FARK.com: (7425383) While Republicans were mocking Barack Obama for being a community organizer, he was putting those skills to use building a 21st Century campaign machine

If you can read this, either the style sheet didn't load or you have an older browser that doesn't support style sheets. Try clearing your browser cache and refreshing the page.

		While Republicans were mocking Barack Obama for being a community organizer, he was putting those skills to use building a 21st Century campaign machine (theatlantic.com)		111
		More: Interesting, obama, Republican, big data, Democrats, community organizer, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Nation of Islam

• • •

1359 clicks; posted to Politics » on 09 Nov 2012 at 12:15 PM | Favorite | share:

Share this link:

URL:

http://fark.com/go/7425383

Bookmark:

Article Comments close

111 Comments (+0 »)

View Voting Results: Smartest and Funniest

Archived thread

First | « | 1 | 2 | 3 | » | Last | Show all

Kazan		2012-11-09 12:49:27 PM

SouthParkCon: I don't want to go to off-topic but I've recently been slammed and ridiculed for saying "Progressive" and yet within the article is says:

"A new focus on how Democrats and progressives are on the winning side of the data wars."

Can the Fark Left/Progressives/Liberals/whatever give those of us on the Right some guidance on what's not going to get your feathers ruffled? It's in the interest Farking for all.

Also those of us on the younger side of the Right have been rallying at the Old Guard that they need to get with it. Romney's campaign was the first time they started to listen but they still have a way to go.

how you use a term is important.

MSFT		2012-11-09 12:49:50 PM

Smeggy Smurf: Hitler was a good organizer too and that turned out well

He built a great highway system, got VW off to a good start, brought Germany out of an economic depression and set the Jews on a path to having their own state in Israel.
Oh, and he liberated Poland practically overnight.

Not bad at all.

aug3		2012-11-09 12:52:47 PM

qorkfiend: Weaver95: I was 'data captain' for cumberland county democrats during the Obama campaign and I got an up close and personal look at votebuilder (which is their database/application suite). as a professional systems analyst, lemme tell ya - this thing is well designed. literally anyone can use it - it's UI is slick, it's well thought out, it's lightweight so it'll work on any computer out there (via any browser connection). I could pull up lists of local democrats, sort out the ones we'd contacted and who said they'd help and within 5 min I had a list printing out of people to call and schedule for election day. I ended up teaching people to use it, and no matter the skill level of the end user, they ALL could do basic entry tasks and basic database functions with minimal training and a bit of practice.

the tech backing the Democrats these days had some very big brains behind it's design.

It's funny because the GOP demonizes and actively tries to purge their party of the people who can create systems like this, then scratch their heads in amazement when their technical abilities are adversely affected.

There will be some fun news coming soon about the complete and utter failure of Project ORCA.

is that the one where they tried to release Rush back into the Ocean?

TheOther		2012-11-09 12:55:00 PM

Weaver95: TheOther:
So, does he take it with him or does he try to use it to take the House in 2014?

well, look at it this way - the voter lists we built this election are going to be used as the basis for GOTV efforts in 2014. we know who we reached, who came out to vote for us and its likely that if we reach out to them again, we could get them to vote Democratic party in the mid terms.

plus, Limbaugh and the GOP are spending their time right now yelling at voters and calling them stupid. because THAT'll work out so well for 'em in 2014, right?

1. Start by identifying every GOP congressional district that they won in 2010 with a lower Republican voter turnout than this year's Democratic vote.
2. Never, ever say a word in favor of rape.
3. Turnout those Obama voters for your challenger.

The national Democratic Party isn't an every-election turnout machine. I don't know if this is a money problem or who controls the money problem or structural or fatigue or what, but for the Democrats to overcome mid-term slump, they better have their ground game rolling every where.

Weaver95		2012-11-09 12:55:13 PM

Cubicle Jockey: SouthParkCon:
Yea, I didn't pick up that Weaver had gone over to the Left. That is a change.

Weaver adopted the Klingon proverb with respects to the GOP: "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, prepare to die."

bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'

Muta		2012-11-09 12:57:51 PM

Weaver95: i'm still floored that the GOP apparently had zero logistical abilities. none. Team Obama was tightly run and we knew what we were doing, how we were going to get there and come election day, damn if it didn't play out exactly as engineered.

