That's what they said about Reagan
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I'm calling the election - Obama will win
- Thread starter Big Smoothy
- Start date
That's what they said about Reagan
GearsMcGilf
Registered
Obama has this shit wrapped up. Romney even knows it. Frankly, I don't really give a shit at this point. I don't think either one of those losers has shit to offer. I may even sit this one out. Our choice is either another round of tax cuts and deregulation, which is what fucked us in the first place. Or, higher taxes, more bullshit regulation, an energy policy held hostage by enviro special interests, amnesty for illegals, and more unsustainable debt n deficits. Take your pic. lol
cshea2
Registered
This is true, but Reagan was not the incumbent.
debates rarely have ANY sway on the vote. people already have their minds made up. this year a lot of republicans are voting democrat because Romeny is so detested. the Republicans have been making a lot of stink about how the party has become unrecognizable. Republicans for Obama
[url]http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/3/extremists-chase-some-republicans-toward-obama/
[/URL]
[url]http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/3/extremists-chase-some-republicans-toward-obama/
[/URL]
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I also know a lot of dems that will not vote for Obama. His report card sucks. Not sure if they will vote Romney.
people recognize the subtle fact too that a lot of the vibe we get of what an asshole he is personally comes from his own sons.
Another failed attempt to make Mitt likeable - Democratic Underground
dad is finished eating by the time the rest of us sit down... anyone with any common sense knows you just told everyone your dad is an ignorant, self centered douchebag.
Another failed attempt to make Mitt likeable - Democratic Underground
dad is finished eating by the time the rest of us sit down... anyone with any common sense knows you just told everyone your dad is an ignorant, self centered douchebag.
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It's a sad day. They were right when they say vote the lesser of 2 evils. I don't know if I can vote for evil anymore.
GearsMcGilf
Registered
lol! Yes, it must be because Obama has been such a success story. Is it his successful foreign policy in the mid east, the fact that he cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, or the fact that the economy is now growing at 1% that has all these Obama republicans sold?
some one please tell me what Obama has done that is great? He failed... Flat out failed he made promises that he did not keep. He lied to the American public to their face and has covered up so much more then bush. Why is it that people blame the gov't for the twin towers, but when Obama is president and we get attacked its a youtube video lol. Bush never blamed Clinton for what happened all I hear is Obama blaming Bush. If I remember correctly Bush even consulted with Clinton about the war and they worked together in the beginning. Obama is full of excuses hands down.
If this was an NFL couch or QB that made promises of superbowls and promises of trades and never came there he would get fired on the spot. You dont keep people who fail to do their job in office period.
So again some one tell me why he is successful? America it self is more divided then ever.
If this was an NFL couch or QB that made promises of superbowls and promises of trades and never came there he would get fired on the spot. You dont keep people who fail to do their job in office period.
So again some one tell me why he is successful? America it self is more divided then ever.
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I've asked this question to everyone I know. No one can give me an answer. The fact is this guy is one of the worst presidents I've ever seen. The only one I know that's voting for him has been on unemployment since 2009 and he has a cash job.
I just hate Obama period I think he ruined our country, caused more segregation, brought back racism, supports blacks against whites, puts them blame on other people and not him self and ect.
If a ship fails in the Navy because of the crew it is the commanding officers fault and he takes responsibility for what happened. He can even get relieved of his command, but with Obama he blames EVERY thing on every one else. His campaign is identical to his last one. It is built on hopes and dreams. Well our country is not ran off of hopes its ran off of hard dick pounding work. The problem is obama has his dick down every ones throats so deep that they dont want to realize he is a flaw and a joke.
They base Romney for being morman, yes Obama is muslim and went to an anti american church, he said Romney political and business beliefs are unethical, Obama believes in the same shit the USSR feel to pieces too. If he really cared about the American people where are all these jobs he promised..
