The Machine Beat the Manager (Here are the Numbers)

‘In 2008, Obama rode the energy of hope and change into the White House,” says Andrew Bouchet, former national political director for Rick Santorum. “This year, he had no energy but he had spent the intervening years building an awesome Machine. Last night, he rode the Machine back into the White House.”

The Machine indeed won. “Starting months ago, Democrats began spending $350 million building a get-out-the-vote infrastructure that swamped us,” Ed Rollins, who served as campaign manager for Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection bid, told me yesterday. “Then they demonized Romney in the swing states, and by the time he responded his image was set with too many voters — especially blue-collar whites.”

Mitt Romney won white voters by 20 points nationwide, but in the swing states he dramatically underperformed. He won only 46 percent of whites in New Hampshire, 51 percent in Wisconsin, 47 percent in Iowa, and 54 percent in Colorado. Karlyn Keene of the American Enterprise Institute says it looks as if blue-collar whites disproportionately stayed home. Exit polls showed that Americans with only some college education were outnumbered at the polls by those who were college graduates — something that rarely happens in national elections. The brazenness of the Obama ads was breathtaking. One spot featured Romney as a heartless vulture capitalist who was responsible for killing the wife of a steelworker during his time at Bain Capital. Not only was the story false, but Team Obama denied responsibility for the ad only days after they had put the former steelworker on a conference call with reporters to convince them to write about his tale.

Of course, Mitt Romney had his own misleading ads, but they were tame in comparison — one accused the Obama auto bailout of shipping car production to China. The fact is that the Machine played for keeps, while Mitt Romney — the quintessential corporate Manager — didn’t.

The Obama Machine built a firewall of swing states whose electoral votes it had to hold no matter how many millions of popular votes the Machine was going to lose. In the end, it appears to have won every swing state but North Carolina (and, perhaps, Florida). The turnout operation it ran in the swing states and elsewhere spilled over into Senate races. Republicans won only eight of the 33 Senate races up for grabs on Tuesday, the fewest number of Senate races won by a major party since the Lyndon Johnson landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964. If had not been for skillful redistricting, Republicans could have come close to losing the House.

It’s become a cliché since Tuesday to say that Republicans dropped the ball on courting the Hispanic vote this year. But it needs to be resaid. Mitt Romney did not have to move so far to the right of Governor Rick Perry of Texas and other candidates on the immigration issue in the primaries. There are ways to address both the desperate need for better border control and the need for long-term solutions to the demand for immigrant labor. Hispanics, despite holding many conservative values, do not see Republicans connecting with them in terms they understand, or with arguments that convince them that liberal policies will undermine the economic future of their families.

The battle for Hispanic voters saw Romney and Republicans routed. John McCain won only 31 percent of Hispanics in 2008 — down from George W. Bush’s high-water mark of 43 percent in 2004. Mitt Romney won only 27 percent this election, and Hispanics were a tenth of the electorate.

Romney did just as badly with Asian voters, who were 3 percent of all voters. As recently as 1996, Bob Dole won a majority of Asian voters, John McCain still won 35 percent in 2008. But this year, Mitt Romney picked up only 26 percent of Asian-Americans. Republican politicians who have reached out to Hispanics and Asians successfully should be recruited to teach seminars on just how their approach worked for them. Topping that list would be Representative Ed Royce of California, former congressman Tom Davis of Virginia, and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.

Joe Trippi, who was the manager of Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign, says he realized on Monday afternoon that Romney had lost the election. He was reading Scott Rasmussen’s final tracking poll, which showed Obama and Romney essentially tied. But in a footnote, Rasmussen warned that only 67 percent of voters who had cast ballots already were white. He said that meant Romney would have to have an electorate on Election Day that was 77 percent white — a demographic bridge too far.

On top of all of the errors and missed opportunities, Republicans were also the victims of simple bad luck: an October surprise in the form of Hurricane Sandy. As Tom Bevan and Carl Cannon of Real Clear Politics note, Sandy “temporarily stopped the campaign in its tracks, and any residual momentum Romney still had, while affording Obama the opportunity of acting like a president, which he did effectively, at a time the electorate realized it was sick and tired of attack ads and empty rhetoric.”

