The most effective email subject line of the 2012 US presidential campaign began with one word: Hey. That’s the finding of the massive Obama campaign operation known as “The Cave.” That and many other startling findings are detailed in a report on how the Obama campaign went about re-electing a president who boasted a record of failure and divisiveness.
The Cave was to US politics what the Hubble Space Telescope would have been to Neanderthals: An advancement so profound that it verges on magic.
It was also a very non-traditional approach to politics, in that it was less consultant driven than it was data and ability driven. It hired analysts from Silicon Valley rather than the Beltway, one of whom is a particle physicist. Their agile, outside-politics thinking helped build an efficient, ruthlessly data-driven machine that was able to correctly predict the behavior of millions of Americans and make real-time adjustments that produced votes. Or at least, that’s the story that the folks who built it are saying in the report. Victors always crow when they get to write their own history, but setting that aside, they did win a race that the issues, history and the chasm in experience and abilities between the two candidates suggested that they should have lost.
Obama’s personal political army posted it on the web and require a valid email to obtain it. So I downloaded it and have posted it right here. Download it for yourself and take a look.
The GOP had better not only pore over every detail of this at the national and state levels, they must build something better for 2014 and beyond. The Romney campaign’s ORCA project was supposed to be the GOP’s technological answer, but it was a total failure.
Last night, Gov. Bobby Jindal pushed the GOP to stop being the “stupid party.” They not only have to stop being stupid, they have to become very, very smart.
More:
So, the professor and Mr. Howell teamed up to make Gilligan the leader of the island. Awesome.
Awesome? Well, I’d use “scary as crap” but that’s just a concerned citizen talking.
There’s a lot of insight in this column. Thank you.
This was the first Presidential race I predicted incorrectly in my entire life. And I wasn’t just incorrect, I was thoroughly incorrect. I thought Romney was going to walk away with a Reagan-esque landslide, and I thought that because every single historical indicator was on my side.
Economy in shambles? Check.
Incumbent directly responsible for unpopular policies? Check.
America humiliated overseas? Check.
Americans killed abroad with zero consequences attached? Check.
Incumbent looking like a complete moron in the debates?
Incumbent party demoralized, challenger energized? Check.
Did I mention the economy being an absolute shambles? Check.
For an incumbent to town that entire list of weaknesses, any one of which should spell a loss on its own, and turn it into a win is a work of political genius. The Conservatives should absolutely be adapting this to their own ends, because if it worked for Obama just imagine how effective it would be for a party that’s actually correct on the issues.
Don’t be too tough on yourself, James. Zero did something that had not been done in recent times: winning re-election with fewer votes than when elected. It’s a whole new playing field now due to the database driven paradigm that is to politics what television was to the Kennedy/Nixon presidential race.
Vote fraud also played a part in the results.
They figured a goodly number of “ghost voters” into their projections, particularly in minority precincts where nobody will protest the results.
voter fraud was instrumental. All this election came down to was applying the Chicago/Illinois strategy to the battleground states. Gin up the numbers with fraudulent early votes and send in the buses to rotten precincts. If the precincts are rotten enough, such as in Philadelphia, they can just manufacture enough votes to steal it from the entire rest of the state.
Yeah the GOP better get smart all right. This dem administration has been crooked and incompetent from the get go. Their success in elections has ALWAYS been about stealing them.
The electorate was raped with the most analytical technologically possible. Great, they have figured out how to convince the majority to “redistribute” my earnings.
We are at or past de Tocqueville tipping point.
‘Twasn’t rape. It was consensual.
Collectively, America’s voting public fails the two-finger test.
So he won by sending out flyers using slacker-speak? That was what appealed to the electorate and decided an election?
Holy…
We’re doomed.
And this OFA behemoth is now Obama’s personal 501(c)4 org, with anonymous donors who can make unlimited contributions. Same resources, same management, same data files and phone lists and rabblerousers.
Any business wishing to succeed in a Washington-centered environment, for the next era, had better be ready to donate frequently and handsomely to this organization. If you thought that Chicago politics was crooked heretofore, now see it metastasized, technologized and gone national.
I see no mention of such possibilities in the mainstream press, nor on the blogs. Am I wrong?
Face it. OFA is ACORN.
So, is this why Chris Christie is sucking up to Zuckerberg?
The MSM, Hollywood, and major liberals did their part for Obama who did not appear to want a 2nd term – he is their pawn.
As for me they couldhave had Einstein but I still think vote fraud is what put this president into office. There just weren’t enough people that liked or wanted him to win a second term. The evidence is there. Now if you move the census to the WH and you require everyone to go to the drivers license place that are illegals and you get their name and info and you require everyone on welfare and food stamps to register to vote you have their info and can use it for false absentee ballots or for sending people into vote for them. This election was stolen clear and simple and my gut tells me that. If Obama was so popular he would have been drawing the crowds that Romney did and he was not. The black community and even the illegal community did not have enough votes to push him over the edge. Period.