CAN SOME ONE ANSWER THAT WERE ARE THE JOBS WITH THE STIMULUS PACKAGE... HE failed that. he tried to make his change and failed. It is like in base ball your pitcher is throwing wild shit you pull him out and put some one else in. The one thing he is right it is time for a change...
If a ship fails in the Navy because of the crew it is the commanding officers fault and he takes responsibility for what happened. He can even get relieved of his command, but with Obama he blames EVERY thing on every one else. His campaign is identical to his last one. It is built on hopes and dreams. Well our country is not ran off of hopes its ran off of hard dick pounding work. The problem is obama has his dick down every ones throats so deep that they dont want to realize he is a flaw and a joke.
They base Romney for being morman, yes Obama is muslim and went to an anti american church, he said Romney political and business beliefs are unethical, Obama believes in the same shit the USSR feel to pieces too. If he really cared about the American people where are all these jobs he promised..
CAN SOME ONE ANSWER THAT WERE ARE THE JOBS WITH THE STIMULUS PACKAGE... HE failed that. he tried to make his change and failed. It is like in base ball your pitcher is throwing wild shit you pull him out and put some one else in. The one thing he is right it is time for a change...
There is much to criticize about Rasmussen's methods. All polls are conducted within a 4-hour window, the person who answers the phone (even a child) is sampled, phones that are not answered are not called back, and much more. All of Rasmussen's polls are done by computer; live interviewers are never used. However, other firms that do robopolling such as SurveyUSA and PPP get much more accurate results with no bias, so the problem is not the robopolling per se.
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it seems like if any state understands Romney it would be Massachusetts.... they are leaning heavily toward Obama 60 to 32 
Yet Rasmussen polls are consistently the most accurate. Hmmmmm
then you too must believe them. they do say Obama has the lead.
every one answer this, if your girl friend, boy friend, husband, wife or what ever dog, sheep ect. Lied to you as much as Obama did and promised you the world but never delivered would you still be with them?
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then you too must believe them. they do say Obama has the lead.
Yep, he sure does. Funny thing though, his lead over Romney at this point is about half of Jimmy Carter's lead over Regan at the same point in 1980. Baaaaad news for Obama.
do you not realize the difference between open chat and anything goes? i think a mod needs to remind you. i know it's frustrating when your candidate is losing but as a soldier i think you'd be able to maintain a little decorum under fire.
I really think, given Romney's performance so far, he has a lot of time left to mess up before election day. his sophomoric preparation of "zingers" for the debate tonight even makes me cringe at how stupid he's probably going to make himself look.
Standard Donkey
Registered
this isnt simply an issue of "my candidate vs your candidate"
these aren't football teams we are cheering for.. this shit actually matters. We have in the blue corner, a president who.. fucking wow i dont even really need to say anything cuz he's so laughably terrible
and in the red corner, someone who is clearly less terrible.
unlike a football game, this shit matters.. this is the lives of our children, and our children's children.
Sailor get it right, and its the truth, Obama is fucking over the country and smiling as he convinces all of you hes the best.
While not the best, he's certainly better than Romney.
It thought the electoral count would be tighter.
But B.O. has won.
Good thing? I'm not so sure.
Luckily for me though, I do not have to leave the forum for a month.
But B.O. has won.
Good thing? I'm not so sure.
Luckily for me though, I do not have to leave the forum for a month.
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Rick Perry's Campaign May Have Been A Joke, But It Also May Have Helped Decide The 2012 Election | The New Republic#
How Rick Perry?Mr. "Oops"?Helped Kill the Romney Campaign
Of all the characters who littered the strange campaign of 2012, none was a bigger laughingstock than Rick Perry, who will go down in political lore for three things: threatening bodily harm to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, declaring that our staunch ally Turkey is run by "Islamic terrorists", and, oops, I can?t remember the third thing. But now that the election is over, it?s looking like Perry had the last laugh.
