Obama and the Democrats, all the experts are bragging today, had a much more “metric-driven” campaign. They had a much better handle on who would vote and why, and they were much better organized with paid guns who knew what they were doing to get their guys out. On election morning, they pretty much knew they were going to win. They feared surprises, of course, because they didn’t achieve total control. But their real uncertainty only extended to VA and FL–which they didn’t need. They focused their campaign on nailing down a majority of the electors, and they did so quite scientifically. Compared to the Democrats’ technocratic elite, the Republican evangelicals and big-money libertarians with their SUPER PACS–beginning with the Koch Brothers–were clueless. Karl Rove used to know stuff and know how to use it. No more.
All the Republican projections to the contrary were wishing, hoping, and praying. They were very short on dispassionate thinking. We lost, let’s admit, because we were out-thought and so out-gunned.
The argument about whether the Republican message was too conservative or not conservative enough is beside the point. Blaming ordinary Americans for being suckered by a superior marketing machine is shifting the blame from where it belongs. It’s not that Romney’s commercials etc. and campaigning message were all that intelligent (as Pete repeatedly pointed out). They were just rather naive and ineffective.
November 8th, 2012 | 9:03 am
Two conversations, both necessary:
This one.
My “It’s Different This Time” outrage at my fellow citizens.
One does not cancel or invalidate the other…
…Peter you know that part in the Nicomachean Ethics where he talks about one’s own blame for becoming ignorant? That phenomenon is what my outrage rests upon. Some can be excused for being suckered, some…cannot.
November 8th, 2012 | 9:21 am
Well, thanks, that’s exactly my point. Some can be excused for being suckered and some cannot.
I’m also for both conversations, of course. The Democratic gloating about their technocratic superiority is repulsive. But they are still right.
November 8th, 2012 | 9:36 am
“The argument about whether the Republican message was too conservative or not conservative enough is beside the point.”
I agree. People know we’re about to go into a depression. People know that partisan gridlock isn’t going to change. People know that all politicians are alike. I signed up for the Obama and Romney emails early on in this election and Obama machine was on it. They made sure that the right counties went their way, and they did. Honestly, I am both impressed and admire their thoughtfulness.
November 8th, 2012 | 9:39 am
Dr. Lawler,
Thank you for your thoughts. I have found your commentary throughout the election season to be informative and insightful.
One thought to add to yours – the Democratic machine has a very large proportion of voters set “default” to their party. Their advantage, in my opinion, lies in creating an organization whose sole operation is to get these voters registered and to the polls on election day.
It’s simply a matter of loading folks on a bus and getting them to a polling station, provided that someone else (possibly the same group) has registered them.
These people being loaded onto buses will never be “conservative” in any sense of the word.
I don’t see any corresponding pool of waiting Republican (conservative) voters waiting around, willing to vote for whoever the person driving them to the polling station says to vote for.
While this activity (collecting poor voters and driving them to the polling station) isn’t illegal, and fits with what many people see as “democracy”, I think it’s hard to make the case that it’s what the Founders had in mind.
And I think it’s really an unstoppable force.
November 8th, 2012 | 10:16 am
Carl’s correct, plus we’re seeing the results of thirty years of promoting socialism (progressivism, Marxism, etc) in the public schools and colleges/universities.
Plus, the GOP is permanetly split with one faction locked out of the convention for example and the disconnect between the Neos/RINOS and the conservatives. The Tea Party didn’t show up, there were millions of few voters this election the ’08. Mitt (Romneycare, big-bidness statism, etc) was NOT their man and most folks vote FOR someone.
Thus we need a new party that unites the conservative people while drawing in ‘moderates’ or we should begin to think about secession if we value our liberties.
November 8th, 2012 | 10:16 am
Rove has always benefited from the silly meme on the left that W was a simpering moron so his success must be attributable to someone else. (Cheney’s laughable rep as some sort of Darth Vader character is also due to this.)
I recall some quote or other from some profile of W portraying him as saying in a strategizing session “That idea’s so dumb Karl must have thought of it.”
November 8th, 2012 | 10:23 am
Brian, To some undefinable extent you’re right on both counts. “Rove” is a symbol–but the Republicans from Rove or someone had killer, metric-driven strategies in OH and FL in 2004. Nothing clever since then, amazingly.
