After reading a variety of articles with sources from inside the Romney campaign team, I am considering revising my whole way of looking at this election. I knew, because I witnessed it first hand, that Romney had a terrible ground game that basically threw money at problems rather than organizing in any rational way. But I still can’t believe that they just wasted 30,000 volunteers on election day by asking them to sit inside precincts and strike voters off the list as they voted using a web application that didn’t work. Failure on that level is reminiscent of the post-invasion plan for Iraq. It’s not a matter of the Obama campaign staff being better. The Romney campaign sabotaged their most passionate warriors and rendered them useless.
Another thing I didn’t think possible is that when Romney took no chances in the last debate it was because he thought he was ahead. And when he campaigned in Pennsylvania it wasn’t a Hail Mary pass but an attempt to run up the score. I am having trouble believing that no one in Romney’s inside circle thought they were going to lose. I want to argue that they are just saying that because that is what they told all their billionaire supporters and they can’t admit to them that they were getting bullshitted.
I can kind of understand where the Republicans were coming from when they assumed that black turnout would not be as high the second time around and that Obama could never match his 2008 turnout because he couldn’t deliver on all his promises. Intuitively, both of those assumptions made perfect sense. But pollsters are paid to test those kind of assumptions, not to incorporate them into their models. Why did Romney’s pollsters assume a 78% white electorate when all the reputable pollsters were assuming a significantly lower percentage? Wasn’t it just bullshit to sell to the big donors? Wasn’t that what the Rasmussen and Gallup models were doing, too? I mean, I was certain that Team Romney was in on the joke. Are we supposed to believe that they drank their own Kool-Aid?
Why do people on Romney’s team want us to know that the candidate was “shellshocked” when the turnout numbers matched the consensus of polls? Are we supposed to feel sorry for him because he was crestfallen or because he is stupid? How does that help his legacy? I don’t think it does. I think it protects him from the anger and backlash of his billionaire donors.
But this is always the thing with Republicans. Are they stupid or evil? The answer always comes back: both.