I agree with Susan. Subotai Bahadur has been all over this. The left doesn’t want to admit just how much they’ve damaged with this election but I’ve never seen anything like it in my lifetime. We really are now two countries that “aren’t on speaking terms,” as Michael Barone put it. I fired two Democrats after the election and swore I’d never knowingly hire or patronize another one. They’re dead to me and whatever ills may befall them, they can expect neither sympathy nor help. They are no longer my countrymen.
Completely agree Susan.
But what else needed to happen to make this process a success? It required an awful lot of voters who didn’t care (enough) about Obama’s shortcomings, and most of whom had bought into the progressive narrative. It also needed a boatload of single-issue voters who didn’t care about anything else nor the consequences of their vote. Without decades of the Long March Through the Institutions and its consequences in reshaping the American narrative, this “Cave” would not have worked. It was simply a data-mining machine for succesfully finding America’s morons, of which we now have an abundance.
Which means that Republicans would be deluding themselves if they think this same formula would work for them.
Don’t forget the steady stream of lies spouted by Obie and members of his team and the unwillingness of their collaborators – the media – to call them on it.
Had it been a Republican candidate shoveling similarly blatant BS, the media would be pounding away at it day and night until that person threw in the towel.
The same super hi-tech team that elected Putin elected Obama.
1. Terrific post.
2. In addition to Democrat brilliance, there was Republican cluelessness. Remember the smugness before the election, smugness despite the polls, smugness despite the betting odds.
Even worse than the pre-election smugness is the post-election denial. Some of it right here in this comment thread.
3. IMO the Obama record is so bad that Democrat brilliance would have been inadequate against mere competence by the Republicans: a competence that Pat Caddell, for example, eloquently warned was absolutely lacking.
“Even worse than the pre-election smugness is the post-election denial. Some of it right here in this comment thread.”
Exactly. The plaintive cries of “voter fraud” come from a refusal to face reality. There is zero evidence that the magnitude of fraud was enough to sway the election. And at worst, fraud could have turned a Romney squeaker into an Obama squeaker. But by all precedents, this should have been a Romney landslide.
Give the data miners their due: they won what appeared to be an unwinnable election. And the Republicans better damn well embrace modern technology and analytics if they want to compete on the national stage.
This is incorrect. They did not need massive vote fraud, but only targeted vote fraud. It has been common knowledge for years that vote fraud makes the difference in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania. Why do people have so much trouble just admitting this is the reality? It’s not a boogeyman. It works. They are doing it. Get on the right page.
And I say this to you as a former democrat. The FRAUD IS REAL.
Agreed, DH.
It escapes me how major vote fraud, on the order of 5%, could occur without causing a discrepancy with exit polls. Oo! Oo! I know! I know! The exit polls were fraudulent too! The conspiracy is even bigger than I thought!
Having grown up in the original Mayor Daley’s Cook County, I accept that it’s a constant struggle to minimize Democrat cheating. Otoh, to say that fraud caused Romney’s loss strikes me as psychotic.
When Jindal says we should address Americans as adults, it’s what I want to hear. But is he correct? If conservative Internet discourse is anything to go by, a noticeable fraction of people tune out or shout down straight talk; in effect, they insist on being manipulated. Appearing on the horizon is Ben Franklin’s stage “when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”
I read the paper. very easy to peruse through. Facebook, testing, computer engineers, data. Not using gut instinct. Hiring people who were left wing and having them find others. Constant testing of everything. Fighting the next campaign not the last. Planning ahead. The Republicans are in big trouble if they trust the gut and behave like the House Speaker. Lost, without a plan and winging it. Karl Rove and Silicon Valley are the future along with serious politicos who listen to the data and think like Machiavelli. The Republicans need to read the paper and not just spout off and act stupid. Will they?
Karl Rove? Eh?
The standard Republican elected or appointed official is a practicing professional, owns a real estate agency, a car dealership, or a construction company, or some such. He thinks like a merchant and lives in the World of “the customer is always right,” market feedback is absolute and absolutely correct, and you can’t make enemies of people you might need to do business with. The standard Democrat is a lawyer who is working or has worked as an appartchik for a Democrat law firm, lobbying firm, or a Democrat front group or non-profit. The Democrat lives and breathes politics and political operations. The Republican hates politics and only got in so s/he could do rather than be done unto. Except that s/he CAN’T do because he can’t comprehend what his eyes and ears tell him; s/he’s literally never dealt with somebody like a Democrat apparatchik and doesn’t even know what he’s seeing. He thinks a “union guy” is that nice avuncular lobbyist that the unions send to see people like him, not the cold-blooded communist that was reading Trotsky and Alinsky in high school and who firmly believes that the revolution is its own morality. The leadership of the Republican Party doesn’t have an effin’ prayer against these people!