It?s been so long now that it?s easy to forget, but 15 months ago, the governor of Texas was looming as a force to be reckoned with. After mulling a run for president, he decided to jump in, with a potent fundraising base and the presumptive support of most of the delegate-rich South behind him. Sure, he wasn?t considered the sharpest pitchfork in the barn, but he had never lost an election and, with his brief flirtation with secession, had tapped into the anti-Washington fervor of the moment far better than any other Republican in the field. Premier national political magazines dispatched reporters to do long profiles of him. And the frontrunner for the Republican nomination fatefully decided that Perry was such a threat to his prospects that he would ? try to destroy him by running to his right on immigration.
Mitt Romney repeatedly attacked Perry for his support of in-state tuition for undocumented students at Texas colleges, declaring at one debate that it "made no sense at all" and running what was probably the nastiest ad of the primaries, a Web ad (since disappeared) that concluded with a clip of former Mexican president Vincente Fox praising Perry, as if that in and of itself was disqualifying. (Separate from the attacks on Perry, Romney also declared he would veto the Dream Act, which provides a route to citizenship for young illegal immigrants, and proposed a policy under which undocumented residents would "self-deport.") It was a brazen gambit. For one thing, Romney had had a spot of trouble some years earlier for employing illegal immigrants at his Belmont, Mass. manse, which Perry made sure to mention in what became the most heated exchange of the primary season. For another thing, it cynically overlooked the reality of Texas, where vast numbers of young undocumented residents are a reality to be reckoned with and where the tuition policy had broad legislative support. It was left to Perry to utter the defense that arguably sealed his fate even before his debate snafu: "If you say we should not educate children who come into our state ? by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart."
But even as Romney was glorying in the move, its risks were plain to see. After vanquishing his foes amid a virtually all-white primary electorate, Romney was going to face a general election in which he could not afford to do worse than John McCain had with Hispanics?a 32 percent share. His harsh rhetoric was, for many voters, going to be inextricable with the litany of Republican callousness on the issue?Tom Tancredo, Maricopa County Sherrif Joe Arpaio, Arizona?s draconian anti-illegal immigration law and its copycats in Alabama and elsewhere, and on and on. Hispanic Republicans warned Romney to cool it, but he blustered on. What was he thinking? Probably, that he had managed so often in other contexts to play the opportunistic Etch-a-Sketch game, so why not think he could do the same here? Come general election time, he would have his son Craig tape Spanish-language ads, and would load up the Tampa convention with Hispanic Republicans, and would appear at a Univision forum with an oddly-tinted skin tone.
No dice. As the campaign went on, it became clear that Romney's immigration flanking of Perry was an "original sin," as Ron Brownstein put it. In a year when many Hispanic voters surely were gettable, out of frustration with a slow recovery and Obama?s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, Romney?s share of the Hispanic vote on Tuesday plunged to 27 percent?while the Hispanic share of the electorate ticked inexorably up by about a third, to 10 percent. Somewhere in West Texas, a man in cowboy boots named "Freedom" and "Liberty" was cackling.
A final cautionary note on this: even as the Republicans? woes with Hispanic voters are drawing overdue attention?even Charles Krauthammer was hitting Romney on this score after the votes came in?it is important to keep some regional context in mind. The GOP?s Hispanic deficit is a huge Electoral College problem for the party in Florida, Colorado and Nevada, and will soon become a problem in Arizona and maybe even Georgia and (dreamers can dream) Texas. But it is a negligible factor in the Democrats? Midwestern firewall, the swath of states that guaranteed Barack Obama?s victory Tuesday night: Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. While it?s proper for demographers to herald the Democrats? expanding, multi-hued coalition, it is also worth remembering that Obama won Ohio because of a) huge turnout by African-Americans and b) his ability to hang onto far more working-class white voters than he did in other parts of the country?and to even pick up some more along the way. Check out this terrific New York Times map showing the shifts in party support between 2008 and this year. Not surprisingly, given Obama's narrower edge this time around, most of the country shifted red to a certain degree. But look what shifted more Democratic even than in Obama?s big 2008 win?much of central Ohio. Much of that is due to the increasingly cosmopolitan Columbus metro area. But it?s also a reflection of shifts in deeply middle- and working-class towns like Chillicothe, the seat of Ross County, where Obama somehow managed to improve substantially over his 2008 vote share. In places like this, what mattered was less Mitt Romney demagoguing Rick Perry on immigration than his blithely offering the Texas governor a $10,000 bet.
