Tonight Saxby Chambliss (R) won reelection to Senate against a great candidate who was initially able to make this race much closer than it should have been. But that was Nov. 4th.
Why didn't Jim Martin close the distance tonight?
We democrats have to take a long hard look at this Senate race and try to find the lessons in this contest. We failed and we have to find out why.
I'll get into more detail on the points below the fold. contribute if you want.
1.Turnout - our turnout model focused on African-American turnout when we didn't have enough base votes. African-American numbers are not enough to win Georgia, you still need at least 20% of whites in a best case scenario. That's with a 30% African American turnout which is an extremely optimistic scenario.
If Obama can't pull enough AAs what was the plan for Martin? Any strategy dependent on AAs would've taken months or years to implement (review Obama's actual GA strategy). I know Martin never had the type of money Obama had, but I'll elaborate on Martin's money problem farther down.
A bigger error in turnout was the failure to tie all advertising to the Dec. 2nd date. The voting period was never hammered in effectively, which ties in with message control. Everyone everywhere should have been told constantly, VOTE ON DEC 2nd! I never got that sense.
2.Dems gave no compelling narrative for Martin- Why were we suppose to elect him beyond him being a Democrat? A message as the majority party should have been sufficiently different. Who was Martin as a person? Why did he specifically deserve to be Senator of Georgia? What was his history? The crux of the campaign seemed to be "Vote for Martin, he'll help Obama, and Saxby is the devil."
Georgians didn't vote for Obama so why would they want one of his helpers? This may have been the most telling mistake for me.
I never got a sense of Martin as a candidate until about week ago. This is his best ad
But it came too late and nothing else followed in this vein. I never got a sense of his temperament or intellect.
Beat Chambliss! sounded an awful lot like Kerry's 2004 Campaign of Beat Bush! Talk more about you ownr candidate, you might actually win more. Remember Rep. Bachmann(R-MN)? We had video proof and it still wasn't enough.
We need to drop this dated strategy completely. I'll call it the Kerry Stategy even though it existed for much longer before that. Republicans have tried it too, with little luck. In what situation did it ever work?
Never again do I want to hear "Vote Democrat because Republicans are evil!" Cue scary music and intellectual rambling.
We as Democrats are better than that and we need to get beyond this mentality if we're ever going to make some meaningful inroads in the South (GOP stronghold). Don't just blame a political party, attack your opponent with useful specific critiques. Which leads me to my next point:
4.Lack of Strong Attack on Chambliss This was the best attack ad the DSCC made:
Horrible. This could have been an amazing ad. Instead it was boring and was designed strictly for the internet. Do you think a moderate in Georgia is looking at Democrat attack ads online? At least put some money behind it sheesh.
The Imperial Sugar factory attacks were an opportunity to appeal on a personal level and include a LOCAL EXAMPLE of Chambliss's devious ways. And yet Dems concentrated more on criticizing Chambliss's devious ads against Max Cleland. The public doesn't care so much if therr politician is an asshole, they assume it anyway. If I had a lawyer I'd have the meanest sonovabitch I could find, not the school bus driver. We sounded like whiners again. We totally missed a good attack opportunity.
4.Message Discipline fell apart.- Too many slogans and none of them caught on. Where was :
Martin for Senate
"The South Will Rise Again" or
MARTIN FOR SENATE
"Real Georgian Values"
MARTIN FOR SENATE
"Southern Democrat"
5.Underfunded Candidate- Martin never got the resources or focus he deserved to fight- not until the end of October. DSCC believeably, never counted on a close race in Georgia, they opted for Kentucky instead, which seemed closer at the time.
5.Obama never showed- It was probably a good idea Obama didn't campaign, he didn't need this defeat. But if he wasn't coming, wasn't the race over from the beginning? Was Martin ever going to get the same African Amerian numbers as Obama? No. Never.
Nothing should have hinged on AA turnout the minute Obama showed hesitation. This campaign should have changed immediately and gone toward pursuading the White moderate or white women.
Instead Martin pulled the ridiculous idea to do a photo op with Ludacris!
No disrespect to Luda, I loved Word of Mouf, but nothing alienates older white voters in the south more than black hip hop celebrities. Not a good look.
In the end I am dissappointed in what happened tonight, not because of what the pundits will say about this tomorrow, or the fact that Chambliss is back and still horrible, but because all of this was predictable. And we still made the same mistakes.
UPDATE: I listened to some of your comments (THANKS!) and I wanted to say that I thought this one was actually winnable.
We could have used the Texas house runoff election of Rep. Ciro Rodriguez in 2006 as an example. Keep the margin under five points and over perform on election day. But Martin's numbers kept falling and he didn't have enough resources to totally reproduce the same strategy from the beginning. Also Senate races are much more difficult and expensive than House races.
If anything, Chambliss did a better job of mobilizing the base.
Martin had a shot, although I agree it was much better on Nov. 4th.
He could have aimed to define himself a little better given the time frame, and possibly gone local as some have suggested.