And, that would be OK if the leadership understood that and would hire a cadre of political operatives that can actually go toe to toe with the Democrat operatives. Trouble is; the Republicans are so concerned to be perceived as nice people and so adverse to conflict and confrontation that they can’t stand to be around people who deal with conflict and confrontation. If you’re one of the professional a**holes who has some experience and expertise in dealing with professional lefties, you really don’t want to go all-in for Republicans because they won’t back you up and if they lose, you’re in the wilderness until the next election the Republicans stumble into winning because Democrats absolutely will not hire you or let anybody they influence hire you if you’ve worked for Republcans. I carried a lot of water for Republicans in my state in dealing with very militant and powerful public employee unions. I’ll guarantee you that were I to show up at some Republican grip ‘n grin tonight, in the first five minutes I’d hear, “here comes trouble.” It’s hard to reliably make the mortgage payment working for people like that.
@Art Chance on January 25, 2013 at 6:27 PM –
Art, did you do a lot of posting on RedState.com in the past?
If so, I liked reading your stuff.
Would you mind if I forwarded this post of yours to another political site, with accreditation to you?
Thanks!
Bryan seems to forget the one very important Difference that Made the Difference: THE MEDIA SWOON which the R party will NEVER get.
The Obama campaign did three things right. First, it built off Newt Gingrich’s attacks on Romney as a corporate raider and mercilessly pummeled him over the summer. That defined Romney very negatively. Second, Obama was very effective at organizing and mobilizing volunteers to make one-on-one contacts with voters, most of whom were the volunteers’ neighbors, friends, or coworkers. Romney didn’t have a third of Obama’s volunteers. Third, Obama was effective at scaring his base to come to the polls. Young women were terrified Romney would ban birth control and legalize rape. Blacks feared Romney eould take their welfare away & deny them the right to vote. Union members rightly feared Romney would crack down on their abuses. On the flip side, all Romney did was run around and ramble about tax cuts and “job creators.”
Bottom line: Obama’s tech was cool but wasn’t why he won.
By the time of the next presidential election people will vote for food.
So I am heavily involved in tech startups, the cloud, analytics, and software. The snark about this methodology is completely misfounded. This PDF is the most important document that has come out of this defeat, because it shows – in a lot of detail if you understand the fields – just how Obama’s technical team just executed, focused, and drove this campaign to success.
Sure, the winners write history. But if anything, I would hazard a guess that in a lot of areas, they are under-representing their success. Maybe not too modest by half, but the numbers don’t lie.
There’s no way to sugar coat this … Romney, and more specifically, the Republicans, had their ass handed to them by a smart, dedicated, insightful technical team that delivered adaptive software solutions that more than compensated for their boss’s inadequacies.
Here’s what’s sad … it’s going to happen again unless the Republican party eats some crow and figures this stuff out. Here’s what’s worse … this style of development and deployment (DevOps + analytics + marketing) can and will be modified to be applicable to house and senate races. The only Republicans who are willing … culturally … to buy this stuff at the local level are tea-party candidates, because they need an edge and very often they are thinking out of the cultural norm. But Democrats are going to get this stuff for free … they don’t have any more cultural objection to using technology this way because their boss just won with it, and all of the stars are democrats.
@John on January 25, 2013 at 4:24 PM
I believe you are both right and wrong. I haven’t read this piece, but I have read earlier, similar descriptions (e.g. radio-based ads out of Dothan, AL to reach parts of Florida with easily-persuaded young womyn, misinformation about “the GOP will take your birth control” — forbidden by Griswold v. Connecticutt,btw, and the “Obamaphone” ads). It is true that the campaign did a masterful job of pulling together a disparate group of voters from what would have been “lost in the statistical noise” earlier.
But look at it this way. Even doing all this, against an easily-maligned rich-white-guy-and-dork like Romney, they *still* managed to barely eke out a win; and at that, with a number of things like statewide initiatives for marijuana legalization in Colorado, gay-marriage-constitutionality in Minnesota, and the like, designed to pull in ALL the instinctive Dem voters.
All the focus groups in the world wont help when you have a LOSING issue: look how the Dems are running like scalded dogs from the gun confiscation, except for those few from impregnably Socialist or worse districts.
