The Romney Campaign was in denial on election day

[Phokus]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/?pageNum=2

As a result, they believed the public/media polls were skewed - they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn't reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave miscalculation, as they would see on election night.

Those assumptions drove their campaign strategy: their internal polling showed them leading in key states, so they decided to make a play for a broad victory: go to places like Pennsylvania while also playing it safe in the last two weeks.

I'm actually very surprised by this. I mean, it's one thing for yokels who fell off the turnip truck to believe the B.S. that Fox News/Dick Morris were spewing, but you'd think the ones running the campaign wouldn't have been caught off guard so much. You'd think the millions they spent aggregating the data would have given them more accurate info.

And Nate Silver correctly gets all 50 states right just by running public polls through his model.

LOL.

 

[sigurros81]

They ate up their own shit they were spewing out.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Not buying it. Not even a bit.

 

[Farang]

Not buying it. Not even a bit.

While it joys me to read.. me neither. The way the campaign acted in the final days smelled of desperation ('expanding the map') and for advisers to plant stories like this has other motivations behind it then giving some reporter the inside scoop.

 

[mshan]

Campaign, from beginning, lacked true strategic vision.

Their plan was economy sucks, vote for the amorphous other guy.

No contingency plans or fall back positions, no multi-pronged attacks.

Can you imagine Romney as commander in chief?

Arrogantly walking onto battlefield assuming superiority in troop numbers, doesn't even bother to look at terrain for tactical advantage, then gets completely wiped out in a slaughter when opponent ends up being stronger and more powerful than they anticipated.

Putin and Chinese were probably licking their chops if Romney go into office...

"That was just one of several ways that Mr. Obama’s campaign operations, some unnoticed by Mr. Romney’s aides in Boston, helped save the president’s candidacy. In Chicago, the campaign recruited a team of behavioral scientists to build an extraordinarily sophisticated database packed with names of millions of undecided voters and potential supporters. The ever-expanding list let the campaign find and register new voters who fit the demographic pattern of Obama backers and methodically track their views through thousands of telephone calls every night.

That allowed the Obama campaign not only to alter the very nature of the electorate, making it younger and less white, but also to create a portrait of shifting voter allegiances. The power of this operation stunned Mr. Romney’s aides on election night, as they saw voters they never even knew existed turn out in places like Osceola County, Fla. “It’s one thing to say you are going to do it; it’s another thing to actually get out there and do it,” said Brian Jones, a senior adviser."


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/u...fter-a-dismal-debate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

“They ran a 20th-century campaign in the 21st century,” said one Romney bundler, frustrated that the campaign made assumptions about the youth vote and voter intensity that didn’t pan out. “The anger is that they were entrusted to do certain things. It’s not like they were paid a $5,000 retainer to get a few dozen articles in an inside-the-Beltway paper. This is the major leagues.”

Another Republican outside the Romney campaign but privy to its thinking described the defeat as a complete pummeling, with Senate losses adding salt to the wound.

Romney supporters point to a series of brash statements made by advisers that seem out of touch with reality in retrospect. Inside-the-Beltway, Republicans trained their fire on senior Romney advisers like Ed Gillespie and political director Rich Beeson for appearances on last weekend’s Sunday shows. Gillespie said the electoral map was expanding, and Beeson predicted a 300 electoral vote win for Romney.

“There were a lot of Republicans who were on calls that the campaign was having led to believe we had shots in Pennsylvania and Minnesota,” one Republican operative supporting Romney said. “I think Republicans are split right now between confused and shocked, and also I think they are wondering did the Romney campaign have numbers we didn’t have.”

In starker terms, the source questioned: “Was last week a head fake, or were they just not that smart?”


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83549.html#ixzz2Bg8mqBNM

And somehow I don't think Jack Welch will publically acknowledge that Obama even outdid his 2008 campaign in terms of expanding markets:

Obama Win Is Management Lesson to All: Welch

CNBC.com | November 05, 2008 | 07:50 AM EST


Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election should serve as a management lesson, as he opened up new "markets" during his campaign, former General Electric CEO and management guru Jack Welch told CNBC Wednesday.

"If you look at management skills as being execution, as one of the real issues, this guy demonstrated without question the best execution I've ever seen in a political campaign," Welch said.

"He came from a basement startup to build an organization that was flawless--demonstrated in the culmination in Chicago last night with one of the most impressive rallies, or celebrations, one could ever see. This is a manager. This is a real manager."


http://m.cnbc.com/us_news/27552782 (actual video clip has long since seemingly conveniently been erased from CNBC website)

And what was the Romney campaign doing?: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/11/07/romneys_transition_site.html

 

[Lemon law]

I somehow can't bring myself to outrage over the Romney slowed concession speech. After all, its in the finest American Professional football playbook. Even if you are behind 50 to 10, with six seconds left on the clock, but still there is something profoundly American in delaying the inevitable.

 

[Generator]

Mo Money Romney bankrupted his 2008 campaign and this year you can see the complete INEPTITUDE top to bottom. A Romney presidency would have been a holocaust. Lets not even imagine what kind of shit Lyin Ryan would have pulled behind Cheesy Grits back!

 

[jagec]

I somehow can't bring myself to outrage over the Romney slowed concession speech. After all, its in the finest American Professional football playbook. Even if you are behind 50 to 10, with six seconds left on the clock, but still there is something profoundly American in delaying the inevitable.

Absolutely. It was a good speech, too.

Pity that We The People are such poor sports, in defeat OR in victory.

