◼ Mitt Romney and Republicans across the country “did a pretty good job of running a nine-month campaign,” he said. “The problem is the other side did a really good job of running a four-year campaign. - Bill Hoffmann and Kathleen Walter/Newsmax
“While we were debating each other 23 times, the other side, the Obama campaign, was spending $150 million or whatever the number is on technology and data all across the country.
“So fundamentally we sort of have to accept the fact that we are in a permanent political environment and that nine-month operations aren’t going to work anymore, obviously.”
◼ Is Winning the Argument Enough? - Peter Wilson/American Thinker
On two occasions during the conference...someone mentioned a PDF called ◼ "Inside the Cave: An In-Depth Look at the Digital, Technology, and Analytics Operations of Obama for America."
As an aside, I mentioned this to a liberal friend and she said, is that title racist? Why? I asked, utterly confused. "Because he's a black man," she responded. So I guess "cave" is another new racist codeword.
"Inside the Cave" was not released by Republican racists but by Engage DC, a "well respected new media consulting firm." It's a scary and depressing document, which opens with a photo of a windowless office described with this caption: "The Cave in Obama for America's Chicago headquarters housed the campaign's Analytics team. Behind closed doors, more than 50 data analysts used Big Data to predict the individual behavior of tens of millions of American voters." These analysts are brilliant, young, and were willing to leave top firms to work for peanuts to re-elect Obama: "[Obama] went directly to Silicon Valley and to data analysts in the Fortune 500 and academia. One used to work at Pixar. Another was a high-energy particle physicist."
Romney spent millions on television ads, robocalls and the disastrous Orca, a "traditional corporate IT project gone bad," while Obama for America microtargeted voters through Facebook (34 million friends), Twitter, email (16 million on their email list compared to Romney's 2-3 million). OFA constantly tested new strategies -- "drunk donating," a "Quick Donate" app that processed donations through Amazon, and "upselling" donations (would you like to supersize that order?)
...when we look ahead, I'm not sure that winning the argument is enough. The Tea Party showed the power of our founding principles, but ultimately it wasn't enough on Election Day. Can we reach those workers getting paid minimum wage by Elizabeth Warren with arguments about fiscal responsibility? Can we fight donation-upselling by quoting the Constitution to young people who have been indoctrinated their whole lives and believe that the Founders were evil slaveowners? I don't think so, but it makes me mad. I'd love nothing more than to win elections by convincing voters that the ideas I heard this weekend are true and just, but I'm afraid the battle is going to be much harder, more boring, more calculated and more soulless.
The 2014 campaign for the House is already underway. We'd better get our Cave up and running.
