new areas).
Our mantra became all about getting it done for Obama in spite of OFA. Their contributions could be summed up as this: lit (which was not nearly as useful as my inactive voter paper) & canvass lists of people who’d already been canvassed recently.
But it’s over, we won, and hopefully Denver will continue to lead the blue charge here in Colorado. Thinking about all of the OFA incompetence has now given me a headache and totally harshed my mellow.
I’m glad that you both had a great experience, and thanks for your efforts!
Balloon Juice has been such a fabulous port in this storm.
SatanicPanic
@dm: I figure his elevation involved some variation on the Peter Principle.
NonyNony
@Villago Delenda Est:
I honestly wonder if they spent more on trying to get Romney elected than they will pay in taxes under Obama for the next four years.
But even there – honestly that’s a terrible investment. You can buy Representatives by the six-pack and the odd Senator here or there and get a much better return on your investment if all you care about is tax cuts.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Seconds!
Roger Moore
@Mike G:
And the government (through Temasek) owns a substantial share of most of the big businesses in the country. And it’s such a nanny state it makes the Democrats at their most interventionist look like Ayn Rand.
LanceThruster
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Who coulda guessed? Selfish greedy bastard is selfish.
Elie
@handsmile:
Wonkette’s site is a supper hoot and I totally enjoyed the GIFs as well. Thanks!
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
Romney certainly comes across the classic Dibert pointy haired boss. It really sounds like they sitting around Boston saying “but we had all the right buzz words”
quannlace
Wow, Benghazi is like his crystal meth!
Also too, it’s all the media’s fault.
Litlebritdifrnt
Ha Ha more bitter wingnut fail
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/08/kristen-neel-anti-obama-australia-tweet-backlash_n_2093160.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
These idiots are so clueless
Villago Delenda Est
@NonyNony:
It’s not the money…it’s the principle of the thing!
(Ok, I tried typing that with a straight face, and it just did not work…)
Dennis G.
Brilliant.
Schlemizel
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
100% agreed – its not the techie stuff stopping them (although that is a challenge) its mostly management & as you point out sad old inertia.
Bokonon
@cosima: The difference between Romney’s campaign and Obama’s campaign may ultimately come down to this – there were people in Obama’s organization (like you) that worked around the disfunctions, and tried to make things work better, and provided dissention and negative feedback (or insubordination where necessary).
From these stories about Romney’s ORCA system, I get the feeling that it was a top-down effort where people were not allowed to raise questions or point out problems. They were just supposed to do what they were told, execute on the plan, and produce victory.
22over7
@NonyNony:
Individually, the rich people spent a pretty small amount of their wealth. And President Romney would have sheparded through a repeal of the capital gains tax and the inheritance tax. Those two alone would have made these people much, much richer.
ranchandsyrup
I took yesterday off work to nurse a hangover. Today I collected on 4 bets (none of them for the standard Romney unit that I desired. SAD FACE). Each collection was glorious. The preeminent office wingnut paid me in singles.
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
Wait, wait! People who invested in Mitt’s operation got screwed out of their money while his confidantes prospered? Nobody could have predicted that the former head of Bain would do such a thing!
ding dong
Orca flopped onto Trumps casino in Atlantic City with Sandeee.
LanceThruster
@Villago Delenda Est:
Any time the party of principles tells you it’s not the money…
Schlemizel
@Southern Beale:
I have to assume Michael McKeon is a wingnut grifting douche. Is that a good guess?
cckids
@Schlemizel:
Isn’t this related to the computerizing medical data/records required by the ACA? It will allow docs to see what tests have already been done, review results, etc. Should save $$ after it gets into place. Also lives, but we all know what those are worth in this argument.
Kyle
@Bokonon:
This is Republican ideology (and corporate America) in a nutshell.
jwb
@Linda Featheringill: Rove is the one who surprised me, because he should have known better. That leaves two plausible scenarios: (1) he drank the Kool-Ade along with everyone else on the right; (2) he thought the GOP had the votes rigged to fall Romney’s way but the rigging for some reason failed. If you go with option (2), it becomes fun sport thinking about how that rigging failed. It’s a nice scenario for a political thriller.
Will
@SatanicPanic: Can I steal that?
