Apparently, the Romney campaign will rely almost exclusively on the RNC for voter reg/GOTV efforts and on television advertising to get their voters to the polls. They don’t even pretend that their candidate has any innate appeal:
“For the Republicans, what’s going to drive turnout is not going to be Mitt Romney — it’s Barack Obama,” [Doug] Gross [a veteran GOP activist and Romney’s 2008 Iowa chairman] said.
Meanwhile, the president’s team is already in the field registering voters.
The campaign appears poised to be even more aggressive this year. Volunteers are registering new voters in an effort to expand the pool of supporters. They are knocking on doors to identify likely voters — an activity that usually occurs in the summer or fall. And the reelection effort has begun blanketing battleground states with field offices, including 18 in Florida, 13 in Pennsylvania and eight in Iowa. In the process, Obama’s apparatus has locked up local Democratic operatives across the country much earlier than expected.
“It’s made it tougher to find good staff for local campaigns,” said Jim Ross, a San Francisco-based Democratic strategist who runs campaigns in California, Oregon and Nevada.
That traditional field work is being buttressed by a massive technological investment aimed at expanding the campaign’s voter database, which in turn fuels the organizing efforts. Nearly a fifth of the campaign’s spending so far — $15.1 million — went to online advertising, technology consulting and Web hosting. The campaign recently opened a field office in San Francisco for volunteers who want to contribute their high-tech skills to Web development and other projects.
Obama’s reelection effort also will draw on the resources of the Democratic National Committee, for which he’s helped raise $138 million in the last year.
I’m going to predict right now that the Obama campaign will fill up Georgia with field offices while Romney is poll-testing what kind of advertising can make Northern Virginians take him remotely seriously.
The Obama campaign will have identified its soft supporters in Montana before Romney can select a running mate. While Romney is bleeding money to air commercials in Pittsburgh and Phoenix, Obama volunteers will be completing their third walk-thrus of neighborhoods in Tucson and Harrisburg.
The community organizers already proved the superiority of their model once. Hillary, McCain and Pailn scoffed at us up until the moment they realized that their gooses were cooked.
nice!
In the process, Obama’s apparatus has locked up local Democratic operatives across the country much earlier than expected.
Is this reporter stupid? Of course he would!! When you have an incumbent President, there is no other game in town. Duh!!!!
Actually, it is usually the Democratic operatives who also work on the staffs of local campaigns and referendum questions, etc. It can often be tough especially in smaller states to secure those experienced folks.
Thing is, the community organizing model is only possible if your candidate has any appeal outside the Hamptons and Temple Square.
I know lots of community organizers who would disagree. They’d say that the “universals” of public life remain the same—whether it’s a neighborhood association campaigning for new playground equipment in the local park, or a candidate campaigning for president.
If, as appears from this article, Romney’s campaign is not making use of the full array of tools and tactics available to them, then they’re guilty of political malpractice.
It wouldn’t be the first time, but it is a bit surprising for a guy who’s been running for president full-time for nearly 8 years now, and whose supposed strength is his management expertise.
His management expertise is of the corporate board room variety, of the “you’ll do what I say because I OWN YOU” variety. The business model really isn’t the same as the politician model.
True. On the other hand, he’s been running for one office or another for much of the past 20 years. And one of his supposed strengths is the ability to use data to look at a problem from multiple angles, and then make good strategic and tactical decisions.
He’s done an okay job of that in this campaign. He has, in fact, put together the only complete Republican presidential campaign organization this cycle. He’s on the ballot in all 50 states. He organized in the territories and thereby built up a big delegate margin that offset several of his losses on the mainland over the past few weeks.
But he doesn’t have a senior campaign strategist who’s a good TV surrogate. There’s no Steve Schmidt, or Karl Rove, or David Axelrod, or James Carville who can do a dozen 5 minute interviews a day on national and (especially) local TV to drive home the message the campaign wants to deliver—especially those messages that the candidate can’t deliver himself (e.g., Gingrich is a buffoon and needs to be forced out of the race).
