Thoughts For The Morning After. We Built That Victory!

by: countrycat

Wed Nov 07, 2012 at 08:15:51 AM CST

Last night, Democrats were thanking God & their groundgame for an expected nailbiter that turned into a surprisingly large electoral college victory. The party held on to the Senate - and may actually pick up seats, thanks to the TEA Party. The fight for marriage equality scored some big gains, and Allen West lost his seat.

Obama family

Without gloating - an activity that the late Molly Ivins warned against - let's quickly review some of last night's big winners:

Nate Silver: The FiveThirtyEight blogger sustained withering criticism from the folks who didn't like his math. Silver predicted 313 electoral votes for the President. With Florida still too close to call, but Obama in the lead, looks like Silver's main problem was being too conservative.

Democratic senators: A year ago, heck... even 6 months ago, even the most optimistic pundits were predicting an evenly divided senate and possibly a GOP-controlled chamber. But as it stands now, it's possible that we may actually pick up a seat.

Marriage equality: A big, big night on this one! Voters in Maryland and Maine. The vote in Washington State looks good, and Minnesota voters turned down an effort to write marriage inequality into the state constitution.

ACLU of Alabama: After running neck & neck all evening, Roy Moore finally surged ahead in the Chief Justice race and defeated Judge Robert Vance. While terrible for Alabama, the ACLU affiliate's membership and contributor base grew markedly during Moore's last tenure.

Political "sports" fans: Alerted by Twitter chatter last night, Daddycat & I turned on Fox News to enjoy the Karl Rove/Ohio meltdown and stayed to listen to analysts warn that the coming fight for the "soul" of the party (who knew it had one?) was going to be pretty bruising. TEA Party folks were already complaining that Romney lost because he wasn't a "real" conservative while the old guard talked about the need to appeal to a wider demographic group than angry old white people.

We'll have a lot more news & analysis about the election over the few days, but I'm running on about 4 hours sleep right now.....

Feel free to treat this as an open thread and tell share your favorite moments from last night. Video of the "Great Rove Meltdown of 2012" is on the flip.

countrycat :: Thoughts For The Morning After. We Built That Victory!

Tags: Marriage Equality, ACLU, Row Moore, Nate Silver, TEA Partry, 2012, (All Tags)

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Thoughts For The Morning After. We Built That Victory! | 3 comments

Alabama exit poll (4.00 / 2)

Granted, al.com only sampled 15 boxes to 'understand' voting patterns in the whole state, but this has to be the most incomprehensible characterization ever of how Alabamians voted.

Obama and Romney ran close in small towns and rural areas, but Romney led in larger cities and suburbs. The candidates ran about even in the geographic area covering Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery and parts of west Alabama, but Romney led in other areas of the state by about a 2-to-1 margin.

The finding that older, white, wealthier Alabamians supported Romney is almost certainly correct, but that paragraph above is nonsense.

Work harder and work smarter!

by: mooncat @ Wed Nov 07, 2012 at 17:30:48 PM UTC

by: you @ soon

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Brilliant campaign strategy (4.00 / 2)

Jim Messina is the Nick Saban of politics.

Listening to Obama's victory speech last night (with tears in my eyes) has given me high hopes for the future. All the negatives for the next two years are going to be directed at the 113th Congress if they choose to continue the obstructive path the 112th took.

I listened to a bit of Rush Limbaugh today. He thinks Obama won because he actually believes the majority of America gives a popcorn fart about Romney's tax returns.

Congressman Mo Brooks has to be the most angry winner in the history of politics. He will continue to spread his fear mongering rhetoric, trying to make people believe America is in danger from cuts in military spending.

Congrats to Terry Sewell. The only voice of reason to represent Alabama has been re-elected.

October 2012 was the 332nd consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985. - N.O.A.A.

by: Dragontide @ Wed Nov 07, 2012 at 19:19:46 PM UTC

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The OFA strategy was brilliant, and they executed it very well (4.00 / 2)

The online outreach coordinator, Erica was terrific and has apparently not had a day off in 2 months. She made sure bloggers and other online media sources had text of speeches before they were delivered, video afterward, transcripts of debates -- sometimes before the debate was over -- and was extremely quick to respond to Romney's lies with relevant statistics, quotes and links. Ditto for OFA campaign themes, she always provided backup information with data, quotes and links. Based on the emails I received from her, there were precious few times she was away from the job for even 8 hours at a stretch these last weeks. Obviously, the communications was top-notch, and judging from the vote totals, the voter outreach/GOTV operations must have been at least as good.

This is easily the most modern, organized and competent Democratic campaign organization I've ever seen.

Work harder and work smarter!

by: mooncat @ Wed Nov 07, 2012 at 19:56:17 PM UTC

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