Elie
@cosima:
I hope you share your experience with national OFA at some point. I am sure that of all the sites operating, some of course, may not have been as well run and they need to know that for future planning and to weed out (or retrain) those who need it.
Also glad that you survived and obviously you can take some pride in having participted in an ultimately successful and very important outcome..
Best —
sparrow
@Villago Delenda Est: Or that black people are not actually stupid enough to let the voter intimidation efforts win. Like those robocalls saying to vote on Nov 8th — you only think that’s going to work if you think your target is stupid…
El Cid
“We’ll always have Benghazi…”
MCA1
@Brendanyc: I’m not as worried about this, for three reasons. One, the next Democratic Presidential nominee will inherit the Obama system and infrastructure, and will have the chance to continue to improve it while Republicans play catch up; Two, the Republicans need to figure out who their coalition of voters is first before they can start microtargetting them, and part of that means they have to target people who are two-time Obama voters and likely registered Dems – they don’t have the historical affiliations and preferences they can even plug it, other than “white,” “old,” and “fearful”; and Three, while they try to get their v.2 in play for the next Presidential race, Democrats will be pushing their current tools down the ticket and using this sort of technology and turnout advantage to crush it in the next Senate and House elections.
SatanicPanic
@ranchandsyrup: I only bet one person. He wanted to bet more but I felt it was a sucker bet, and kept it low. Plus he’s more of a Paultard than a wingnut, so it won’t have the same “IN YOUR FACE” feeling. Still, it’s going to feel good when I collect.
Schlemizel
@butler:
It may take them a try or two to get it right – thats my fear. Hopefully we can either fix it or make the electorally irrelevant before they figure it out.
If I had that money I know exactly how I could cripple the GOP side. It would all be legal and above board. It would take a year to get set up but if you gave me KKKarl’s money I could flip the House and gain a super majority (or damn near close) in the Senate in ’14. What scares me is that if I thought of it those bastards could too. Still I’m not talking because I know it would work & if they don’t think of it I don’t want to help them
Herbal Infusion Bagger
@Tonal Crow:
Not to me. Orcs are the grunts and workers for Evil Overlords. That sounds a bit too blue-collar and hard work for GOPers.
Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief Nazgul, though – now you’re talking.
You Know Who
Keep laughing, but guess what? JEB BUSH is poised and ready…
Stooleo
More Schadenfreude. Pictures of white people mourning Romney’s loss
ranchandsyrup
@SatanicPanic: Make him pay you in gold.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Yutsano: You might be thinking of Orson Bean.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Yutsano: You might be thinking of Orson Bean.
SatanicPanic
@Will: Sure! Besides, all personal property is going to be abolished Jan 21, 2013 anyway. The election is over so we can stop pretending.
Villago Delenda Est
@You Know Who:
Oh, look! It’s the first mate of the good ship Set Sail for Fail!
Herbal Infusion Bagger
@cosima:
Different experience to me – I was amazed how effectively they used volunteers and quickly put ’em to work, given they had up 400+ of them at a time. But we seemed to have a mix of old union hands, techies, and eager college kids as the volunteer coordinators.
jibeaux
A very nice amuse buche, to cleanse the palate between main courses of tears.
Stooleo
Sorry, Bad link. Try this.
geg6
@cosima:
Wow, sorry you had such a bad experience, but I worked both 2008 and 2012 and found both campaigns to be the best organizations I’ve ever worked for, whether as a volunteer or an employee. Super competent and organized. Of course, we had the same guy this time around as the last time (he was a lower level guy in ’08 that got promoted in ’12) as my contact and we all started back in February or so with our county effort. Sounds like you got one of those isolated incidents where someone at OFA was not competent. In the two presidential elections, the one off-year election, and the runup to the passage of the ACA, it’s been nothing short of amazing. And I’ve been volunteering for Dem campaigns since 1976.
Obama didn’t win my county, but I didn’t expect him to with all the olds, the bigots, and generally stupid people around here. But I can’t put any blame on the local OFA for that.
Anya
@cosima: Thank you for all you’ve done, despite the incompetent kids OFA hired. I am disappointed. I worked with three OFA offices in Ohio and all three were masterfully run by professionals.
“But we seemed to have a mix of old union hands, techies, and eager college kids as the volunteer coordinators.”