Do you think the Dems can maintain that advantage through the 2020 election? I don't see the Republicans losing their derp they lose that election big and get redistricted.

Weaver95		2012-11-09 01:00:57 PM

Muta: Weaver95: i'm still floored that the GOP apparently had zero logistical abilities. none. Team Obama was tightly run and we knew what we were doing, how we were going to get there and come election day, damn if it didn't play out exactly as engineered.

Do you think the Dems can maintain that advantage through the 2020 election? I don't see the Republicans losing their derp they lose that election big and get redistricted.

well, gerrymandering is going to be more of a problem with state/local elections so getting out the vote is going to be possibly less effective than it was for the Presidential election. that said, I think the state strategy needs to focus more on letting the GOP hang themselves AND balancing efforts to get voters motivated to vote for you. that could be difficult though. budget constraints are more of an issue down here on the ground.

MSFT		2012-11-09 01:01:19 PM

BSABSVR: SouthParkCon: Also those of us on the younger side of the Right have been rallying at the Old Guard that they need to get with it. Romney's campaign was the first time they started to listen but they still have a way to go.

says the guy who was beating the skewed polls horse on Monday night.

And he would have been right, too, if it wasn't for all that darn math and science!

cptjeff		2012-11-09 01:02:23 PM

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: That being said, the biggest complaint we got was that people were hit multiple times by multiple different organizations with whom we had no contact (i.e. the Unions and the PACs). Unfortunately, there was no way we could have avoided that.

As somebody who did some work for a union backed PAC, we got complaints about you too. Just sayin'.

mrshowrules		2012-11-09 01:02:37 PM

I'm surprised Rush and Fox are going with "Obama hacked the election using illegal data infiltration techniques"

halfof33		2012-11-09 01:02:40 PM

Gee, in the real world, we call that a "Machine."

And Barry is a product of the Chicago Democratic Machine.

Gee, the Democrats have huge patronage armies in urban centers?

Off to the Atlantic to write about it!

bobmccarty.com

Weaver95		2012-11-09 01:06:20 PM

halfof33: Gee, in the real world, we call that a "Machine."

And Barry is a product of the Chicago Democratic Machine.

Gee, the Democrats have huge patronage armies in urban centers?

Off to the Atlantic to write about it!

[bobmccarty.com image 400x337]

we haven't heard from you in a couple days. i'm glad you're ok. I was a bit worried that Obama getting re-elected was going to force you to hurt yourself.

ArgusRun		2012-11-09 01:06:44 PM

Weaver95: SouthParkCon:

While the butthurt is going to have to run its course, I wouldn't assume that is what the RNC will be depending on in 2014. I know Fark see's the Tea Party and GOP as a bunch of racist backward hillbillies but the reality is that a lot of people getting involved on the Right just don't have the experience that the Left has in community organizing. That is beginning to change, will it make a difference? I would hope so. I know a vast majority of Farkers would support a Democratic super-majority however like the old saying goes "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" and for the record I wouldn't support a Republican super-majority either.

i'm going to disagree here a bit - the Right does know how to organize. they're not entirely stupid, and the tea party has organized/motivated teams of voters to get out the vote and pull down powerful members of the GOP that the baggers felt needed to go. so its not that they lack the knowledge or experience. what's ripping the GOP up is that 1. they are sloooooooow to adapt new technologies and 2. the GOP has serious control issues. past a certain point you have to trust that your regional leaders know what they're doing and you have to give 'em free reign to get the job done in their own way. the GOP has big problems trusting regional directors with that level of responsibility. they want to maintain control at the top and have a very strong central control that calls all the shots.

So you're saying the Democrats are Ender and the GOP is Bonzo Madrid?

It all makes sense now.

/Nate Silver is Bean

lantawa		2012-11-09 01:07:05 PM

Article is exactly correct. I'm cool now that the election is over. Good jerb, you guys. If I'm still alive, I'll grouch atcha come 2016. Till then, kudos and congratulations. You deserve it. I hope that things get better for everyone. We'll see.