How Rick Perry?Mr. "Oops"?Helped Kill the Romney Campaign
Of all the characters who littered the strange campaign of 2012, none was a bigger laughingstock than Rick Perry, who will go down in political lore for three things: threatening bodily harm to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, declaring that our staunch ally Turkey is run by "Islamic terrorists", and, oops, I can?t remember the third thing. But now that the election is over, it?s looking like Perry had the last laugh.
It?s been so long now that it?s easy to forget, but 15 months ago, the governor of Texas was looming as a force to be reckoned with. After mulling a run for president, he decided to jump in, with a potent fundraising base and the presumptive support of most of the delegate-rich South behind him. Sure, he wasn?t considered the sharpest pitchfork in the barn, but he had never lost an election and, with his brief flirtation with secession, had tapped into the anti-Washington fervor of the moment far better than any other Republican in the field. Premier national political magazines dispatched reporters to do long profiles of him. And the frontrunner for the Republican nomination fatefully decided that Perry was such a threat to his prospects that he would ? try to destroy him by running to his right on immigration.
Mitt Romney repeatedly attacked Perry for his support of in-state tuition for undocumented students at Texas colleges, declaring at one debate that it "made no sense at all" and running what was probably the nastiest ad of the primaries, a Web ad (since disappeared) that concluded with a clip of former Mexican president Vincente Fox praising Perry, as if that in and of itself was disqualifying. (Separate from the attacks on Perry, Romney also declared he would veto the Dream Act, which provides a route to citizenship for young illegal immigrants, and proposed a policy under which undocumented residents would "self-deport.") It was a brazen gambit. For one thing, Romney had had a spot of trouble some years earlier for employing illegal immigrants at his Belmont, Mass. manse, which Perry made sure to mention in what became the most heated exchange of the primary season. For another thing, it cynically overlooked the reality of Texas, where vast numbers of young undocumented residents are a reality to be reckoned with and where the tuition policy had broad legislative support. It was left to Perry to utter the defense that arguably sealed his fate even before his debate snafu: "If you say we should not educate children who come into our state ? by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart."
But even as Romney was glorying in the move, its risks were plain to see. After vanquishing his foes amid a virtually all-white primary electorate, Romney was going to face a general election in which he could not afford to do worse than John McCain had with Hispanics?a 32 percent share. His harsh rhetoric was, for many voters, going to be inextricable with the litany of Republican callousness on the issue?Tom Tancredo, Maricopa County Sherrif Joe Arpaio, Arizona?s draconian anti-illegal immigration law and its copycats in Alabama and elsewhere, and on and on. Hispanic Republicans warned Romney to cool it, but he blustered on. What was he thinking? Probably, that he had managed so often in other contexts to play the opportunistic Etch-a-Sketch game, so why not think he could do the same here? Come general election time, he would have his son Craig tape Spanish-language ads, and would load up the Tampa convention with Hispanic Republicans, and would appear at a Univision forum with an oddly-tinted skin tone.
No dice. As the campaign went on, it became clear that Romney's immigration flanking of Perry was an "original sin," as Ron Brownstein put it. In a year when many Hispanic voters surely were gettable, out of frustration with a slow recovery and Obama?s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, Romney?s share of the Hispanic vote on Tuesday plunged to 27 percent?while the Hispanic share of the electorate ticked inexorably up by about a third, to 10 percent. Somewhere in West Texas, a man in cowboy boots named "Freedom" and "Liberty" was cackling.