Hey, maybe we were at the same campaign office. I had a similar experience.
Mark S.
@You Know Who:
Don’t ever change.
SatanicPanic
@ranchandsyrup: Good idea, since we’re due for hyperinflation any day now. Or maybe I’ll ask for Ameros.
cckids
@NonyNony:
Here in NV we’ve had a “None of the Above” option for years. This year, the NV Repub party took it to the state Supremes to get it off the ballot going forward. I don’t remember their exact bs argument, but they won. So this election was the last time we could do the “nota” option.
El Cid
Just you wait, libs! Four years from now Obama stands no chance of winning!
Roger Moore
@jwb:
There’s always option 3: he didn’t care about the outcome because he’s skimmed enough to be set for good, and he doesn’t believe that his donors can touch him.
MCA1
@NonyNony: This is it precisely. I spent half my dinner at a nice restaurant last weekend being harangued by a guy I barely knew but assumed was a hardcore Rep., about these very things. 2008 was a fluke. People voted for the wet dream candidate. Can’t replicate the enthusiasm. 2010 was a much more accurate picture of the electorate. Small sample size state polls vs. the infallible Gallup. Some apocryphal story about a meeting attended by a friend of a colleague with a host of Wall Street titans who, to a man, said it was in the bag for Romney and he’d get 300+ EV’s.
My response to this line of bullshit consisted of: “I think you’re wrong. Nate Silver and facts on the ground agree with me.” I added in that midterms don’t equal Presidential elections, Romney was acting desperate in the last week of the campaign, and there were so many conservatives blinded by their Obama hatred that they’d confirmation biased themselves into thinking everyone else did, too (a la some of us in 2004), but generally I just said one of us is going to have a bubble burst on Tuesday night, and let him continue to feel good.
Chyron HR
@You Know Who:
Only 1458 days until PRESIDENT-ELECT (JEB) BUSH!
Word on the street says that Purple Strategies will be releasing SHOCK POLLS in 2016 showing JEBMENTUM in all swing states!
DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE TO BE ANNOUNCED is doomed, libs!
Mark S.
@jibeaux:
If only all of our teabagger friends would do that.
Schlemizel
@cckids:
it sure is – but I bet there is already an HHS body in the way of those guys getting to set up the DB. Plus they would be hamstrung by some of the rules the govt is forced to operate under (Hope that didn’t sound to wingnutty – I am working at a gov place these days & Congress has worked overtime to cripple things here(
LanceThruster
The Rude One has a way wth words.
NonyNony
@jwb:
(2) makes the better fiction, but the most plausible scenario is (1).
Rove is not a genius. Rove’s “talent” was to understand that Lee Atwater didn’t go low enough and that the tolerance of the American electorate for underhanded tactics was much, much higher than anyone previously expected. And that Democrats would be wimps and not fight back properly.
Those assumptions worked in the short term (they almost failed in 2000 – Rove was “saved” by Republican incompetence in Florida and the fact that Sandra Day O’Connor wanted to retire and wanted to have her replacement appointed by a Republican). It took the Democrats a couple of cycles to adjust – but now those assumptions are off the table. Democrats know that the press will not call out lies and will in fact enable liars if the liars are Republican. The campaign has to actively push back. Democrats in 2000 were taken by surprise by Rove’s tactics – by 2012 its expected that Republicans will be scum.
jwb
@Roger Moore: Rove looked too concerned and perplexed for option 3.
jwb
Deleted for duplication.
Mark S.
@Chyron HR:
UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH will ensure that Jeb LOSES BY ONLY TWO POINTS!
NonyNony
@Chyron HR:
I believe you forgot
trollhattan
Things that puzzle me: my county’s registered voter turnout was under 50%. WTF? this is a gummint town and also, too, there were plenty of important local and California statewide initiatives on top of the opportunity to directly say, “Up yours, Willard!” (57% voted, “Kenyan, please.”)
I don’t get it, unless there are fifty tons of mail-in ballots outstanding, but some rural counties are in the 80s. I guess my vote counted double.
Schlemizel
@Will:
We have to ask?
OH_OH, its already up on my FB. Hope he doesn’t sic the MPAA on me 8-{D
Thanks for that great line Panic
ranchandsyrup
@SatanicPanic: ZOMG stagflation black Jimmy Carter!
ranchandsyrup
@You Know Who: That only makes me laugh harder. The Bush family war between GWB/Rove and GHWB/Jeb/Bar should be a reality show.