Weaver95		2012-11-09 01:07:23 PM

cptjeff: Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: That being said, the biggest complaint we got was that people were hit multiple times by multiple different organizations with whom we had no contact (i.e. the Unions and the PACs). Unfortunately, there was no way we could have avoided that.

As somebody who did some work for a union backed PAC, we got complaints about you too. Just sayin'.

the key point here is that NOBODY was saying they got hit up by the Obama campaign, the unions AND the Republicans.

MSFT		2012-11-09 01:14:22 PM

halfof33: Gee, in the real world, we call that a "Machine."

And Barry is a product of the Chicago Democratic Machine.

Gee, the Democrats have huge patronage armies in urban centers?

Off to the Atlantic to write about it!

[bobmccarty.com image 400x337]

Ah, the party of personal responsibility takes some well needed time for introspection to understand how they lost so much by such a wide margin this year. Good for you, champ.

halfof33		2012-11-09 01:16:28 PM

Weaver95: we haven't heard from you in a couple days. i'm glad you're ok. I was a bit worried that Obama getting re-elected was going to force you to hurt yourself.

I been here, I didn't hear from you for months after the Occumopes imploded. How are you?

Anyhow, good luck dealing with impending State pension defaults. Barry owes some public employee unions big, which state do you think will go broke first?

you got an app for that on the iPatronage computer, libs?

Rwa2play		2012-11-09 01:19:25 PM

Weaver95		2012-11-09 01:20:28 PM

halfof33:
I been here, I didn't hear from you for months after the Occumopes imploded. How are you?

oh I've been working on the Obama campaign. you might have heard about it...

Anyhow, good luck dealing with impending State pension defaults. Barry owes some public employee unions big, which state do you think will go broke first?

you got an app for that on the iPatronage computer, libs?

I was wondering how you were going to deal with the massive rejection of the GOP agenda...any ideas on where you think you'll be going next?

qorkfiend		2012-11-09 01:20:54 PM

aug3: qorkfiend: Weaver95: I was 'data captain' for cumberland county democrats during the Obama campaign and I got an up close and personal look at votebuilder (which is their database/application suite). as a professional systems analyst, lemme tell ya - this thing is well designed. literally anyone can use it - it's UI is slick, it's well thought out, it's lightweight so it'll work on any computer out there (via any browser connection). I could pull up lists of local democrats, sort out the ones we'd contacted and who said they'd help and within 5 min I had a list printing out of people to call and schedule for election day. I ended up teaching people to use it, and no matter the skill level of the end user, they ALL could do basic entry tasks and basic database functions with minimal training and a bit of practice.

the tech backing the Democrats these days had some very big brains behind it's design.

It's funny because the GOP demonizes and actively tries to purge their party of the people who can create systems like this, then scratch their heads in amazement when their technical abilities are adversely affected.

There will be some fun news coming soon about the complete and utter failure of Project ORCA.

is that the one where they tried to release Rush back into the Ocean?

No, that was Operation Rushbo Drop.

MSFT		2012-11-09 01:22:08 PM

halfof33: Weaver95: we haven't heard from you in a couple days. i'm glad you're ok. I was a bit worried that Obama getting re-elected was going to force you to hurt yourself.

I been here, I didn't hear from you for months after the Occumopes imploded. How are you?

Anyhow, good luck dealing with impending State pension defaults. Barry owes some public employee unions big, which state do you think will go broke first?

you got an app for that on the iPatronage computer, libs?

You ready for all those free slaves to start raping your white women?! What's next, let them marry a white woman!? Well I hope you're happy when this place turns into Africa 2 Electric Boogaloo!!!
But seriously, cry more.

Rwa2play		2012-11-09 01:23:14 PM

Weaver95: halfof33: Gee, in the real world, we call that a "Machine."

And Barry is a product of the Chicago Democratic Machine.

Gee, the Democrats have huge patronage armies in urban centers?

Off to the Atlantic to write about it!

[bobmccarty.com image 400x337]

we haven't heard from you in a couple days. i'm glad you're ok. I was a bit worried that Obama getting re-elected was going to force you to hurt yourself.

Would it had mattered?