A final cautionary note on this: even as the Republicans? woes with Hispanic voters are drawing overdue attention?even Charles Krauthammer was hitting Romney on this score after the votes came in?it is important to keep some regional context in mind. The GOP?s Hispanic deficit is a huge Electoral College problem for the party in Florida, Colorado and Nevada, and will soon become a problem in Arizona and maybe even Georgia and (dreamers can dream) Texas. But it is a negligible factor in the Democrats? Midwestern firewall, the swath of states that guaranteed Barack Obama?s victory Tuesday night: Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. While it?s proper for demographers to herald the Democrats? expanding, multi-hued coalition, it is also worth remembering that Obama won Ohio because of a) huge turnout by African-Americans and b) his ability to hang onto far more working-class white voters than he did in other parts of the country?and to even pick up some more along the way. Check out this terrific New York Times map showing the shifts in party support between 2008 and this year. Not surprisingly, given Obama's narrower edge this time around, most of the country shifted red to a certain degree. But look what shifted more Democratic even than in Obama?s big 2008 win?much of central Ohio. Much of that is due to the increasingly cosmopolitan Columbus metro area. But it?s also a reflection of shifts in deeply middle- and working-class towns like Chillicothe, the seat of Ross County, where Obama somehow managed to improve substantially over his 2008 vote share. In places like this, what mattered was less Mitt Romney demagoguing Rick Perry on immigration than his blithely offering the Texas governor a $10,000 bet.
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Obama’s Victory: How the Democrats, burned by Karl Rove, became the party of competent campaigning. - Slate Magazine
How Democrats became the party of effective campaigning?and why the GOP isn?t catching up anytime soon.
A polarizing incumbent wins a closely fought but decisive re-election despite mixed public opinion about his first term. His lead was steady and consistent throughout, and he was boosted on Election Day by strong turnout from core constituencies despite suggestions that his supporters could suffer from weakened enthusiasm the second time. The storyline was clear: The president won in large part because of superior tactics and improved technique.
In 2004, the incumbent who won that tactical victory was George W. Bush, and as Democrats learned more about his campaign?s successful application of first-generation ?microtargeting? procedures, they began to see their opponent?s powers as more mundane than mystical. Five weeks after Bush?s re-election, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne diagnosed the Democrats as suffering from ?Rove Envy? and described the longing the party had ?for the strategic clarity and organizational acumen? Republicans showed in campaigns. Indeed Bush?s win had ratified what both sides recognized as a long-standing culture gap between the parties. Republicans were the party that was competent about politics, bringing the discipline of the corporate suite to the campaign war room. Democrats, who had resigned themselves to the reality of the Will Rogers quip about not being ?an organized political party,? committed themselves to building a new infrastructure for innovation and collaboration among separate interest groups and rival consultants.
Tuesday night?s results testify to many dramatic changes, particularly demographic and ideological ones, that mark life in Obama?s America. But within the practice of politics, no shift seems more dramatic than the role reversal between the two parties on campaigning competence. Today, there is only one direction in which envy can and should be directed: Democrats have proved themselves better?more disciplined, rigorous, serious, and forward-looking?at nearly every aspect of the project of winning elections.
After losing even more dramatically in 2008, Republicans acknowledged that Obama?s campaign was tactically superior and technically more advanced than John McCain?s, and the party?s operatives leafed through David Plouffe?s memoir, The Audacity to Win, for clues on what the Democrats did right. (Spoiler alert: The book revealed almost nothing about the mechanics of an Obama campaign.) But that curiosity never translated into serious self-examination.
The Republican political class could look at so much else working in Obama?s favor?that candidate?s unique appeal, a broad distaste for Bush, voter anxieties about economic crisis, strategic inconsistencies in McCain?s approach?that few undertook the same self-examination that the electioneering left did in the wake of 2004. But in 2012, a seemingly vulnerable incumbent president?s solid victory will be attributed to tactics, and the other side will surely hustle to catch up. But the innovation terrain in politics has changed over the last eight years, and it will be a lot harder for Republicans to return to parity with their opponents.