NonyNony
@jibeaux:
Jeebus. I hope that guy seeks professional help.
trollhattan
@NonyNony:
Rove’s 2006 All Things Considered fapping was the nation’s best public viewing of him as a fraud, to that date. His “I have the numbers!” crap proved he’s a liar and/or easily fooled by fake pollsters. I don’t think he’s improved in that arena, only upping his grift skills.
LanceThruster
@Roger Moore:
Karl is the Bain Capital of Super PACS.
trollhattan
@You Know Who:
I thought you were going Galt along with our Uberklasse? Not invited along to Galt’s resort and bar?
Tonal Crow
@FormerSwingVoter:
Awwwwwww…Wepubwicans don’t wike it when they get gwifted!
Tonal Crow
@Linda Featheringill:
I don’t. Not in the least. Republicans have been spewing propaganda so effectively for so long that they’ve completely forgotten that it *is* propaganda. Now, to them, it is “true” that Obama’s a communist, Nancy Pelosi’s running internment camps for Republicans, Harry Reid is conniving with Stalin to end free enterprise, and Bernanke has debased the dollar so much that we’re experiencing hyperinflation, sky-high interest rates, and Greek-style fiscal collapse.
Shawn in ShowMe
@catclub:
For a blah Kenyan Muslim to win at all, and with 7.9% unemployment to boot, should have been unpossible. What happens when the Dems run a likable white guy with a decent GOTV operation? They win in a walk.
cckids
@Schlemizel: Oh, I’m sure of that (the regs). But even if they eliminate the repeating of tests that happens in the first 24 hours someone is in the hospital, it will save hundreds of millions.
Due to my son’s condition, I’ve spent WAY too much time in hospitals, and the waste due to repetition is unreal. X-Rays, blood work, scans, etc. And he is a Medicaid patient, so you know they aren’t getting any great reimbursement. Maybe that is why they have the duplication, but I’d think if Medicare/Medicaid would quit paying for duplicated tests, a lot of that crap would stop.
johnny aquitard
@General Stuck:Amazing:
Never occurred to him that message those tens of millions heard isn’t one of self-reliance and individual economic freedom. They heard the dog-whistle racism, the condescension, the utter contempt and hostility expressed toward them as a people and toward their communities and toward their right to vote. And yes, they found that terrifying. So did a helluva lot of whites.
The part I like, from reading those comments, is how few are capable of any reflection or introspection. They’re still looking for a scapegoat, still hating on the poor, the black people, latinos, single women. The guy actually blames public schools, amazing. The cornerstones of the communities where those tens of millions live, those are the root of conservative fail? And he insists they live in a bubble?
Then again, they do teach math in those public schools. I can see how that can easily undermine the conservatives message.
I liked that piece and many of those comments because I am reassured those guys have no clue why they lost. I am reassured because they think doubling down on the hate — what that guy calls single issues — is going to work. I am reassured because they believe they failed because the message didn’t get through (as if Fox News and Rush Limbaugh were not enough). It’s the label, surely not the toxic contents within.
Sure. Sure. A little botox here and there in the wrinkled message to appeal to youth and smooth out some of the nasty flaws, and little time in a tanning booth and it’ll all be, as Dora the Explorer likes to say, “Come on vamanos, everybody let’s go!” Instant appeal to the people they hold in contempt the most. Sure. Sure.
Chris
@NonyNony:
Take every election seriously. Novel idea….
Obama’s gotten the ball rolling on the Democratic comeback. We just need to keep building on it. It took almost thirty years from the time Nixon invented the Southern Strategy to the time Gingrich tool over Congress and cemented the GOP’s top dog status, so I’m not expecting immediate or painless domination. We can do it, though.
Bubblegum Tate
@Bokonon:
Well said.
And thank you for everything you did, cosima.
redshirt
Today is the best day. So much deliciousness, everywhere.
grape_crush
> …a fascinating and tantalizingly brief piece…
No idea if this was linked to upthread, but there’s a bit more juicy detail here from Slate:
Regarding Orca, the idea of getting pro-GOP poll watchers to report impressions of what’s happening at polling stations is a flawed idea when the people you are talking about are like this guy:
The conversation on the video captures the skewed perspective of the person making the observation: “So what I am saying is, it looks to me like this voting location was selected as the place they told everyone to come.”