YouAreItNoTagBacks		2012-11-09 01:25:21 PM

halfof33: Gee, in the real world, we call that a "Machine."

And Barry is a product of the Chicago Democratic Machine.

Gee, the Democrats have huge patronage armies in urban centers?

Off to the Atlantic to write about it!

[bobmccarty.com image 400x337]

Despite all the let-downs of the first term, the amount of BS thrown by the right-wing over the election cycle, combined with the poutrage, has made '12 feel almost as good, if not better than '08.

Thank you FoxNews for that. You kept them in denial and as a result they're imploding. And it's beautiful.

halfof33		2012-11-09 01:26:37 PM

MSFT: You ready for all those free slaves to start raping your white women?! What's next, let them marry a white woman!? Well I hope you're happy when this place turns into Africa 2 Electric Boogaloo!!!
But seriously, cry more.

LOLZ. Drink moar, sport shirt.

Weaver95: I was wondering how you were going to deal with the massive rejection of the GOP agenda...any ideas on where you think you'll be going next?

Looks around... wait, is this the thread where we pretend that the Libs won the House?

Oh, I get it, the libs.... they won the house!

It is opposite day!

Hee hee!

/i noticed you dodged the question, Weavs, the answer is that Illinois is going to be the first state to go broke.

kazrak		2012-11-09 01:28:41 PM

Weaver95: logistics, logistics, logistics. that's what worked for us in Pennsylvania.

"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."

MSFT		2012-11-09 01:29:25 PM

YouAreItNoTagBacks: halfof33: Gee, in the real world, we call that a "Machine."

And Barry is a product of the Chicago Democratic Machine.

Gee, the Democrats have huge patronage armies in urban centers?

Off to the Atlantic to write about it!

[bobmccarty.com image 400x337]

Despite all the let-downs of the first term, the amount of BS thrown by the right-wing over the election cycle, combined with the poutrage, has made '12 feel almost as good, if not better than '08.

Thank you FoxNews for that. You kept them in denial and as a result they're imploding. And it's beautiful.

Easy for you to say - you don't seem to care that Obama spent the last four years taking away all of our guns, our civil liberties, and lost two wars. And the next 1000 years of darkness is going to make us remember that fondly!!!!!11

tomcatadam		2012-11-09 01:29:58 PM

Weaver95: i'm still floored that the GOP apparently had zero logistical abilities. none.

There's rumors about in these threads that they had an application suite, but they didn't bother to test it beforehand, so it crashed and burned immediately and never recovered.

limbaugh, Nate silver

I'm quite curious about what any GOP pundits have to say about him at this point. He absolutely nailed it this time.

BSABSVR		2012-11-09 01:30:02 PM

So because Obama won, state pension issues are a worse problem than they would have been if Romney had won

Makes sense.

Weaver95		2012-11-09 01:30:43 PM

halfof33:
Weaver95: I was wondering how you were going to deal with the massive rejection of the GOP agenda...any ideas on where you think you'll be going next?

Looks around... wait, is this the thread where we pretend that the Libs won the House?

Oh, I get it, the libs.... they won the house!

It is opposite day!

Hee hee!

/i noticed you dodged the question, Weavs, the answer is that Illinois is going to be the first state to go broke.

so the GOP lost the white house, lost the fight against gay marriage, lost the fight against the legalization of marijuana...LOST several key US senate and house races, lost a number of key state races...but you're considering election night a GOP victory because the Republicans sill manage to maintain a thin majority in the House of Representatives?

innnnnnnnnnnnnnnteresting.

you don't consider this to be a massive, coordinated and irrefutable rejection of the GOP agenda?

MSFT		2012-11-09 01:32:39 PM

halfof33: MSFT: You ready for all those free slaves to start raping your white women?! What's next, let them marry a white woman!? Well I hope you're happy when this place turns into Africa 2 Electric Boogaloo!!!
But seriously, cry more.

LOLZ. Drink moar, sport shirt.

Weaver95: I was wondering how you were going to deal with the massive rejection of the GOP agenda...any ideas on where you think you'll be going next?

Looks around... wait, is this the thread where we pretend that the Libs won the House?

Oh, I get it, the libs.... they won the house!

