Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The repubs were totally outmatched on the technology side. I remember an interview Chris Christie gave to Oprah. At that time, Christie warned the repubs that even though the unemployment rate was high, President Obama was one of the best politicians he'd ever seen. Ignore him at your own risk.
The Optimizer created a new set of ratings based on the political leanings of categories of people the Obama campaign was interested in reaching, allowing the campaign to buy its advertising on political terms as opposed to traditional television industry terms. Very interesting article
The repubs were totally outmatched on the technology side. I remember an interview Chris Christie gave to Oprah. At that time, Christie warned the repubs that even though the unemployment rate was high, President Obama was one of the best politicians he'd ever seen. Ignore him at your own risk.
The Optimizer created a new set of ratings based on the political leanings of categories of people the Obama campaign was interested in reaching, allowing the campaign to buy its advertising on political terms as opposed to traditional television industry terms. Very interesting article
What's ironic is Democrats used these tools against a self-proclaimed "numbers guy" business man. Almost everything the Democrats used originated in the private sector, then they re-applied the techniques to politics. Cloud based systems, demographics, big data, mobile apps, micro-targeting, etc... Meanwhile Romney's team struggled with IT basics such as properly provisioning their systems.
But then, another demographic that went for Obama this year is "Geeks". Most tech publications that endorsed a candidate endorsed Obama. If you look at the election results around tech corridors, they mostly went Democratic (Silicon Valley, Austin TX, Northern VA).
Obama caught my attention when he reeled in and vanquished the Clintons. No small feat. He seems to me to be very good at the long game. His investment in the auto industry earned him Ohio, and most of the Rust Belt. His fiscal cliff maneuver allowed him to avoid brinksmanship in an election year (we'll see how it works out). The guy lacks the cheerleading skills of a Bill Clinton, and he loathes the vacuous braying and boasting that seems to be common on the right, but he is a very formidable general in the political arena. He even showed he can debate pretty darn well, when pushed (I still don't think he cares for it).
A lot of people tried to make him look like a fool and a rookie. It never rang true for me.
Obama caught my attention when he reeled in and vanquished the Clintons. No small feat. He seems to me to be very good at the long game. His investment in the auto industry earned him Ohio, and most of the Rust Belt. His fiscal cliff maneuver allowed him to avoid brinksmanship in an election year (we'll see how it works out). The guy lacks the cheerleading skills of a Bill Clinton, and he loathes the vacuous braying and boasting that seems to be common on the right, but he is a very formidable general in the political arena. He even showed he can debate pretty darn well, when pushed (I still don't think he cares for it).
A lot of people tried to make him look like a fool and a rookie. It never rang true for me.
There was serious talk among the OFA I was with that Obama "eased up" on the first debate (he was also caught off guard by mittens aggressive style) becuz they didn't want to be to far ahead. If he destroyed mittens in the first debate we wouldn't have worked as hard. My reaction ten minutes into that debate was I needed to work harder becuz Obama let me down. That might have been exactly what he was after.
Obama caught my attention when he reeled in and vanquished the Clintons. No small feat...A lot of people tried to make him look like a fool and a rookie. It never rang true for me.
I agree with this.
After the primaries Hillary wanted no part of Sec'y of State. She was tired, and she was p**sed at Team Obama because she thought they had gone overboard in playing the race card against her. Yet Obama wanted her for SOS because he knew he would have to be focused on domestic policy early in his first term. And he managed to get her to agree to come on board. That was an impressive exercise in personal persuation, IMO.
Not only did he get a SOS that could work with no supervision, he got the Clintons in the tent p***sing out rather than out of it, p***sing in.
The working title for the software used by Obama in 2008 was named Narwhal. Narwhal was upgraded and improved for 2012. The Democratic volunteers who weren't already trained in it's use were trained and up to speed with the software by the beginning of May.
The Romney organization knew about Narwhal by 2009, and hired a software company to create a super-version named Orca. In the wild, Orcas eat Norwhals. Orca was supposed to provide phone bank volunteers an instant response to any question, and all the very latest data and info.
Unfortunately, the software had glitches, and no one thought about training the volunteers on how to use it. During the last days of the campaign, when it was supposed to give Romney a big edge in GOTV, the servers crashed, the central operators were flooded with last-second questions on how to run Orca, and all kinds of difficulties in implementing the info Orca provided. It ended up being a huge Chinese fire drill.
Narwhal ate Orca alive. This doesn't happen in nature, but apparently it does in politics.
There was serious talk among the OFA I was with that Obama "eased up" on the first debate (he was also caught off guard by mittens aggressive style) becuz they didn't want to be to far ahead. If he destroyed mittens in the first debate we wouldn't have worked as hard. My reaction ten minutes into that debate was I needed to work harder becuz Obama let me down. That might have been exactly what he was after.
My gut reaction to the President's poor performance in the first debate was that there had to be a reason. His former personal assistant, Reggie, (can't remember his last name) likened his debate performance to a basketball game. Obama shines when he's under pressure.
Last edited by tigerlily; 11-14-2012 at 04:33 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