November 8th, 2012 | 10:36 am
Therefore what? What is to be done?
November 8th, 2012 | 10:42 am
Echoing one point Brian made. W. is the only Republican in now 24 years to win a majority of the popular vote in the Presidential election. He defeated (by the skin of his teeth, mind you, but still a win is a win) a sitting Vice-President of a 2-term President who left office with an approval rating in the 60s, a good economy (sluggish, but infinitely better than it is now) and no known looming foreign policy crisis (I am talking about in the general voting public, not far-sighted foreign policy wonks).
Before that W. defeated a popular sitting governor in Texas and won relection with nearly 70% of the vote (I know that Texas is a red state, but by contrast Rick Perry has never come close to those numbers)
W. certainly had his issues as President – but let’s not discount the fact that he was a terrific politician.
November 8th, 2012 | 11:01 am
“It’s not that Romney’s commercials etc. and campaigning message were all that intelligent (as Pete repeatedly pointed out). They were just rather naive and ineffective.”
So then what would be the sophisticated and effective alternative for a conservative candidate?
If the Obama campaign is any indicator, effectiveness with this present voting population consists in finding an effective meme for every demographic to make them fear the other candidate? Whether it’s abortion for single women, immigration for hispanics, or fear of alienation by a white elite for everyone who isn’t white and elite?
Is there a conservative argument that can be as compelling as the fear mongering arguments conservatives have to overcome?
I suspect the answer to this question depends on the character of the voters. If this last election is an indication of that character, I’m at a loss.
November 8th, 2012 | 11:55 am
Peter,
Is it possible that there is a Tocqueville angel even in the marketing? Take the women issue: Democrats on the whole are the ones on the front lines with women promising them access to contraception and health care. The war on planned parenthood more than perceived as a war on contraception is a war on mediating institutions. And unfortunately, the democrats have long won the trench warfare of meeting people where they are because they staff these institutions. So the so-called “war on women” was more broadly not just a war on rights and access to goods and services, but more deeply on the very mediating institutions Americans so deeply rely on in their DNA. This is why the assault on planned parenthood at best will be a slow death. But will be largely self-defeating for our side.
That’s the same issue with Hispanics: Democrats on the whole staff more of the services that meet hispanics where their needs are (the medical clinics, the immigration centers, the job training sights, etc.) So, unlike the women and mediating institutions which are the sticky factor, in this case it is the person-to-person interaction that largely comes from Ds and not Rs in this situation. Again, the marketing works because the same people doing the marketing had their political friends helping out the hispanics in need.
So why was the marketing effective? Not merely because it scared people but because it touched something much deeper in the American DNA.
November 8th, 2012 | 12:15 pm
I simply fail to understand why smart people don’t understand the “metrics” of this election. It has nothing to do with “technocratic elite”. As an aside, I hate that term-it was a corporate buzzword years ago, I hate to see it used in politics.
Modern politics, that is since the 1930′s-is all about pandering to constituencies that you develop. Peter Drucker, I think, once said the only purpose of a business is to create a customer, and politicians have adapted that to mean the only purpose of politics is to create a (loyal) constituent. You “need” something? That’s an “issue” “we” must “address”, with “policies” and “programs”.
Consider these principle constituencies of Obama:
1.) The young. The young are always prone to collectivism (“show me a man who’s not a socialist at 20..”) but more people are growing up without fathers and in public schools with collectivist, secularist, relativism and libertinism as predominate themes. Of course they support “gay marriage”, you accept counterfeits when you have no knowledge of the genuine article. Free contraception-that hits two themes. Obamaphones, all baubles of your ersatz father.
2.) Single (not all) women. Buried in the famous “gender gap” is that it’s single women, not married ones that support Obama. Married women were 56% were almost as likely to support Romney as men 59%. Its also popular to think free contraception was the “killer app”. I suspect, if you dug into the “single women” group, you’d find that within that group, women with degrees in social sciences and unwed mothers and such supported Obama by something like 70-80%. Do you think the left has ANY incentive to work toward restoring legitimacy?
3.) People of African descent.