It is opposite day!

Hee hee!

/i noticed you dodged the question, Weavs, the answer is that Illinois is going to be the first state to go broke.

When you say house are you referring to the White House? Was it part of your plan to lose that particular house? Because, honestly, you should have tried to win the White House.
As for broke states, why is it that the red states take in more federal money than they pay in while the blue states are the opposite? Is that another case where the math is just too much for you?

cptjeff		2012-11-09 01:33:47 PM

Weaver95: cptjeff: Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: That being said, the biggest complaint we got was that people were hit multiple times by multiple different organizations with whom we had no contact (i.e. the Unions and the PACs). Unfortunately, there was no way we could have avoided that.

As somebody who did some work for a union backed PAC, we got complaints about you too. Just sayin'.

the key point here is that NOBODY was saying they got hit up by the Obama campaign, the unions AND the Republicans.

That actually surprised me- it wasn't all getting out the vote, until the last weekend or so, we (and Obama's people) were hitting undecideds. Despite the fact that these people were generally convincable, there was nobody from the Romney campaign anywhere- even in purple swing counties like Loudon. And that speaks to the difference in tech- not only was the democratic side much better organized, the the analysis was much better as well. They knew not just who you were likely to support, but they could also use data mining to predict how likely you were to be convinced, and how you would react to somebody knocking at your door. That allows campaigns to rely on volunteers to not just get out the vote, but to actually try and flip votes, which is something that campaigns have never trusted to volunteers before, since their control on the message isn't nearly as tight. Romney, and Republican groups in general, didn't seem to have that capability.

halfof33		2012-11-09 01:35:27 PM

Weaver95: Republicans sill manage to maintain a thin majority in the House of Representatives

"Thin" majority? Is that how the freaking spin is going to go? LOLZ!

BSABSVR: So because Obama won, state pension issues are a worse problem than they would have been if Romney had won

Makes sense.

Yes because the democrats are in the farking to bag to public employee unions, and therefore won't make the hard decisions that need to be made by increasing employee contributions and decreasing benefits.

Jesus son.... I haven't got the time to educate you sheep. do some homework.

cptjeff		2012-11-09 01:36:06 PM

Weaver95: halfof33:
Weaver95: I was wondering how you were going to deal with the massive rejection of the GOP agenda...any ideas on where you think you'll be going next?

Looks around... wait, is this the thread where we pretend that the Libs won the House?

Oh, I get it, the libs.... they won the house!

It is opposite day!

Hee hee!

/i noticed you dodged the question, Weavs, the answer is that Illinois is going to be the first state to go broke.

so the GOP lost the white house, lost the fight against gay marriage, lost the fight against the legalization of marijuana...LOST several key US senate and house races, lost a number of key state races...but you're considering election night a GOP victory because the Republicans sill manage to maintain a thin majority in the House of Representatives?

innnnnnnnnnnnnnnteresting.

you don't consider this to be a massive, coordinated and irrefutable rejection of the GOP agenda?

Interesting trivia: If the House map was the same as it was in 2010, Democrats would have a majority right now. More people voted for democratic members of congress than republican ones.

Redistricting. It works.

MSFT		2012-11-09 01:37:26 PM

tomcatadam:
I'm quite curious about what any GOP pundits have to say about him at this point. He absolutely nailed it this time.

Kind of hard to embrace the sciences when your party platform is firmly anti-intellectual and you consider college education to be "elitism".
Pray harder, I guess?

YouAreItNoTagBacks		2012-11-09 01:37:38 PM

MSFT: YouAreItNoTagBacks: halfof33: Gee, in the real world, we call that a "Machine."

And Barry is a product of the Chicago Democratic Machine.

Gee, the Democrats have huge patronage armies in urban centers?

Off to the Atlantic to write about it!

[bobmccarty.com image 400x337]

Despite all the let-downs of the first term, the amount of BS thrown by the right-wing over the election cycle, combined with the poutrage, has made '12 feel almost as good, if not better than '08.

Thank you FoxNews for that. You kept them in denial and as a result they're imploding. And it's beautiful.

