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Analysis: Why Mitt Romney may have taken so long to concede
(Yahoo News) – In an election season dominated by names like Gallup, Rasmussen and Nate Silver, the Romney number crunchers had their own methods. A campaign release described Project ORCA as a “massive undertaking” involving nearly 35,000 volunteers and designed to “conduct the world’s largest exit poll” and win the White House.
The project operates via a Web-based app volunteers use to relay the most up-to-date poll information to a “national dashboard” at the Boston headquarters. … Another key component to Project ORCA is state-of-the-art dashboard. For the past several months, a “brain” has been built into this dashboard and it will take in, analyze and recommend actions on the millions of pieces of incoming data. In the fast-paced environment of an Election Day command center, having this programmed “brain” will alert decision-makers to key findings and suggest reallocation of resources.
The human brains behind that brain came as a result of what Slate reported as a “summertime personnel spree ” that included engineers who used to work at Apple, Google Analytics, Omniture and even Overstock.com, as well as “commercially available services.”
The success, though, would have to depend on volunteer troops united by a Web-based smartphone app. Romney himself called these forces, armed with the technology, an “unprecedented advantage on Election Day.”
Romney Campaign Enlists Help of Orca Project to Get Vote Out – see video in 1st comment
In Boston, stunned Romney supporters struggle to explain defeat
(Examiner) – Indeed, what was striking after Fox News called the race for Obama, at about 11:15 p.m., was how stunned so many of Romney’s supporters were. Many said they were influenced by the prominent conservatives who predicted a big Romney win, and they fully expected Tuesday night to be a victory celebration.
“I am shocked, I am blown away,” said Joe Sweeney, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “I thought I had a pretty good pulse on this stuff. I thought there was a trend that was going on underground.”
“We were so convinced that the people of this country had more common sense than that,” said Nan Strauch, of Hilton Head, South Carolina. “It was just a very big surprise. We felt so confident.”
“It makes me wonder who my fellow citizens are,” said Marianne Doherty of Boston. “I’ve got to be honest, I feel like I’ve lost touch with what the identity of America is right now. I really do.”
Some Romney aides were surprised too, especially since they had put an enormous amount of effort into tracking the hour-by-hour whims of the electorate. In recent weeks the campaign came up with a super-secret, super-duper vote monitoring system that was dubbed Project Orca.
Orca, which was headquartered in a giant war room spread across the floor of the Boston Garden, turned out to be problematic at best. Early in the evening, one aide said that, as of 4 p.m., Orca still projected a Romney victory of somewhere between 290 and 300 electoral votes. Obviously that didn’t happen. Later, another aide said Orca had pretty much crashed in the heat of the action. “Somebody said Orca is lying on the beach with a harpoon in it,” said the aide.
Going Ballistic and In Denial …
Fox News [and Karl Rove] Slowly Loses Its Mind Over Election Results
When Fox News called the election for Barack Obama just before 11:30 p.m., it was the culmination of a night-long sigh by the right-wing network, capped off with a climactic hissy fit seeped in denial, courtesy of Karl Rove. The polls didn’t look good going into the day, but the channel’s well-manicured hosts put on a happy face and crossed their fingers, as they have for weeks now, kicking off election night with similar refrains of hope and favorable internal polling from the Romney campaign, plus predictable mentions of unemployment, Libya, and paths to a win without Ohio. But the excuses started early and then things got weird.
“The white establishment is now the minority,” said a resigned-sounding Bill O’Reilly, long before any swing-state had been decided. “And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff.”
“The demographics are changing,” he added. “It’s not a traditional America anymore.”
Trump’s Twitter rant after Obama win: `We should march on Washington and stop this’
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Now we know what Mitt’s been smirking about for the past few months. Thought he had a super-duper-secret window into the real minds of Americans — the one where they really like the Rombot. As the “honest” con-men will tell others, one of the easiest marks is another con-man.
This does not sound to me like “denial,” Oui. It sounds more like the onset of depression after denial is no longer possible. For 50+ years the white establishment of which O’Reilly speaks (working class and middle class white people rather than the white plutocracy) has felt…with good reason…that the American economic system was stacked for them. They also “wanted stuff”, and they got what they wanted and more. In fact, they got too much. As the cultural philosopher Steven Wright once observed, “If you had everything…where would you put it?” Now they are growing old and a new, more vital generation is taking over. What you are seeing is not denial; it is the sadness of old age when it realizes that it blew its chances.
In a sense, what we are witnessing is a youth revolution. I see it everywhere, and it’s a good one. Much, much better…more well balanced and more rational, for sure…than the drug-fueled youth revolution of the late ’60s.
Just in time, too.
Funny how that works, aint it?
Just in time, before we managed to blow ourselves up in some sort of nuclear or environmental catastrophe.
Just in time.
Later…
AG
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Great observation AG, I know how your roots in the cultural scene of New York and elsewhere gives first insight in change! This election was indeed a balancing act for America’s future. Teetering on the abyss after 8 years under Bush as we, the older generation, starts to develop cynicism. I found it very heartwarming an incumbent president who manages to reach young people after 4 years of Repug bashing. This truly renews the sense of hope in a new generation. Youth brings forth the ideals after all.