Something like 95% of people of African descent voted for Obama. It was very clear, early on, to an attentive ear-that some of the political advertising was an understated message of a President under seige and looking for a group response. It worked. In my state, (PA) the 460K (out of 550K) vote edge in Philadelphia County completely overturned a 51+% Romney advantage into a 52% Obama advantage. Take out Allegheny County, and the rest of the state is bright red.
The difficulty with this sort of analysis is that people aren’t just a single attribute. If you are female, grew up without a father and are single with two children, I’d bet you voted Obama, because of the correlation of each attribute with an Obama vote. Correlation isn’t necessarily causation, though and when you get right down to it, the driving force in people voting for Obama is the promise of getting something, whether its food stamps, contraceptives or redefinition of marriage.
November 8th, 2012 | 12:30 pm
You make a good point, Steve.
I was just beginning to pay attention to politics in 2000, but wasn’t one of the big promises of Bush II to address immigration reform in a meaningful way? He even had a pretty compelling way to tie it in to his larger vision of compassionate conservatism, as I recall. Didn’t he tout his accomplishments along these lines in Texas? And perhaps it’s one of his great failures as a president not to have followed through on these promises, and shore up the weakening Reagan coalition. I see no reason why the Latino vote should remain 70-25 in favor of Dems, but Republicans are going to have to do something to earn the loyalty of these voters. Is there something I’m missing here?
November 8th, 2012 | 12:58 pm
I am not ready to buy this story that the Democrats have some sort of techno-ninja wizardry. I think this is one bit of a lazy media narrative being passed around when people are at their most vulnerable after an event which left half the nation jubilant and the other half defeated.
First, exit polling was “bare bones” to the point where the numbers “couldn’t form a narrative” in 19 states:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/national-politics/20121025-tv-networks-ap-changing-exit-poll-strategy-in-texas-18-other-states.ece
One of those states- Texas- holding one of the largest, if not the largest, Hispanic contingency while breaking sharply Republican.
Secondly, I still don’t believe the wizard of the hour, Nate Silver, is as trustworthy as he is being made out to be. Forget about his political predictions; his famous PECOTA system in baseball was faulty- it was an Ichiro Problem- and when he left Baseball Prospectus and other statisticians took over the system, it had to be completely overhauled because it wasn’t intelligible. Or as the following article puts it: “[It was] large, complex, and full of creaky interactions and pinch points- a Rube Goldberg contraption of an Excel spreadsheet.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12082
Not only did he have to fudge certain numbers, much like the retrograde tricks of the Ptolemy system, but it was never as good as advertised [see 2009-2011]. This suggests, to me at least, that as brilliant as Nate Silver may be, he may think better than he builds.
Finally, and most jadedly, the narrative about the Democrats being able to tap into “the diversity of the Democratic party,” propelling President Obama back into office is AWFULLY convenient. Now that Health Care is off the table, immigration is next up on deck. The President said so himself off the record:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/obama-drops-off-the-record-on-interview-predicts-grand-bargain/
It may not be collusion between Democrats and the press, but all it took was for one pundit on one station to mention that “Hispanics won the President reelection after he got them out to vote with Science!” before they were all talking about it. They all share the same polling data from point one- and though the reporters/pundits may not have been knowledgeable about my first point, I am sure many of them with a left-leaning Weltanschauung were ready to run with something that would be tantalizing, polarizing, and on the agenda for the next administration. It’s an easy story that riles people up, and pits people into easily digestible groups…it’s a good dig by reinforcing Republicans as being “old, out of touch white guys.” I mean, it has been really odd that every prominent position the Republicans hold has been blamed for Romney losing, while they helpfully give them free advice to “diversify.” Yet, Republicans seemed to hold ground, if not advance, on the local and state level. Was this really a repudiation of the Republican party that the press has been making it out to be?
I’d bet the farm that it came down to white working class workers in the Midwest. Romney being a businessman those guys think they work for; coupled with the influence of the Koch Bros was a turn-off. The auto-bailout type stuff worked for them, they were happy and there was nothing Romney could do about it.
That isn’t being clueless, that’s simply unlucky.
November 8th, 2012 | 1:06 pm
Nate Silver was more lucky than good. Romney was unlucky on the timing of Sandy and all that. But Silver didn’t work for Obama. I admit that the exit polls are suspect, but the turnout numbers from place to place aren’t.
November 8th, 2012 | 1:22 pm
For the record–here’s the best argument I’ve gotten against overhyping the Obama science of voter control: OH was much closer than either his or Romney’s “internals” showed. Plus there was a strangely low turnout of rural, white, mainly evangelical voters in that state. A strong turnout there of such voters (which Romney must have pretty reasonably expected and Obama feared) would have turned the state. As Olsen pointed out, Romney had reason to believe that his OH strategy was failing, just as Obama thought his firewall was pretty solid. That’s why Romney was scoping out PA etc. in a kind of desperation. OH was much more in play than both sides thought. In general, the low white turnout across the country–lower than both sides expected perhaps–has yet to be adequately explained. Some, such as Steve Hayward, have mentioned the word Mormon–not as a strong factor, but strong enough to keep some evangelicals home. Others, maybe more plausibly, fall back on the scientific success have Obama’s negative campaigning against the plutocrat that’s not one of us, campaigning Romney apparently thought he didn’t have to counter all that much.
November 8th, 2012 | 1:34 pm
In a high-profile race, “political technology” alone cannot make a candidate competitive and would seem to matter primarily when the race was going to be close for other reasons. All the political technology in the world couldn’t have got McCain elected, but it made a difference in 2004 and 2012, where the candidates were more evenly matched and about equally appealing to the electorate (I obviously assume that GWB and Romney were good or at least decent candidates). That political technology makes a difference, IMO, only after lots of other conditions have been met is at least good for democracy, as the people are getting something close to what they want. While it might be depressing to think about the people’s openness to Obama’s policies and their consequences, the most one can say is that they are being short sighted and foolish, not systematically duped.
I think political technology is also important in low-profile races, where it’s possible, say, to out-organize an incumbent state house member who’s gotten too comfortable to worry about defending himself.
November 8th, 2012 | 1:39 pm
The fact that Obama lost so many voters in the last four years should strongly dampen liberal triumphalism, and conservative doom-mongering as well.
One does start to wonder looking at some of these numbers whether the complete avoidance of social issues by Mitt was a catastrophic misjudgment. Did a lot of voters stay home because their social concerns weren’t even being addressed? But would raising them have mattered to these voters, i.e., did they mistrust Mitt enough not to be disposed to any pitch he might have made?
One also wonders whether the Akin fiasco also hurt Mitt by keeping home some portion of GOP voters who didn’t like the way he was completely shunned by the party.
I’m starting to come around on Pete’s point that Obama’s abortion extremism should have been brought up, at least by outside groups in a targeted manner, if not more directly. The voters that the GOP feared alienating were clearly already in the bag for Obama anyway.
November 8th, 2012 | 1:43 pm
In other words, the “fear of alienation by a white elite for everyone who isn’t white and elite” gave Obama the race.
So, is there a conservative argument that can be as compelling as the fear mongering arguments conservatives have to overcome?
November 8th, 2012 | 1:51 pm
ramsey, bush could not get anywhere with immigration reform in the house. the first bush-inspired reform bill (Kennedy/McCain) passed the senate but floundered in the house. the second reform bill (kennedy/kyl) did not even pass the senate. opposition mostly from right-wingers in the party (cries of “amnesty,” which might have been effectively true) who didn’t realize that this was the best they were going to get.
November 8th, 2012 | 2:39 pm
@ Ramsey
Correct. Bush 43 (II, W., whatever you want to call him) did try to get comprehensive immigration reform through. I am in the minority among conservatives but I think he was right. He won 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. If Romney wins that, he wins.
@ sara
You are also correct that he lost a lot of support within his party, but he also lost some support from Democrats from the right (yes, I know that hardly seems possible – but in this case it was true).
November 8th, 2012 | 2:42 pm
Brian,
I think the party and Mitt would’ve been hurt far more by actively associating themselves with Akin and Mourdock.
November 8th, 2012 | 2:56 pm
“I think the party and Mitt would’ve been hurt far more by actively associating themselves with Akin and Mourdock.”