?It is a rude awakening,? says Blaise Hazelwood, who served as political director of the Republican National Committee during Bush?s re-election and worked this year as part of Mitt Romney?s targeting team. ?There was a false sense of security, a sense that we figured out how to do this microtargeting?we?d figured it out how do to it pretty well?and now there are other things for the party to focus on.?
It is no coincidence that in both 2004 and 2012 the engines of radical innovation were the campaigns of incumbent presidents. We tend to underappreciate how radically different a presidential re-election is from any other enterprise in American political life. It is the rare chance for candidates to disrupt the cycle of short-term, election-year priorities and invest in their own research agendas instead of being forced to follow a consultant-driven marketplace.
For Bush, this proved a unique opportunity to synthesize information from consumer-data warehouses with voter registration records and apply some of the same statistical modeling techniques that companies used to segment customers so that they could market to them individually. In Obama?s case, the continuity provided by a re-election campaign encouraged a far broader set of research priorities, perhaps most important the adoption of randomized-control experiments, used in the social sciences to address elusive questions about voter behavior.
Following their 2004 loss, Democrats found it relatively easy to catch up with Republicans in the analysis of individual consumer data for voter targeting. By 2006, Democrats were at least at parity when it came to statistical modeling techniques, and they were exploring ways to integrate them with other modes of political data analysis. Already the public-opinion firms of the left saw themselves as research hubs in a way that their peers on the right didn?t, a disparity that stretched back a generation. When polling emerged in the early 1980s as a new (and lucrative) specialty within the consulting world, the people who flowed into it on the Republican side tended to be party operatives; former political and field directors who had been consumers of polls quickly realized that it was a better business to be producers of them.
Those who went into the polling business on the left were political consultants, too, but many of them also possessed serious scholarly credentials and had derailed promising academic careers to go into politics. Now that generation?Stan Greenberg, Celinda Lake, Mark Mellman, Diane Feldman, among others?preside over firms that see themselves not only as vendors of a stable set of campaign services but patrons of methodological innovation. When microtargeting tools made it possible to analyze the electorate as a collection of individuals rather than merely demographic and geographic subgroups, many of the most established Democratic pollsters in Washington invested in developing expertise in this new approach. Their Republican rivals, by contrast, tended to see the new tools as a threat to their business model.
Concern that the technical supremacy of Rove and his crew would ensure the Democrats? future as a minority party drove consultants who usually competed with one another to collaborate on previously unimaginable research projects. Major donors like George Soros decided not to focus their funding on campaigns to win single elections, as they had in the hopes of beating Bush in 2004, but instead to seed institutions committed to learning how to run better campaigns. Liberals, generally in awe of the success that Republicans had during the 1980s and 1990s in building a think-tank and media infrastructure to disseminate conservative ideas, responded by building a vast left-wing campaign research culture through groups like the Analyst Institute (devoted to scientific experimentation), Catalist (a common voter-data resource), and the New Organizing Institute (improved field tactics).
With an eager pool of academic collaborators in political science, behavioral psychology, and economics linking up with curious political operatives and hacks, the left has birthed an unexpected subculture. It now contains a full-fledged electioneering intelligentsia, focused on integrating large-scale survey research with randomized experimental methods to isolate particular populations that can be moved by political contact.
?There is not much of a commitment to that type of research on the right,? says Daron Shaw, a University of Texas at Austin political scientist who worked on both of George W. Bush?s presidential campaigns. ?There is no real understanding of the experimental stuff.?
If Republicans brought consumer data into politics during Bush?s re-election, Democrats are mastering the techniques that give campaigns the ability to understand what actually moves voters. As a result, Democrats are beginning to engage a wider set of questions about what exactly a campaign is capable of accomplishing in an election year: not just how to modify nonvoters? behavior to get them to the polls, but what exactly can change someone?s mind outside of the artificial confines of a focus group.