The Nation article goes on to state that Conway is in denial about the demographic composition of his community. I can’t disagree with that conclusion.
cosima
There were less than 10 of us who showed up regularly to do the phone-banking & canvassing in our area. This is a blue (the only R/R sign in the entire neighborhood was my neighbor’s) area, with tons of Latinos. I used a local parenting internet group to find volunteers, found an awesome bilingual ESL teacher, tons of community connections through her teaching & her husband (Latino), who said she’d help, gave her info to our “Latino outreach” coordinator, later asked how she was working out, and he said “who?”
The paid OFA staffer for our area would say to me “do you know anyone who can volunteer?” and I was thinking “don’t you think I’ve asked already, and wth with the phone-banking for volunteers?!” She was enough to give a person nightmares.
It was really something, but over with and done, and we got the result that we needed, so I’m putting it behind me. And hoping for a better campaign team next time!
With luck they’ll send me a questionnaire and I can explain to them all of the ways that the group needed improvement.
Because I don’t think there are any of us who really believe that the GOP will use this as a learning experience, a chance to reflect on the direction the party has taken, and begin to come to their senses. They will double-down on the voter-suppression tactics, the wingnuttery, the lying, the corporate cash — all of it. It is their identity, their core, and they will not change except to become even worse.
Which means that GOTV, voter registration, outreach to minorities and down-ballot/ticket issues will become even more important. I told lots of people that I talked to while canvassing that they need to begin to effect change locally more than anywhere else, voting on presidential years is important, but you have to vote on the issues and for the candidates that directly affect the community in which you live, the education that your children do/don’t get, police officers, fire fighters, all of it comes from your commitment to voting each & every time. The inactive voters were inactivated because they did not vote mid-term elections, and that’s how the shite begins, installing a bunch of voter-suppressing and vote-rigging bastards at the state level. We even get mail-in ballots here, it’s just not that difficult to vote — when you get the chance…
Speaking of which, can’t wait to get rid of our shite Secretary of State the slimy snake who inactivated hundreds of thousands here in CO.
japa21
I sincerely hope Jeb runs and gets the nomination.
Most people still see the economic troubles ass caused by Bush policies. By 2016 the economy should be running fairly smoothly. But the collapse will still be on people’s minds.
Won’t be hard to say, look what the last Bush did. We giot you out from under that. Do you really want a repeat?
Cakewalk for the Dem candidate.
Gravenstone
@Yutsano: I believe Breitbart’s widow is Orson Bean’s daughter, not Orson Scott Card. Card has been a wingnut moron of good public standing for ages now. Amazing what one can get away with after a successful novel.
Tony J
@Soonergrunt:
Oh that is fricking lovely. Card is such a tool that he almost – almost – has me convinced that he’s spoofing for yucks and bucks. I mean, “Don’t you dare say I’m lying or exaggerating!”
Come. On.
pseudonymous in nc
I can’t help but wonder whether rumour or knowledge of the OFA “Nate Silver room” running poll-based simulations to allocate resources was the trigger for the anti-Silver backlash — that attacking the public quants was also meant to undermine the private quants.
1badbaba3
@Tonal Crow: Is that off their concept album “2112”? Man, I used to love that when I was a kid.
@Kyle: Hells yeah, dude, they rawk! The Canadian Zeppelin! Crank that shit up to eleventy!
‘Cos it’s one louder, innit?
Gravenstone
@You Know Who: You really are a clueless moron, aren’t you? Jebbie is pissed off becuase his idiot brother C+ Augustus destroyed the Bush family name in perpetuity. There will never be another Bush from this lineage to occupy the White House. Ever.
Shana
@MCA1: Agree completely. Kind of how, here in Virginia, we loved Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy that put paid people in every state to build the party, not just ones that were reliably blue states. That basic infrastructure helped a great deal even though the program was officially ended once Dean was no longer head of the DNC.