The other issue is that the Republicans have consistently p*ssed all over their most partisan constituents, the Tea Party, and made NO effort either to reach out to the grass roots, nor to do anything like define principles around which to rally, other than “vote for us, because…umm….” (Recall the brouhaha around the original plan to cut spending by $100 billion a couple years back, which became a *prorated* $100 billion, then finally became $18 billion in promised cuts in the rate of growth, while cutting off all newly-elected Tea Partiers from any influence in the House of Representatives’ Leadership? NOT what was expected by the rank-and-file following a historic, 60-seat shift of power. I suspect most of the GOP leadership is either under blackmail, like Weepy Boehner’s having had a couple of mistresses, according to online rumor, or those such as the Senate’s Lugar and Murkowski, who did all they could to torpedo the candidacy of the person who primaried them, instead of being “team players” for the sake of the party.)
To be competitive in 2016, the Republicans will not only have to be able to match the digital/data capabilities of the 2012 Obama campaign, they’ll have to be able to outdo them (since the Democrats will advance their digital/data operation too). I’m not convinced that the Republicans will even get their digital operation up to the level of Obama 2012 by 2016.
My personal observation is that this election was decided by media bias. Pure and simple.
It doesn’t matter how slick and targeted your marketing team is if the mainstream media is constantly and consistently pounding on your weaknesses, while simultaneously ignoring the staggering negatives of the other candidate. Let’s face it folks, when you combine the voting power of the ‘takers’ with the propaganda capabilities of the democrat media complex (aka – the MSM), it really doesn’t matter what the republicans do.
And yet they somehow lacked the technical expertise to block foreign donations.
Block? Heck, they couldn’t even publish such a list, let alone manage to uncover Obama’s transcripts. The Democrats play to win. The Republicans just play.
This is not as daunting as some suggest.
There is a lot of best practices in here. True. But it’s nothing extraordinary, except by historical political standards.
It’s all well understood technology and methodology, and available in the marketplace, at modest prices.
Republicans have a different problem: they need a CLEAN SWEEP of old practices in favor of new practices … which inevitably means displacement of the professional Republican consultants who’ve dominated for the post-Reagan cycles.
Heartily agree. These consultants are not adding value.
There is a great deal of work to be done, and a lot of that work is totally obvious. So why is it not happening.
Here is just one obvious thing. Republican voter ranks are full of highly trained ex military who deeply understand battle and strategy. This is battle, on a different level. So why are these expert resources untapped? repub leadership seems not to understand how to target dem assets and undermine or neutralize them. They don’t seem to understand how to cultivate their own assets or develop a separate power base. They don’t coordinate across units, and they allow enemy psyops to sow confusion and disinformation in the ranks all the time.
WTH?
Romeny:
I’m going to put America back to work!
Obama:
Why?
Hey, I got an idea! Why don’t we let the beltway “elites”, like Rove, Rubin and Lowry, pick the candidate and tear apart all challengers? Oh, wait, that’s what we did last year. Oh well, I’m sure that strategy will work in 2016! Party of Stupid, Backwards!
Obama Phones, wellfare ect. won the election, only when supply of these “services” are interrupted and then only if the recipients of these services view GOP as a more reliable service provider, the power will shift. The dems have activated those to docile to vote before now.
Welcome to the European reality, you just made it on the train before it will crash. How nice, take a seat.
A European sayz hello
They used tech people from the West Coast. I live in DC and there are only a handful of truly great tech people here (I work in the Tech field). Don’t believe me, well Android, IOS, Google, Amazon AWS don’t come from DC or the East Coast. Someone in the Obama team figured that out and ran over Romney. Real tech people work in bull pens, not over stuffed offices and meetings rooms.
Fraud.
You can cheer and analyze and vow to do better next time all you like, but as long as the fraud goes unchecked, nothing matters.
The analysts who explained with great confidence before the election why we had it won are the same analysts who are explaining with great confidence now why we lost. Hm.
It’s true that Obama ran a better campaign than Romney, but ultimately that was a symptom of the problem. Romney’s problem, at core, was Romney. The GOP made the same mistake it’s been making for years now, it focued on a fantasy-world vision of the electorate. The average Republican voter, including probabl a majority of self-identified conservatives, _are NOT libertarians_.
The American electorate is divided, but _not_ primarily economic. If economics were the only issue, the Dems would retain their former total dominance from the pre-Reagan days. It was _cultural_ issues that broke the FDR coalition. Abortion, acid, and amnesty. The GOP keeps trying to run on the assumption that the majority is demanding free trade, deregulation, and union-breaking, and it’s just not the case.
In 2010, the GOP won a huge, biggest-in-80-years victory primarily because of Obamacare. Yet the GOP decided to run as if that was a mandate to run against the New Deal. The 2010 Congress had not even been sworn in yet when we started hearing talk of ‘freedom of contract’ and privatization of Medicare and John Galt, and that quite simply is not what the 2010 election was about.