 

[dullard]

Phokus, you just don't get it. Romney's poll numbers add up. Of course they add up. Romney was someone who ran businesses for 25 years and balanced the budget. Romney was always in the lead, Romney won. Get over it. His business experience proves that. Oh, and balancing the budget means the Republican internal polls add up. When we're talking about math that doesn't add up, how about 50 states in Nate Silver's estimate. That's math that doesn't add up.

 

[Incorruptible]

Mo Money Romney bankrupted his 2008 campaign and this year you can see the complete INEPTITUDE top to bottom. A Romney presidency would have been a holocaust. Lets not even imagine what kind of shit Lyin Ryan would have pulled behind Cheesy Grits back!

Do you have any shame? Comparing a possible presidency to the Holocaust? Over 6 million people were killed in the Holocaust and you have the nerve to compare it to this? Shame on you for disrespecting the victims that were killed

 

[mshan]

Stay Classy, Mitt:

" From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.

Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked."


http://www.forbes.com/sites/helaine...fers-credit-cards-in-the-middle-of-the-night/

 

[Moonbeam]

Stay Classy, Mitt:

Some of those 47% assholes were in his party. What kind of mooching slime thinks his taxi should be paid for? It's not like some goon who would wring Big Bird's neck in front of millions of children would worry about what his party thinks of him not that they serve no purpose. America dodged an enormous asshole.

 

[hal2kilo]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/?pageNum=2



I'm actually very surprised by this. I mean, it's one thing for yokels who fell off the turnip truck to believe the B.S. that Fox News/Dick Morris were spewing, but you'd think the ones running the campaign wouldn't have been caught off guard so much. You'd think the millions they spent aggregating the data would have given them more accurate info.

And Nate Silver correctly gets all 50 states right just by running public polls through his model.

LOL.

What's that smell? Is that fertilizer used to cover Roves tracks.

 

[Doppel]

To have fvcked the campaign up so much perhaps we should be scared how close Romney really did come to leading the strongest nation on earth. It's one thing to miscalculate a campaign...

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Do you have any shame? Comparing a possible presidency to the Holocaust? Over 6 million people were killed in the Holocaust and you have the nerve to compare it to this? Shame on you for disrespecting the victims that were killed

There's a difference between a holocaust and the holocaust. When people talk about nuclear holocaust they aren't trying to say the Nazis did it with radiation.

 

[ShawnD1]

Do you have any shame? Comparing a possible presidency to the Holocaust? Over 6 million people were killed in the Holocaust and you have the nerve to compare it to this? Shame on you for disrespecting the victims that were killed

It's nice to see that you only consider Jews to be humans. The rest of the people killed were not humans.

 

[HomerJS]

Listening exclusivly to Fox News dumbs down even smart people.

Part of his problem he never got out into the real world. That's why people sensed he couldn't connect with them.

 

[DrewSG3]

Nate Silver was right then when he said their polls oversampled Republicans by 6 points

 

[techs]

Listening exclusivly to Fox News dumbs down even smart people.

Part of his problem he never got out into the real world. That's why people sensed he couldn't connect with them.

I would say that its part of the Republican/NeoCon/FoxNews/TalkRadio ideology. It says that conservatives are intellectually, morally and spiritually superior over everyone else.

We see it all over. In these forums the shock and disbelief is amazing when you tell a Republican that Obama created far more jobs than Bush did his first term. Or that Obama lowered unemployment far more than Reagan did his first term and that on re-election day Obama and Reagan had virtually the same unemployment rate.

They just can't believe it. They KNOW that somehow those facts are wrong because they are always right, always superior.

So, convincing Romney and his team that they were really ahead was easy. They had to be ahead. There was no way they could be behind since they were so right and so superior.

 

[her209]

I would say that its part of the Republican/NeoCon/FoxNews/TalkRadio ideology. It says that conservatives are intellectually, morally and spiritually superior over everyone else.

We see it all over. In these forums the shock and disbelief is amazing when you tell a Republican that Obama created far more jobs than Bush did his first term. Or that Obama lowered unemployment far more than Reagan did his first term and that on re-election day Obama and Reagan had virtually the same unemployment rate.

They just can't believe it. They KNOW that somehow those facts are wrong because they are always right, always superior.

So, convincing Romney and his team that they were really ahead was easy. They had to be ahead. There was no way they could be behind since they were so right and so superior.

Don't tell them their wrong you ELITIST!

 

[ShawnD1]

Nate Silver was right then when he said their polls oversampled Republicans by 6 points

Even then, nobody cares. Popular vote is not what decides the election. People were supposed to learn this in grade 2 or 3 or whatever grade before the one where people have sex. Back in my school, most of us started having sex around grade 4 (it was a catholic school).

Suppose there are 10 districts, each worth 1 electoral vote. Each district has 100 votes. Democrats win 6/10 districts with 51 votes out of 100. The other 4 districts are 100% republican.
Democrats = 6*51 = 306
Republicans = (6*49) + (4*100) = 694 votes

omgz the polls say republicans are more than 2x as popular!!! It doesn't matter. The democrats will still win in that example. Popular doesn't mean shit.

 

[UberNeuman]

Don't quit, Mitt!

 

[techs]

Don't quit, Mitt!

That's awesome.
Can anyone photochop a Romney face on there?

 

[her209]

Don't quit, Mitt!

The 21st Century version of Dewey Defeats Truman...

Romney's Transition Site
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/11/07/romneys_transition_site.html

It appears Mitt Romney's campaign prepared a transition site in the event that he won.

 

[HomerJS]

Don't quit, Mitt!

Did that paper get their results from Rassmussen??