Defining a Loss
History, as the saying goes, is written by the victors. America loves a winner and losing something as big and public as a presidential election isn’t easy. For the Romney campaign, the impacts of their loss were felt in ways both big and small, including:
- Losing friends
Mitt Romney is losing roughly 850 Facebook friends every hour.
- The Secret Service disappearing overnight
As reported by GQ, the Secret Service detail that had been guarding the former governor since February 1st, when he was first deemed a plausible president, quickly dialed down their operations once election results came in and pulled out entirely the next morning. He had ridden in a 15-car motorcade to make his concession speech and was driven back in a one-car motorcade from that speech by his son. - Cancelling the fireworks celebration
Mitt had an eight-minute fireworks display planned over the Boston Harbor that cost roughly $25K to put on. - Campaign credit cards being cancelled immediately
The Romney campaign cancelled staff credit cards shortly after the concession speech and staff were surprised to find out that their cards didn’t work on their cab ride home. - Scrapping the victory website
Romney’s president-elect site accidentally went live and had to be taken down. - Angry donors
WaPo reports that at a private breakfast the morning after, many wealthy donors “privately unloaded on Romney’s senior staff, describing it as a junior varsity operation that failed to adequately insulate and defend Romney through a summer of relentless attacks from the Obama campaign over his business career and personal wealth.”
A candidate’s campaign team is just as important as the candidate itself. For anyone who’s interested in getting a peek into how presidential campaigns are run, I highly recommend two documentaries: The War Room, which goes behind the scenes on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign from start to finish, and Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, which profiles the outspoken Republican operative who got George H.W. Bush elected in 1988 even though he was trailing his Democratic challenger by 17 points in the polls four months from the election. A campaign team makes or breaks a candidate and when one of the teams inevitably loses, reasons are searched for and fingers are pointed. So where did the Romney campaign go wrong? Well, the press has been analyzing this and people close the campaign have been grumbling about a few things, including:
- Project ORCA
Our electoral college has essentially confined major elections to small margins in a minor number of swing states. As a result, slightly higher turnout for registered voters of either candidate’s party can make huge differences in the outcome of an election. To drive voter turnout, strike lists are used by campaigns on Election Day to keep track of who voted and who didn’t. These lists were traditionally printed out, marked up and sent back to campaign headquarters where other volunteers would call eligible voters up to make sure they head to the polls that day. Project ORCA was the Romney campaign’s secret tool that essentially digitized this entire process into mobile apps and PDF lists that volunteers could use to track voters. It was great in theory, but the system ended up crashing the morning of Election Day, which left many volunteers confused and frustrated. One such volunteer called it an unmitigated disaster. - Benghazi
The campaign jumped the gun on making Benghazi a campaign issue and was immediately criticized for politicizing a national tragedy. