Sniffles on the Presidential Election

Last night was an interesting evening, wasn't it?

It was a great night if you were a Democrat, a not-so-great night if you were a Republican.

I was struck by the differences between the two campaigns, and how Obama's campaign ultimately out-organized and out-hustled McCain's campaign.

Some random thoughts:

1. TechnologyThe Republicans for years have relied on the tried-and-true trifecta of talk radio, extensive databases (many from church membership directories), telephone banking and direct mail. Especially direct mail. While they have had great success in the past with this model, last night showed just how "long in the tooth" it had gotten. It simply no longer works in this day and age. I read a great article about a reporter who volunteered in a McCain phone banking campaign. She was given 100 phone numbers to call from the Republican databases. 70% of those phone numbers no longer worked! Obviously, no one had maintained these lists in a long time.

Contrast that to the new Democratic model: internet! internet! internet! The Democrats harnessed the internet for virtually everything, with phenomenal results. The record number of small donors to Obama's campaign would not have been possible without an internet presence. The seeds for this were sown in 2004, and blossomed to fruition in 2008. The internet gave the Democrats a decided advantage in communication over the Republicans: the internet is two-way communication, meaning info can travel in both directions, while talk radio is one way, getting the message out without any mechanism for feedback.

2. Staffing. With the benefit of hindsight, McCain made a critical error when he jettisoned his campaign braintrust after the primaries. He chose to install Steve Schmidt, Karl Rove's protege, who had run a very successful campaign for Ahnold Schwarzenegger in Collie-fornia. Schmidt, though, couldn't hack it at the national level. He had excellent tactical sense, but terrible strategic sense. He looked at each day's news cycle as something to be "won" or "lost", with no coherent message like Bush had in 2000. Sadly, this myopic focus appealed to the "fighter" in John McCain, to the detriment of both.

Obama took the best of the best in 2004, stayed with them, and they made themselves better. They stuck with the message of "Change!" even when pundits, and to be honest, even people like me, thought it wasn't "sexy" enough. It worked!

Remember back in the mid-1990s when Newt Gingrich ran leadership schools for aspiring Republican political operatives? I think that may have backfired spectacularly on the Republicans in this election. Many of those graduates are now mid-career Republican campaign execs. They asked for, AND RECEIVED, autonomy to conduct state operations as they saw fit. Mixed messages and lack of congruety resulted. Obama's team had to walk a fine line between "authority" and "autonomy"....they gave marching orders to the state-level campaign operatives and watched carefully as those operatives executed their plan. On a side note, one very interesting highlight of this campaign occured in Georgia. Obama claimed he was running a 50-state campaign, but actually pulled out of 3 states for all intents and purposes. Georgia was one of those three states. This left the local Georgia campaign in a bit of a lurch. The Georgia campaign manager, on a shoestring budget and with little more than force of will, built up an enormously successful operation in Georgia that went a long way towards making Georgia more competitive. this manager (I forget his name) was so successful they pulled him out of GA a few months ago and installed him in the key battleground state of Ohio, where he performed flawlessly. The kicker? He's TWENTY THREE YEARS OLD. wow.

I'll probably have more to say later but I'll stop here for now.

A pretty good analysis

Submitted by The Wedge on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 2:06pm.

I look forward to seeing what else you have to say on this.

Pretty astute

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