And apparently his top campaign staff are all media/communications guys. It’s fine to have some of those guys. Heck, it’s important to have some of them. But a good campaign also needs a good field operation. If Romney’s campaign is as far behind Obama’s field operation as this article suggests, and they’re saying they’ll rely on the RNC for voter ID, GOTV, volunteer coordination, etc., then that’s a management failure of the first order—regardless of one’s previous professional training.
Romney has not built really anything in the way of a field operation in any of the states outside of Iowa and New Hampshire. Have you seen one picture of a Romney field office? One dispatch from the field? One article about his supporters going door to door?
He’s exclusively a television candidate.
Yeah, I agree with you. And it could lose him a close election.
In addition, as one of the savviest political observers I know pointed out the day before Fehrnstrom’s “Etch-A-Sketch” gaffe, he’s a television candidate without a good television team. He doesn’t have on his staff someone who can do what Plouffe did yesterday on the Sunday morning shows…or what Rove did for W. Bush…or Carville for Clinton.
Again, for a guy whose reputation in the business world was built on the “Bain Way” of management, it’s kind of astounding.
He’s also a television candidate who’s awkward, painful t watch and incredibly prone to gaffs. Anything can happen but I’d sure love to watch Obama eat the guy alive. One our strengths this time around is there’s no narrative discounting poor debate performances by Romney. George W could “win” a debate by walking out on stage without tripping over his own shoelaces.
My cat Maxwell, who speaks lolcat very well says:
ROMMNEY IZ GOIN 2 GIT HIS BUTT BEAT REAL BAD!
Romney will do better than McCain –45.7% of the popular vote. He will get more EV’s than McCain, too. “Better than McCain” includes winning outright, by the way.
This is not 2008. Romney has different weaknesses than McCain, but not more. 2008 could not be a referendum on the present occupant of the White House, because he was term-limited.
That’s what this election is. It’s not really relevant within broad limits, who the challenger is — the worst conceivable challenger would still get 40% of the popular vote — he’s The Challenger. He’s the not-Obama.
And if that turns out to be the case (I think it could), then Booman’s point is even more important. If states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, etc. are decided by 100,000 votes or less, then Romney could lose the election simply because he didn’t have a decent GOTV operation.
I agree: Obama will be the first President since Roosevelt to be reelected with fewer EVs than he got the first time around.
Hope they turn that database over to the other Dems running. Otherwise it’ll be repeat of what happened when Obama gutted our bench for his administration.
We’ve had access at the county level since last fall and its very cool.
BooMan: McCain and now Romney are jumping on the President’s “flexibility” comment to try to neuter the Etch-a-Sketch meme. Do you it’ll work (meaning the MSM will portray it as equivalent)?
I don’t think it’s equivalent, because wanting flexibility as to how to portray middle defense negotiations isn’t the same as CHANGING one’s positions a la Romney, but the MSM never seems to make the proper distinction.
… Do you think it’ll work? …
… portray missile defense negotiations …
sheesh, bad iphone-ing on my part today.
Don’t know about Booman,but I think it will go away and doesn’t have any staying power outside of GOP voters, because this week is all about the HCR SCOTUS case. There is no oxygen left for this “gaffe” to make any news.
Plus it wasn’t anything that would bother anyone but voters who won’t be voting for POTUS anyway and just use any reason to confirm why they don’t like POTUS.
It’s nothing like the Romney “etch-a-sketch” gaffe because this is one case of “flexibility” but it’s just the truth reasonable people expect that Obama has to get re-elected before he has any idea what he can negotiate with.
There is no point negotiated some sort of anything when if GOP gets elected, the will probably not want to uphold Obama’s deal anyway.
I am reassured by and agree with your first two points,
But my reading of what POTUS’ actually meant was not that he was saying he might not get elected so he couldn’t negotiate but that he needed some political flexibility from his negotiating partner (Medvedev) due to US domestic politics.
McCain/Romney were interpreting the gist correctly, I think, but trying to spin it (incorrectly) as POTUS saying he was going to rollover (post-election) to the Russians after talking tough when, I think, POTUS was just reassuring Medvedev that his non-proliferation goals were going to stay the same but be perceived in the US through an election-year prism.