Very true. Though much of the damage came from the media effectively putting the national microphone in front of Akin and Mourdock even while it went AWOL after a few cycles passed on Bengazi. Messaging can become pretty difficult in an environment where you mistakes are magnified and their mistakes are muffled.
November 8th, 2012 | 3:02 pm
sara: I didn’t say they should have done anything differently re: Akin, I just wonder whether their shunning of him did in fact turn off a lot of these “rural, white, mainly evangelical voters” who apparently stayed home for whatever reason.
November 8th, 2012 | 9:47 pm
Brian, right about Bush. His campaign skills (which only partly involve public speaking) are currently way underrated.
November 8th, 2012 | 9:56 pm
Pseudoplotinus, you’ve gone from unwarranted confidence to unwarranted despair without traversing any of the space in-between. You might hold the key to discovering faster-than-light travel.
I don’t have the complete answer to the questions and neither does anybody else today. Doesn’t mean Republicans can’t win on a platform of good public policy with a better campaign, a better message (which will take time to take root), and favorable circumstances. That doesn’t mean there are any guarantees. Nobody is entitled to win as long as they do X, Y, and Z. But Republicans can do a lot better job talking to a lot more people.
November 9th, 2012 | 2:02 am
Pete, not despair so much as perplexity. But nicely aimed barb none-the-less.
November 9th, 2012 | 6:39 am
I think all the GOP has to do is abandon the oft failed RINO/Neo candidates that it ALWAYS nominates. Nominate a TRUE conservative, campaign on the founding American principles and let’s see if we (1) Get millions more in voter turn out and (2) win the election.
If there are future elections, if we aren’t fighting in the streets in the next four years, if we continue to have a gov’t we might want to try this.
November 9th, 2012 | 1:37 pm
So against my better judgement I told my wife this morning that I want to start volunteering to support the upcoming 2014 and 2016 elections. This armchair quarterbacking via blog is pointless.
I had an amusing image come to mind of the image of Leonidas at Thermopylae a la the 300 wearing a Rubio 2016 button. I laughed, then suddenly became inspired.
November 9th, 2012 | 6:27 pm
Pseudoplotinus, why Marco Rubio? Not that there has to be a specific reason for that sort of thing, I was just wondering about your thought process.
November 9th, 2012 | 7:24 pm
Pete, unlike my previous display of abundant certitude, my preference for Rubio is only preliminary at the moment. But my reasoning is as follows:
First, you should know I am a lifetime resident of California, which by itself should explain most of my reasoning. During the last few decades I saw my state go from 16 consecutive years of Republican governerships to becoming a client state of Public Union and Minority Interests. This years election brought the additional spectacle of handing over super majorities to the democrats in both houses.
The catalyst for the shift was the successful use of the immigration issue by Pete Wilson in the 90′s which got him two terms as governor, but pretty much stigmatised the Republican party ever afterward as the party of anti-immigration in the eyes of hispanics. The rest is history.
So my view of this last election is, rationally or not, colored by what took place in my own state since the 1980′s. From the presidential post mortem so far one of the take aways appears to be that the severe drop off of hispanic votes for Romney, compared to Bush in 2004, had devestating effect. My take is that it was the spectacle of watching this years Republican candidates discuss how best to hunt down and export illegal immigrants back out of the country that effectively gave the hispanic vote to Obama on a silver platter.
So it seems to me the next presidential candidate needs to have the following qualities:
1. A compelling biography that can help instanciate the idea that, particularly if you’re an immigrant or a child of immigrants, the US is a country of opportunity.
2. The ability to eloquently explain how that opportunity is available to American citizens only because of our peculiarly American understanding of the role of small govenment and the industrious citizen.
3. And therefore the future of opportunity for American’s, immigrant or otherwise, rests in a renewed understanding of that principle.
4. To offer an alternative vision of immigration reform that doesn’t scare hispanics into the arms of the democrats.
5. Not be a caricature of WASP-ish republicanism.
Rubio is the only candidate I’ve seen thus far that can effectively meet these requirements. It remains to be seen if he is ready for the challenge, but it appears he’s already shown signs of flirting with a 2016 run.
November 10th, 2012 | 10:55 am
Pseudoplotinus, thanks for giving us your thoughts at such length and especially your personal experiences.
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