As a result, the GOP’s momentum had evaporated by midsummer of 2011. Romney tried to run away from the issues his base care about, and talked about entrepreneurs on and on and on and on for a year, and most people are not and never will be entrepreneurs. They don’t necessarily identify with entrepreneurs, even if they recognize and respect them.
In effect, in 2008 and 2012, the GOP tried to run on ‘economics only’, and GOP economics are unpopular. They’ve been unpopular since the Great Depression, more or less. The general public, by solid majorities, are still New Dealers. They don’t want 100% full-bore socialim, but they also don’t want unrestrained, full-bore free markets. Free trade is unpopular, cutting SoSec and Medicare are unpopular, the word ‘privatization’ is political _poison_ when linked to those programs.
So it’s not exactly a shock that the the GOP failed. The ran Bob Dole’s campaign again, and got Bob Dole’s results…again.
The GOP _cannot_ win nationally without the social conservatives. That cold mathematical fact seems to be something the leadership cannot face, because they keep trying to win on various flavors of economics-only, and then wondering what went wrong.
Another thing that wrecked the GOP in 2012 was all the ‘makers and takers’ nonsense. The problem with that is that it assumes that the so-called ‘makers’ vote GOP and are outnumbered by ‘takers’ who vote Dem. A moment’s thought shows that this is self-evident nonsense.
A large swath of the high-earning tax-paying professionals, for ex, voted for Obama, and consistantly vote Dem, for _cultural_ reasons. If Romney had not gotten a big chunk of the so-called ‘takers’, the election would have been an Obama landslide, instead of being as close as it was.
At different times and stages of life, almost everyone is both a taker and a maker. For ex, if you villify SoSec recipients as greedy, you don’t just alienate them, you alienate their currently tax-paying friends and relations. If you lump in all recipients of public benefits and pay without distinction, you wipe out a chunk of voters who would otherwise be sympathetic to the GOP for cultural and national indentity reasons.
America, like it or not, is a mixed economy, and has been since the Depression. The GOP cannot win running just on ‘cut the government and cut the taxes’ in the real world. All it does is alienate the people we need to win, and who are _not_ socialists just because they aren’t pure free-marketeers.
For that matter, the Chamber of Commerce is just as much part of the problem as the news media.
First, this is an advertising piece.
two, from uncle saul
RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.
RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.
three…yes, Rs should read it, they need to know about the Hive and its mind.
but, they need to read it with some expert help. Someone with a stats background and with deep knowledge of voter databases. (and no, i’m not sure they have those people…sorry)
but, the obvious point is highly predictable. O had to scare the hell out of his left-wing special interest groups…and to make sure to drag as many low-info voters to the polls as possible thru door by door appeals that, from what i’ve rad, seem to be just this side of intimidation
and, Rs can not ever underestimate the power of early voting…or as they say in Chi, vote Early and Often
Why is everyone overlooking the fact that the Øbamunists in partnership with the SEIU and other unions stole the election via good, old fashioned Democrat vote fraud?
California GOP Congressman Devin Nunes has been on the John Batchelor Show explaining how the Democrats in the early voting states had “Vote Parties”. Blank ballots were obtained, people invited, often paid, to attend the “parties” where they were told how to vote and the ballots were delivered to the respective Registrar of Voters. Nunes contends that this Democrat “vote harvesting” gained them four Congressional seats in the Conservative-leaning California Central Valley.
* In 59 voting districts in the Philadelphia region, Obama
received 100% of the votes with not even a single vote recorded for
Romney. (A mathematical and statistical impossibility).
* In 21 districts in Wood County Ohio, Obama received 100% of
the votes where GOP inspectors were illegally removed from their
polling locations – and not one single vote was recorded for Romney.
(Another statistical impossibility).
* In Wood County Ohio, 106,258 voted in a county with only
98,213 eligible voters.
* In St. Lucie County, FL, there were 175,574 registered
eligible voters but 247,713 votes were cast.
* The National SEAL Museum, a polling location in St. Lucie
County, FL had a 158% voter turnout.
* Palm Beach County, FL had a 141% voter turnout.
* In Ohio County, Obama won by 108% of the total number of
eligible voters.
NOTE: Obama won in every state that did not require a Photo ID and lost in every state that did require a Photo ID in order to vote.
Exactly. Exactly! They target the state, they prep the precinct beforehand – the have to have collusion in these precincts to gin up that much imaginary margin.
They won by fraud, everything else is pretty stuff kind of like internet bubble hype.
The do not have the (legit voting) people, but they have the money – and they have the fraud. It is their tried and true business method. With enough money they have expanded the franchise.
