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.
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