Easy for you to say - you don't seem to care that Obama spent the last four years taking away all of our guns, our civil liberties, and lost two wars. And the next 1000 years of darkness is going to make us remember that fondly!!!!!11

I wonder what they'll say in 2016 when none of that shiat has happened?

cptjeff		2012-11-09 01:38:20 PM

cptjeff: More people voted for democratic members of congress than republican ones.

Rather, more people voted for Democrats in House election than voted for Republicans. The prior statement may indeed be true, and going off mathematical probability given the corrected statement, probably is, but I couldn't say that for sure.

MSFT		2012-11-09 01:40:06 PM

YouAreItNoTagBacks:
I wonder what they'll say in 2016 when none of that shiat has happened?

Same crazy crap that halfof33 is spouting now in this thread: denial, denial, denial.
Apparently people like him have a problem with God's Will in these elections. Must not be a good Christian; hell, he's probably a pagan.

MSFT		2012-11-09 01:41:52 PM

halfof33:
Jesus son.... I haven't got the time to educate you sheep. do some homework.

Sounds like you studied it out over the past few days at Glenn Beck University. Are you working on your masters now?
Idea: Write your masters thesis on oligary.

ambercat		2012-11-09 01:42:46 PM

Weaver95: Mugato: Republicans were mocking Barack Obama for being a community organizer yet they worshiped Palin? If republican cognitive dissonance and projection could be an alternate fuel, we'd have perfectly clean air and warp capable ships by now.

i'm still floored that the GOP apparently had zero logistical abilities. none. Team Obama was tightly run and we knew what we were doing, how we were going to get there and come election day, damn if it didn't play out exactly as engineered.

I think at a certain point they started drinking their own kool-aid, and forget that patting the masses on the back for valuing ignorance and stubbornness over education was supposed to keep those people easy to manipulate. Stupidity and making up your own reality doesn't interface well with, well, reality. Their base must have looked so comfortable in the little talk-radio hamster bubble they created for them they decided that their message wasn't actually a recipe for personal failure.

udhq		2012-11-09 01:58:43 PM

Smeggy Smurf: Hitler was a good organizer too and that turned out well

Ummm, I can't believe I'm dignifying your comment with a correction, but the fact is that, no, Hitler was not a good organizer. He was a backroom knife-fighter is what he was, but he never ran a successful electoral campaign.

anfrind		2012-11-09 01:59:09 PM

cptjeff: cptjeff: More people voted for democratic members of congress than republican ones.

Rather, more people voted for Democrats in House election than voted for Republicans. The prior statement may indeed be true, and going off mathematical probability given the corrected statement, probably is, but I couldn't say that for sure.

I'd like to see some confirmation for that. I know a few grumpy right-wingers who could use that extra bit of humiliation.

MSFT		2012-11-09 02:03:54 PM

udhq: Smeggy Smurf: Hitler was a good organizer too and that turned out well

Ummm, I can't believe I'm dignifying your comment with a correction, but the fact is that, no, Hitler was not a good organizer. He was a backroom knife-fighter is what he was, but he never ran a successful electoral campaign.

You don't seem to understand: Republicans actually consider a bunch of brownshirts terrorizing the populace to be "community organization".
Now apologize to the brownshirt for hurting his/her feelings.

cptjeff		2012-11-09 02:06:00 PM

anfrind: cptjeff: cptjeff: More people voted for democratic members of congress than republican ones.

Rather, more people voted for Democrats in House election than voted for Republicans. The prior statement may indeed be true, and going off mathematical probability given the corrected statement, probably is, but I couldn't say that for sure.

I'd like to see some confirmation for that. I know a few grumpy right-wingers who could use that extra bit of humiliation.

Got it off TV news, so can't help ya with a link.

coyo		2012-11-09 02:06:56 PM

halfof33: Weaver95: Republicans sill manage to maintain a thin majority in the House of Representatives

"Thin" majority? Is that how the freaking spin is going to go? LOLZ!

BSABSVR: So because Obama won, state pension issues are a worse problem than they would have been if Romney had won

Makes sense.

Yes because the democrats are in the farking to bag to public employee unions, and therefore won't make the hard decisions that need to be made by increasing employee contributions and decreasing benefits.