Change would start in metropolitan areas, middle schools and universities. Throughout history, the elite coming in power will always attack these “liberal” centra. In the days of military coups, these people would be targeted and taken down to suppress the people’s revolt. The red state radio voices will call for blood in Washington.
Yes they will, but they are becoming increasingly marginalized. Cartoonized, actually.
It’s Elmer Fudd time in Middle America, Oui.
Bet on it.
And we are that wascally wabbit.
You can bet on that as well.
AG
Why are you repeating a Newt false critique:
I take it that you’re not including alcohol and all those uppers and downers doctors dispensed in your description at that time. And you only mean the illegal drugs that were consumed by younger Americans. Drugs that were mostly in short supply and in the case of marijuana weren’t all that potent. Somehow I missed seeing the relatively few addicts and stoners participating in much of anything beyond their next hit.
Illegal drug consumption is higher today than the late ’60s. So, not sure the past can be described as “drug-fueled” and today as a time ripe for rational and balanced revolution. Sort of like:
Why do I say “…the drug-fueled youth revolution of the late ’60s?”
Because I was there. In the middle of it. Most of the best and brightest of my generation didn’t draw an unstoned breath until well into the ’70s. In the music world? 10 years later. This generation? The segment that I saw at Cornell and the larger segment w/which I deal on an almost daily basis as peers (and sometimes as students) in the jazz and latin music world? Easily 90% more sober than were their equivalents in the late ’60s/early 70s. More mature, more goal-oriented and working both harder and much more efficiently at their chosen tasks. All without falling prey to the furrowed-brow attitudes of the Nixonian/grey flannel suit ’50s. The best of both worlds. Will they fuck up somehow? I suppose. But it will be a better fuckup than the ones of their predecessors, it looks like to me. Maybe that’s a pretty good definition and/or description of evolution, come to think of it. Not fucking up the same way or as badly as did your ancestors.
I can deal wid it.
Later…
AG
Guess I wasn’t around the “best and brightest” with enough discretionary income not to draw an unstoned breath.
To reduce the multiple socio-economic-political movements of the 1960s to drugs ingested by jazz musicians (and that predated the 1960s) is highly disrespectful of the millions that were hard-working and consumed less alcohol their than parents had.
“…enough discretionary income not to draw an unstoned breath!!!???”
You most certainly were not around. Not around the scene in Boston, NYC or San Francisco, at the very least. The three places where was most involved.
Discretionary income?
Gimme a break. We lived on the edge of total poverty for years at a time in the counterculture. Why? Because we were lazy? More bullshit. Because we were looking for something beter than the Eisenhower years provided, and we certainly weren’t going to find it inside of the Madison Ave.-created machine or the lockstep academic culture.
And what the fuck does this mean?
Where were you in the late ’60s/early ’70s? Really. Dylan? Miles and ‘Trane? Jimi Hendrix? William Burroughs and Hunter Thompson? The black liberation movement? The multi-racial civil rights movement? The various radical political movements? Tom Hayden? Abbie Hoffman? The Chicago Dem convention riots? Robert Crumb? Richard Pryor? Lennie Bruce? George Carlin? You think all of these people and people like them kicked back with a glass of green tea when relaxing?
Please.
AG
Marin County — 1967 to 1983. Senator Barbara Boxer’s home turf.
One could listen to or read the works of the artists you listed and appreciate them very much without being stoned.
I give up. It’s like talking to someone on the other side of reality. You win. The youth revolution of rhe ’60s was in no shape, mane of form drug-fueled. You’re right. Drugs had nothing to do with it or its failure, and nothing much has changed since then. Good night and sweet dreams. Have a nice day.
AG
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Total devastation, goed to see these video’s going up on YouTube. Their goal was to repeal Obamacare, the American people thought otherwise. This committee can be disbanded.
I spent many years designing, building and managing the implementation of of datawarehousing, management information systems and ” dashboard” type Executive Information systems. They cost millions, have a huge failure rate, and can rarely keep up with the pace of change in the real world. The theories expounded in the video sound so 1990’s to me. I suspect inputting the data distracted a lot of volunteers from actual GOTV work. The notion that directing a robocall at people who haven’t voted yet will do anything other than freak them out doesn’t appear to have occurred to them. OBama’s ground game won because it was directed and implemented by real people on the ground and targeted at SUN voters and early voting.
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Victoria Jackson – I can’t stop crying. America died. But she was already delusional.
Donald Trump: House of Representatives shouldn’t give anything to Obama unless he terminates Obamacare.
Same with a little hot sauce from Ted Nugent. On Twitter early Tuesday morning, Nugent slammed the idea of a vote for “Obama & vote for US Constitution hating SCOTUS crazies.” Later, in a follow-up stream of tweets to his 100,000-plus followers, he announced he would “cry tears of blood for The Last Best Place” and called voters “soulless fools,” and, “pimps whores & welfare brats.”
Political cartoons
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