?The asset that Karl Rove and his team built during the Bush era, with consumer data?that was good and valuable, but it?s static data,? says Cyrus Krohn, a former Republican National Committee e-campaign director and founder of the political-tech startup Crowdverb. ?The Democrats have figured out how to harness dynamic data on top of static data.?
For Republicans concerned about their prospects as a party able to run successful campaigns in the 21st century, the heartening news should be that this election ended in much the same way that 2004 did. The heartbreak of losing a race many thought was winnable should drive a sclerotic political class to sacrifice their short-term professional priorities for the sake of innovation?and the closeness of the outcome should lead them to invest in methods that help them around the margins in the future. But the gap between the sides may be too large for mere enthusiasm to close it anytime soon.
How Democrats became the party of effective campaigning?and why the GOP isn?t catching up anytime soon.
A polarizing incumbent wins a closely fought but decisive re-election despite mixed public opinion about his first term. His lead was steady and consistent throughout, and he was boosted on Election Day by strong turnout from core constituencies despite suggestions that his supporters could suffer from weakened enthusiasm the second time. The storyline was clear: The president won in large part because of superior tactics and improved technique.
In 2004, the incumbent who won that tactical victory was George W. Bush, and as Democrats learned more about his campaign?s successful application of first-generation ?microtargeting? procedures, they began to see their opponent?s powers as more mundane than mystical. Five weeks after Bush?s re-election, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne diagnosed the Democrats as suffering from ?Rove Envy? and described the longing the party had ?for the strategic clarity and organizational acumen? Republicans showed in campaigns. Indeed Bush?s win had ratified what both sides recognized as a long-standing culture gap between the parties. Republicans were the party that was competent about politics, bringing the discipline of the corporate suite to the campaign war room. Democrats, who had resigned themselves to the reality of the Will Rogers quip about not being ?an organized political party,? committed themselves to building a new infrastructure for innovation and collaboration among separate interest groups and rival consultants.
Tuesday night?s results testify to many dramatic changes, particularly demographic and ideological ones, that mark life in Obama?s America. But within the practice of politics, no shift seems more dramatic than the role reversal between the two parties on campaigning competence. Today, there is only one direction in which envy can and should be directed: Democrats have proved themselves better?more disciplined, rigorous, serious, and forward-looking?at nearly every aspect of the project of winning elections.
After losing even more dramatically in 2008, Republicans acknowledged that Obama?s campaign was tactically superior and technically more advanced than John McCain?s, and the party?s operatives leafed through David Plouffe?s memoir, The Audacity to Win, for clues on what the Democrats did right. (Spoiler alert: The book revealed almost nothing about the mechanics of an Obama campaign.) But that curiosity never translated into serious self-examination.
The Republican political class could look at so much else working in Obama?s favor?that candidate?s unique appeal, a broad distaste for Bush, voter anxieties about economic crisis, strategic inconsistencies in McCain?s approach?that few undertook the same self-examination that the electioneering left did in the wake of 2004. But in 2012, a seemingly vulnerable incumbent president?s solid victory will be attributed to tactics, and the other side will surely hustle to catch up. But the innovation terrain in politics has changed over the last eight years, and it will be a lot harder for Republicans to return to parity with their opponents.
?It is a rude awakening,? says Blaise Hazelwood, who served as political director of the Republican National Committee during Bush?s re-election and worked this year as part of Mitt Romney?s targeting team. ?There was a false sense of security, a sense that we figured out how to do this microtargeting?we?d figured it out how do to it pretty well?and now there are other things for the party to focus on.?
It is no coincidence that in both 2004 and 2012 the engines of radical innovation were the campaigns of incumbent presidents. We tend to underappreciate how radically different a presidential re-election is from any other enterprise in American political life. It is the rare chance for candidates to disrupt the cycle of short-term, election-year priorities and invest in their own research agendas instead of being forced to follow a consultant-driven marketplace.