Exactly. Exactly! They target the state, they prep the precinct beforehand – the have to have collusion in these precincts to gin up that much imaginary margin.
They won by fraud, everything else is pretty stuff kind of like internet bubble hype – no real business method behind it.
They do not have the (legit voting) people, but they have the money – and they have the fraud. It is their tried and true business method. With enough money they have expanded the franchise.
– seems my post did not appear – am resubmitting so forgive me if this ends up as a double post. –
lot of self delusion here. The US , in political terms, is a “low information” country.people today have busy lives, get most of thjeir information from social media, yahoo etc. TV news, both nightly networks and cable, are watched by partisans of either side. Yelling “socialist” or “un american” at Obama just doesn’t work. Perception is usuallly 9/10ths of reality for most people, and Obama just does not appear that scary. . On the other side, running Richie Rich with five homes and chairman of the board attitude, is not a sensible choice for a party given the circumstances of the country in 2012j To beat Hillary in 2016, the GOP is going to need a Jindal, or a Rubio or probably the best of the bunch, Christie. The old lwhite guy Mcain, Dole, Romney model is like the old Desoto, great car for its time, but there not making it anymore.
ps The voter fraud theory is pretty much a dry hole where you can waste a lot of resources for very little result
Christie is a progressive, no thank you we are done with NE liberals, it is time to nominate a conservative who can explain principles in clear simple terms, the last one was Reagan and guess what – he won.
Let’s focus on our local / state elections and 2014. Every election matters from town councils, school boards, mayor, do not ignore local politics. Who is pushing for gun control – the council of mayors, who are these people, Leftists! Who controls school boards – Leftists! Who is buying into regional countils, public private partnerships – Leftists!
The GOP goes to sleep after every election, the Left fires up the coffee pot and starts on the next one…data mining contiues.
If you know anything about usability, software development, or analytics, you have to be impressed with the content of the PDF linked from this article. The question is: Why were so many brilliant people willing to work in service of a pretentious mediocrity like Obama? Aside from most Silicon Valley types leaning left, I think part of the answer is the challenge and excitement of working on such a large ambitious project. If Republicans want to build anything like this sort of organization for 2016, they need to find a way to provide the same excitement to the techies who work on the project.
Because the only conservatives with that skill want to be (and do get) paid for those skills. Plus, the best techies are libertarian, so I doubt many were enthused over the choice of Romney.
I found that point also: why all these tech-heads “sacrificed” time and better earnings: excitement, as you mention, but also as resume enhancement for both technological and political reasons, “cred”, considering the future might hold that those with lefty political bragging rights get the better jobs. Also for the social resume, that is, to get chicks.
Consider a time-honored military axiom – ‘Concentration of Force’.
The GOP can come up with the most detailed dissertations of why their philosophy is the better way to go, AND come up with the most marvelous pithy phrases to sell it, and it will all mean NOTHING when it comes up to the Great Wall… the functional, working as advertised Maginot Line of the left…. the MEDIA/cultural/academic axis. (Media is primary)
What one message do conservatives need to hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer and HAMMER and HAMMER and HAMMER…..
“YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO… FOR DECADES!!!” “You have been lied to and lied to and lied to…. about every politician that advocates conservatism, and thus had to be destroyed, about every conservative policy that succeeded and every liberal one that failed, and thus the opposite HAD to be told to you, about the history of your country and what made it great…..” “You have been lied to and lied to and lied to by people whose entire lives are invested in the lie, and thus who will NEVER stop lying, and who have dominated and now dominate your media, your culture and your schools.” “You have been lied to, you are being lied to, you and will continue to be lied to by them as long as you live.”
Either we get THAT message across, or all else is just spinning the wheels. The left managed to sell this very message in order to replace some of our greatest truths with lies, then march through the institutions…. and here we are.
Break that wall, and the field opens up. Fail to, and it is, in fact, game over. Until the collapse. (Oh, and when that collapse comes, remember that the real reasons for it will be lied about!!. And believed. Truly a demonic enemy.)
Dang straight …
And the Biggest Lie of All … which is never said this way, but is the basis for almost every Progressive/Leftist policy:
All you need to do is show up for work or go to school; we have experts who have the answers to your housing needs, your health care needs, your financial needs … no need to plan for your future or actively manage your career, since we can do a better job than you can; just trust us to solve those problems FOR you.
This Lie has led millions to believe that, if they just outsource their responsibility and initiative to this small, self-selected Elite of the Credentialed and Connected, their problems will be solved FOR them … and that they have no other choice but to do so, since they are continually reminded that they are not as “smart” as that Elite.
What they have done in that outsourcing, though, is throw away the secret sauce of American prosperity … personal initiative, which accesses the distributed intelligence of 300 million people in ways that top-down control by the Elite NEVER will … and left themselves wide open to the suffering that will ensue when the Elite inevitably fails to meet their individual needs.