Jesus son.... I haven't got the time to educate you sheep. do some homework.

Ah, so the new talking points are to keep on doing what you are doing and blame the unions more. Lets pretend all the unions combined have more resources than the koch bros.

udhq		2012-11-09 02:11:50 PM

I think the real story of this campaign is how Citizens United seems to have backfired on the republicans. They raised over $2 billion, put most if it into media, and it just seemed to make people disengage. The ground game beat the air game.

The right is going to have to come up with some kind of an answer for the grass roots, or they are going to be electorally dead in the water going forward. Traditionally, they have struggled with finding a way of doing this that doesn't turn off independents (think the ugly, racist element of the Tea Party), but the fact is they can't win without getting boots on the ground one way or another.

BSABSVR		2012-11-09 02:13:41 PM

halfof33: Weaver95: Republicans sill manage to maintain a thin majority in the House of Representatives

"Thin" majority? Is that how the freaking spin is going to go? LOLZ!

BSABSVR: So because Obama won, state pension issues are a worse problem than they would have been if Romney had won

Makes sense.

Yes because the democrats are in the farking to bag to public employee unions, and therefore won't make the hard decisions that need to be made by increasing employee contributions and decreasing benefits.

Jesus son.... I haven't got the time to educate you sheep. do some homework.

And how would a Romney administration have any sway over state pension funds? That is, without insuring them when they lose money? I'm interested in your response because I'm completely sure that you have absolutely zero idea what you're talking about here.

But you probably read an article about this once. Reason posts all kinds of technically correct articles on pensions, as does TAC, so in a hazy half-remembered way, I'm sure you thought it was quite the zinger.

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat		2012-11-09 02:14:05 PM

cptjeff: As somebody who did some work for a union backed PAC, we got complaints about you too. Just sayin'.

Hell, we got complaints about us too. It's hard to explain to the average person that, yes, we know that you've been talked to already, but no it wasn't us and no there's nothing we can do about it.

I got phone calls from both Move On AND the Obama campaign while I was hustling people out the door.

/"Hi, I'm Steve calling from the Obama campaign..."
"Hi, Steve, Imma gonna stop you right there because you've reached an Obama GOTV site and I'm about to send 5 people out to knock on doors..."
"Well, we're down to the wire here and we're really..."
"Steve, my man, put down the script and listen: you're holding up people in PA from getting the President re-elected."
"Have you committed to vote for the Presi-"
"STEVE! This is a PA OFA canvassing site. I'm a full supporter, but I have to go get people out on doors right NOW."
"..."
"..."
"Good luck."
"You too Steve."

halfof33		2012-11-09 02:15:54 PM

coyo: Lets pretend all the unions combined have more resources than the koch bros.

Of course they do, don't be a freaking moran.

What is going to happen is that they are going to stop nominating drooling anti-abortion zealots, make overtures to the hispanic communities, scream about the deficit and unfunded pension liability and wait til Obama's Illinois goes tits up before the next election.

rynthetyn		2012-11-09 02:16:28 PM

On the voter protection end of things, the campaign had a smart phone friendly system for incident reporting so that they could see in as close to real time as possible if a systematic problem was developing somewhere in the country. Let's just say that there are lots of reasons why Florida could have been a heck of a lot more of a clusterfark than it actually was if the campaign hadn't been really on top of issues.

And, because the Obama campaign apparently respects competence a lot more than Romney's camp did, the people recruited to do poll watching weren't just random party loyalists. I spent the last two months working to recruit lawyers in Florida to man the poll watching operation. Poll watching is the mostly thankless, (hopefully) boring grunt work of the voter protection efforts on a campaign but we got highly paid attorneys to take the day off, even though that's thousands of dollars worth of billable hours, to sit at a precinct and observe.

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat		2012-11-09 02:17:44 PM

BSABSVR: Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: Comfort Captain

Giggety.

I know. We giggled about it too. Lacking a better term, it was the person who made sure that the volunteers were all fed, hydrated, comfortable, etc. Also, should there be a need, we were to make sure people standing in line to vote at the end of the night were similarly fed, hydrated, comfortable, etc.

Displayed 50 of 111 comments