For Bush, this proved a unique opportunity to synthesize information from consumer-data warehouses with voter registration records and apply some of the same statistical modeling techniques that companies used to segment customers so that they could market to them individually. In Obama?s case, the continuity provided by a re-election campaign encouraged a far broader set of research priorities, perhaps most important the adoption of randomized-control experiments, used in the social sciences to address elusive questions about voter behavior.
Following their 2004 loss, Democrats found it relatively easy to catch up with Republicans in the analysis of individual consumer data for voter targeting. By 2006, Democrats were at least at parity when it came to statistical modeling techniques, and they were exploring ways to integrate them with other modes of political data analysis. Already the public-opinion firms of the left saw themselves as research hubs in a way that their peers on the right didn?t, a disparity that stretched back a generation. When polling emerged in the early 1980s as a new (and lucrative) specialty within the consulting world, the people who flowed into it on the Republican side tended to be party operatives; former political and field directors who had been consumers of polls quickly realized that it was a better business to be producers of them.
Those who went into the polling business on the left were political consultants, too, but many of them also possessed serious scholarly credentials and had derailed promising academic careers to go into politics. Now that generation?Stan Greenberg, Celinda Lake, Mark Mellman, Diane Feldman, among others?preside over firms that see themselves not only as vendors of a stable set of campaign services but patrons of methodological innovation. When microtargeting tools made it possible to analyze the electorate as a collection of individuals rather than merely demographic and geographic subgroups, many of the most established Democratic pollsters in Washington invested in developing expertise in this new approach. Their Republican rivals, by contrast, tended to see the new tools as a threat to their business model.
Concern that the technical supremacy of Rove and his crew would ensure the Democrats? future as a minority party drove consultants who usually competed with one another to collaborate on previously unimaginable research projects. Major donors like George Soros decided not to focus their funding on campaigns to win single elections, as they had in the hopes of beating Bush in 2004, but instead to seed institutions committed to learning how to run better campaigns. Liberals, generally in awe of the success that Republicans had during the 1980s and 1990s in building a think-tank and media infrastructure to disseminate conservative ideas, responded by building a vast left-wing campaign research culture through groups like the Analyst Institute (devoted to scientific experimentation), Catalist (a common voter-data resource), and the New Organizing Institute (improved field tactics).
With an eager pool of academic collaborators in political science, behavioral psychology, and economics linking up with curious political operatives and hacks, the left has birthed an unexpected subculture. It now contains a full-fledged electioneering intelligentsia, focused on integrating large-scale survey research with randomized experimental methods to isolate particular populations that can be moved by political contact.
?There is not much of a commitment to that type of research on the right,? says Daron Shaw, a University of Texas at Austin political scientist who worked on both of George W. Bush?s presidential campaigns. ?There is no real understanding of the experimental stuff.?
If Republicans brought consumer data into politics during Bush?s re-election, Democrats are mastering the techniques that give campaigns the ability to understand what actually moves voters. As a result, Democrats are beginning to engage a wider set of questions about what exactly a campaign is capable of accomplishing in an election year: not just how to modify nonvoters? behavior to get them to the polls, but what exactly can change someone?s mind outside of the artificial confines of a focus group.
?The asset that Karl Rove and his team built during the Bush era, with consumer data?that was good and valuable, but it?s static data,? says Cyrus Krohn, a former Republican National Committee e-campaign director and founder of the political-tech startup Crowdverb. ?The Democrats have figured out how to harness dynamic data on top of static data.?
For Republicans concerned about their prospects as a party able to run successful campaigns in the 21st century, the heartening news should be that this election ended in much the same way that 2004 did. The heartbreak of losing a race many thought was winnable should drive a sclerotic political class to sacrifice their short-term professional priorities for the sake of innovation?and the closeness of the outcome should lead them to invest in methods that help them around the margins in the future. But the gap between the sides may be too large for mere enthusiasm to close it anytime soon.