They have traded their birthright to pursue happiness … their ability to get ahead … for free Band-Aids and the less-than-ironclad promise that they can “get by”.
What the Republicans fail to recognize, from this last election, is the complete failure of any message by Republicans to get out. Our illustrious free press has turned itself into Pravda and Izvestia and only allowed the State and Democrat message to get out. I don’t believe Obama’s method could work without a compliant media, it can only work in a press vacuum.
If you look at just one example, Romney’s tax returns. The Democrat leader of the Senate actually accused him of not paying taxes for 10 years. Did the press hold him accountable? Of course not! I can only envision the endless stories that would have unfolded had the parties been reversed.
It’s really pretty cynical to believe that you no longer have to run on the issues, you just go after the low information voters by sending in the buses to take them to the polls, push poll them to death with lies about what the other candidate is going to do, and have a propaganda network willing to repeat all the lies and even participate by asking the questions.
Let’s never forget that Candy Crowley made Mitt Romney look like a liar in front of 65 million people. I’m not sure how many votes it cost Romney, but you can bet it was more than one. If the Republican party doesn’t deal with their media problem, nothing they do will change the results of these elections. To lose seats in the House and not win the Senate, when the Democrats had to defend 23 seats, isn’t a tactics problem, it’s not even a messaging problem because the media NEVER allowed the message to get out.
I was volunteering in a local campaign office a week or so before the election. The office manager, a young kid just barely out of college, asked me if I knew what ORCA was. He no-shit had *just then* heard of this program, which was going to run the GOTV effort for the campaign. After being at this major campaign office for three-four months. Months in which he and his interns mostly had spent their time making useless phone calls in the least effective and most metric-friendly way possible. The office was run entirely to the metrics, and considered the effects of effort only in passing, if at all. It also broadcast its efforts across the state as a whole, rather than working closely with the local apparatus and cultivating the local environment. Like spitting into a lake.
I can’t help but think, looking back, that the campaign was too young and ill-trained in the trenches, and operated at higher levels by rent-seeking consultants more interested in milking the operation than doing the work.
I love Governor Bobby, but since Americans are stupid there’s no way for the GOP to stop being the stupid party any more than Dems. LBJ’s infamous “war on poverty” was a bomb, as every other Dem attempt has been for a half-century+. America turned away from God decades ago and is reaping her fatal reward and unless God brings repentance from our sins against Him, we’re eternally doomed as a nation of godless fools the Founders would have approvingly condemned as justly deserving God’s punishment, not being the illiterate, lawless, fascit bigoted members of the oldest profession we are.
Behold the vaunted Obama email list that won the election for him:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/obama-campaign-off-to-a-slow-start-in-capitol-hill
Obama Off To A Slow Start In Capitol Hill Gun Campaign: The campaign emails its massive list demanding calls to Congress. Bad timing — and nobody seems to have noticed.
It’s hype. They want to monetize that list, but the real product is the selling of vote fraud.
Excellent post, thank you this is good information. May I also suggest concerned citizens read “The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care” the same plan used in CO is being applied in my state and I’m sure every state in the country.
Also, see the article at the Daily Caller, the gameplan in LA will also play out countrywide, be aware and inform others
http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/26/how-the-democrats-could-steal-the-key-to-winning-louisiana-and-the-rest/
Obama has developed a cult following
The Electorate has been dumbed down
Romney played not to lose and the Left played to demolish
Consultants (Rove) took on conservatives but not the Left
The GOP failed to link Obama policies with job loss (coal plant shutdowns), devaluation of the dollar, EPA driving up energy costs, etc.
The Democrat Media Complex has fused with Obama
The GOP allows conservatives to be labeled as extremists but the Leftists who want full control over the commoners / ecomony get a pass.
The Bush family controls the GOP, they believe in the New World Order and have been fooled by the Muslim Brotherhood who gained a foothold here and under Obama expanded their reach and influence nationally and on a global scale.
The GOP fails to reach out to conservatives in Hollywood on ways to message principles, remember the spending junkie in the 2010 elections? we need to engage creative people who are willing to go all in to win and to engage in pop culture.
Free stuff beat freedom
2012 Electorate voting (remember the long lines?)in practice:
1)Electorate manipulation (Obama – immigration and welfare easing)
2)Manipulation of demography (Re-districting)
3)Disenfranchisement(undercount white populations and overcount Hispanic ones in Rahm Emmanuels 2010 Census “magic”)
4)Intimidation (New Black Panthers, SEIU, AFL-CIO,et al)
5)Vote buying (“Obama Money”-Spanish ads for food stamps-SNAP)
6)Misinformation (MoveOn.org, Code Pink, La Raza, Priorities, etc.)