On Election Day, an astounding 41 percent of people answering the CBS exit poll said the hurricane was an important factor in their vote. A full 15 percent said it was the most important factor. That explains why late deciders broke for the incumbent president, when traditionally they have gone to the challenger.

Some on the left freely acknowledged Sandy’s last-minute assist. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews went so far as to say on Election Night that he was glad the storm hit because it provided a boost for Obama’s reelection. “I’m so glad we had that storm last week because I think the storm was one of those things,” he blurted out. “No, politically I should say, not in terms of hurting people. The storm brought in possibilities for good politics,” he rushed to say after his MSNBC colleagues stared at him.

I’m sure the victims of Sandy will be pleased to know their sacrifices are appreciated on the left because they will bring in “good politics.” After all, they helped return to power the party that proclaims itself to be compassionate and caring. The disaster-recovery loan they may get isn’t a real substitute for a full-time job, but in the Age of Obama you just have to be grateful for government’ s small favors.

— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO and a co-author of the newly released Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk

J. Fund:

“Then they demonized Romney in the swing states, and by the time he responded his image was set with too many voters — especially blue-collar whites.”

That's what I found in Ohio. Reagan-Democrats did not vote in large numbers for Romney, while some remained undecided about the national, President ticket as they voted for local and state.

In other words, there was low enthusiasm for Romney on the shop floor.

Some people viewed Romney as a bankster, but most who did not vote for him, viewed him with suspicion reinforced by the ads which painted him as a boss for whom you would not want to work.

They did not want to vote for Obama, but they just could not vote for Romney. The ads were very effective.

In addition to Obama-brownshirt election fraud as reported.

By the way, Benghazi? Didn't happen; it's not on any RADAR.

In Ohio, there is among voters whom you would have expected to vote for Romney, mostly a sense of loss re bad economic times. Romney did not *explain* how his ideas would work.

For the most part, re the economy, Obama and Romney appeared as two executives bickering over "management execution." The "measured responses" contestants who would thrill a board of directors with "the intensity of all the excitement found in micromanagement," received a "Oh, that ..." from the shop floor.

Leaving for Romney, a large vacuum where he needed to express well, principles and why we have them, and love of country.

You may think, that Romney *did* express love of country, and you'd be right; but seeing that on ads and especially hearing it on the radio, in Ohio, you had to be alert for it.

What Reagan had in abundance, and for which thousands showed up to see Reagan when he would travel thru Ohio in the years 1975 - 1979 well before the 1980 election.

When Reagan espoused *conservative* principles which happen to be our country's principles of freedom, for liberty and justice for all --- the building blocks and tools that we employ to restrain government and release governments' historical controls over opportunity *and over the spirit of opportunity.*

These are things which The Manager / aka "the suits" do not wish to speak about, because at work, these things elevate the natural sovereignty of people, which the management have to respect ... but have not been respecting as they shoved jobs out the door *because they lost their courage to instead, challenge government oppression that restrains their economic opportunities here in the U.S.A.*

"Management" still have trouble with not hiring *good managers* --- people who know how to lead on principle, people who are smart and good teachers. Instead in the U.S.A., we have too many managers who are hired to be inoffensive and non-threatening ... and I'm not talking about such middle-managers relations to the shop floor - I'm talking about how upper management is obsessed with defending its positions of power.

That would be, the problems that people have with managment, which causes people to vulnerable to the lies of Obama-brownshirts.

Romney, and the GOPe, have had one solution for that problem: illegal aliens by the hoards, while campaigning for legal aliens.

When what people/workers want, is a "good man" a "just man." Somebody who knows why we have principles, who can explain why we have them and need them, and who lives by them.

People want somebody in whom they can believe, that when there is a fight for what is right, then leader in question will not simply use them up (our people and our principles) for his own gains and then abandon our principles.

Instead, we find the GOPe trotting out yet another variation of --- this time, really good packaging (unlike McCain) --- and enough of the people reacting with, "I'm not buying it." What looks good on the outside, was repeatedly consumer-reviewed by Obama's ads and found wanting.

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