Jonathan Alter writes that every election he has covered is reported to be the most important election in generations. 2012, he says, it was true.
The Center Holds
Obama and His Enemies
Simon and Schuster
Is his report on that election. It gets far down into the nuts and bolts of the campaigns, but regularly comes up to talk about what voters were choosing between when they chose.
It starts with election night 2010, "The shellacking."
Other chapters include "Obama Derangement Syndrome," Fox Nation," and "The Clown Car." And that's only the reports on the Republican side.
One revelation is that there was general dissatisfaction among the volunteers from 2008 in the level of communication that they had received in the next three years. OFA had asked for money, but they hadn't kept them involved otherwise. The typical Obama '08 volunteer didn't have much money, but wanted to hear the talking points.
In the mechanics of campaigning, "Chicago" beat "Boston" hands down. Chicago had "The Cave," which had predictions of every battle-ground state. Those predictions were scarily on-the-nose except for Colorado where Obama did a point better than his campaign thought he had done. Boston went into election night thinking that they would win. As late as the time Fox called the election, they still had hopes.
(Obama wrote concession speeches before election day in both 2008 and 2012. Romney had no concession speech until he was convinced he'd lost. He did, however, have an elaborate transition-team set up already.)
Alter regards Obama as missing "the shmooze gene." He points out that Truman played poker with congressional leaders as well as his cronies. Obama plays only with friends. (In the IL senate, Obama up games with other legislators on both sides of the aisle. This is not in Alter's book.)
While Chicago spent $135 million less than Boston on TV spots, they aired twice as many. (I think this includes superpac ads. Alter's writing is not as unambiguous as it could be on that.)
There was a huge age difference between the lower levels of the two campaigns. The Chicago team was filled by guys in their twenties. (Many of them veterans from 2008 who had not passed 30 yet.) Boston brought in a large number of advertising experts in their fifties and even sixties.
Romney narrowly carried white youth.
Chicago tested everything. Phone banks from out of state are as effective as phone banks from your neighbors.
- = -
Read the book, if only to relive the experience. Here are a few of my takes from it.
Obama's legacy -- and possibly the future of the Democratic party for the next few decades -- depends on getting a cooperative Congress in 2014. OFA has the tools produced by the Cave. (The information, concentrated in all CDs of battleground states rather than in battleground CDs, needs to be redone. The methods, on the other hand, are spot-on.) They also have the names of possible volunteers. The question is whether Obama will turn them on full-scale for the coming election.
While the conventional wisdom is that Republicans turn out for the midterm while Democrats don't, this is only relatively true. In many CDs which Obama had carried in 2008, a majority of the voters in 2010 had gone for McCain. The decrease of McCain 2008 voters who went to the polls in 2010 was significant, though. It was simply smaller than the decrease in Obama 2008 voters.
The task, then, in 2014 is to:
1 Turn out more Obama 2012 voters in critical CDs than the Republicans turn out Romney 2012 voters.
2 Persuade some previous Republican voters that sinking the country in order to get Obama is unpatriotic.
Either of these is difficult. Both of them are possible.