Mnemosyne
@cosima:
I wouldn’t wait for a questionnaire from the main organization — go ahead and write it all in a letter and send it off to the state or regional coordinator for OfA. Even after a victory, constructive criticism is always appreciated and you don’t want to get stuck working with the same mopes in 2016.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
To be sympathetic with the OFA staffer, it sounds like she was dropped into running an office with no mentor to show her the ropes and understand how to recruit and retain volunteers.
She sounds probably out of her depth, and would have been better in a support role in a larger office rather than in a smaller office where she was expected to show leadership, ‘cos not everyone’s strength is in leading.
fuckwit
@Shana: We MUST BRING BACK THE 50 STATE STRATEGY right the fuck now, in order to win the House back in 2014!
This is fucking imperative. If I got to meet the President and was given just 10 seconds to deliver one sentence to him, this’d be it. We must reimplement the 50-state strategy NOW, if we’re to take back the House. We already know that we must take back the House (and get a supermajority in the Senate) in order to have any chance of having a functioning government. There’s only one way to get it back.
50 state strategy. Bring back Howard Dean as DNC chairman, or put someone else in charge who’s even better and can take Dean’s work to the next level.
fuckwit
@Shana: We MUST BRING BACK THE 50 STATE STRATEGY right the fuck now, in order to win the House back in 2014!
This is fucking imperative. If I got to meet the President and was given just 10 seconds to deliver one sentence to him, this’d be it. We must reimplement the 50-state strategy NOW, if we’re to take back the House. We already know that we must take back the House (and get a supermajority in the Senate) in order to have any chance of having a functioning government. There’s only one way to get it back.
50 state strategy. Bring back Howard Dean as DNC chairman, or put someone else in charge who’s even better and can take Dean’s work to the next level.
Mike Lamb
@General Stuck: Love the bullshit on public schools. Here’s a question: if public schools are so left leaning, and the majority of folks that vote attended public schools, then why was the election 50% to 48% instead of a much larger spread? How are they getting the message out to the South, Texas, Idaho, etc.?
Schlemizel
@cckids:
Yeah, I have a long ugly history of experience with doctors & hospitals and the coding of treatments and billing fiascoes are familiar to me. I wish we had a decent system in place. There would be a huge cost savings right there
Darkrose
@trollhattan: You’re in Sac, right?
Small sample size, but we voted by mail, as did both the guys in my office who are in Sac. It’s so much easier, and I suspect a lot of people went that way.
JosieJ
@Yutsano: Orson Scott Card is not Breitbart’s FIL, that’s Orson Bean. And I suspect there were precious few agreements over the dinner table for those two.
Err, or what Gravenstone said!
chuck butcher
FYWP
chuck butcher
@fuckwit:
The thing people always seem to forget about the 50 State strategy is that it was never considered to be election specific but rather a long term building tool. The real idea was to build for even 10 or 20 years out, to make the Party competitive in every one of the 50, and that kink of thinking in regard to, say, GA means long term.
jefft452
@catclub: “So here, Obama won with a far superior ground game, against an incompetent ground game. How much did he win by? 25%, 35%? No, he won by a gnat’s whisker … So I can laugh happily now, but they might actually learn from the experience. And they don’t have to learn much to do a LOT better than they did this time”
They did better than their wildest expectations, conservatives turned out in droves, huge numbers of legitimate voters were tossed off the rolls, and, get this, the Marquis de Mittens got 61% of the white vote
61%! That tops Reagan
But here is the thing, 30 yrs ago winning whites 3 to 2 gets you 48 out of 50 states
Today it gets you a 3 to 2 defeat in the EC
If they do a lot better in 2016, they can flip Fla, maybe Va (but probably not) – and still lose
Lojasmo
@Mark S.:
Can we just ban the IP at this point?
ruemara
@Linda Featheringill: Solution is simple. God loves Barack Obama. Mittens, not so much.
Bill Arnold
That Time piece is absolutely fascinating. I had been wondering about why the polls looked so smooth; this disparity in statistics-driven modeling capabilities is an explanation.
Bill Arnold
@Bill Arnold:
Rayid Ghani: an interesting collection of papers. According to the article Rayid leads/led the Obama campaign data mining effort.
Matt McIrvin
Wow, really? He was banking on getting 60%, wasn’t he?
Of course, he was banking on getting 60% of whites with depressed minority turnout.
Bulworth
That’s just precious.