7)Misleading or confusing ballot papers(2000 Florida elections-chads, hanging chads)
8)Ballot stuffing (W. Virginia – Lincoln co.)
9)Misrecording of votes (possibly in Barcelona, Spain?)
10)Misuse of proxy votes
11)Destruction or invalidation of ballots (absentee and overseas ballots)
12)Tampering with electronic voting machines (SEIU-Nevada 2010)
Mr. Roberto Unger (Obama’s 2008 campaign strategist)
Mr. Axelrod (Obama’s 2012 campaign strategist) and his “segmentation”
#1. (2 June 2012) In 2011, federal spending on 79 programs to provide cash, food, housing, medical care, social services, training and targeted education for low-income people was $717 billion. State contributions to these federal programs added another $201 billion and independent state programs added $9 billion … total welfare spending of $927 billion. After adjusting for inflation and population growth, the amount for cash, food and housing was 50% more than in 1991. (Source: 29 May 2012 National Center for Policy Analysis)
#2. (17 February 2012) In 1984, only 14.8% of Americans paid no federal income tax. In 2009, 49.5% (152 million) paid none. (Source: 8 February 2012 Investor’s Business Daily, Heritage Foundation).
His list of complaints against President Obama is a long one in the video entitled ‘Beyond Obama’. From the above two examples, one understands Mr. Unger’s Electoral strategy as “Continental,” just like he did in Brazilian elections. Mr. Obama’s Electoral team (on the other hand-read:Axelrod) has decided on a “segmenting” strategy (not one similar to 2008’s) and one Mr. Unger sees as self defeating. The esteemed philosopher is scathing of Mr Obama’s plans to salvage America’s ailing economy, saying that his policy solely consists of ‘financial confidence and food stamps’. Examples of Mr. Obama’s Electoral “segmented’ base strategy are:
#1 In 2009, approximately 4 million Americans fell out of the middle class and now live below the federal poverty line.
#2 The number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program (SNAP) has set a new all-time record for 20 consecutive months.
#3 In July (the last month for which data is available), 41.8 million Americans were on food stamps. (now exploding to 47.1 million)
#4 The number of Americans in the food stamp program (SNAP) skyrocketed more than 55 percent between December 2007 and July 2010.
#5 In 2009, more than 48 million Americans were enrolled in the Medicaid program.
#6 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the U.S. government.
NOTE: this is some 95 million americans on some form of government assistance programs.
Mr. Unger adds: ‘He has spent trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests and left workers and homeowners to their own devices.’ (with this “segmenting” effort). Of course, this is diametrically opposite of Unger’s “Continental” vision. The politician admits that if Republican candidate Mitt Romney wins the election ‘there will be a cost… in judicial and administrative appointments’
Market ‘segmentation” in practice 2012 (here it is)
- Welfare recipients
- Low Income recipients
- Single Parents
- LGBT’ers
- Middle Class
- Students
- Foreclosed homeowners
- Inner city residents
- Suburb dwellers
- Automobile owners
- Hispanics/Latinos
- Illegal alien young adults
- illegal alien adults
- Sanctuary cities
- Registered voters
- Unregistered voters
- Senior citizens
- Medicare recipients
- Generation “X”
- Generation “Y”
- Small businesses
- Banks
- Investment Banks
- Mortgage Banks
- Internet
- News outlets
- TV media outlets
- Unions/non-unions
- Right-to-work states
- Religion
- Religious universities
- Religious Institutions
- Education/Unions
- Teachers
- Gun Owners
- Federal Employee Unions
- Judicial branches of national and local governments
- Congressional branches of governance
- State Governors
- Foreign Governments
- US Military
- Department of Defense
- Space program
- US Veterans Admin.
Obama’s 2012 “Dream Team” of techie nerds facilitating social networking led by:
Harper Reed
partial list of programs used:
-Dash Board
-The Call Tool
-The FaceBook Blaster
-The People Matcher
-Nazwhal
Lastly all NYSE media and Rick Santelli blogs.
RNC/GOP was using “white boards!!!” No wonder Romney failed. Pray. Amen. Yes, Obama did employ Chicago-style thuggery, too Especially in lo income tenements and their dwellers, labor unions and teacher organizations.
What are the implications of the fact that this incredibly-sophisticated machine was only able to deliver a marginal victory?
BTW, how do we know this pdf isn’t disinformation?
+5 Insightful
If Obama was able to govern as well as he was able to run a campaign he would have been a great president. I agree that the repubs need to analyse what the Obama campaign did, and find a way to duplicate its effectiveness, not by roling over on sound conservative principles, but campaigning much smarter.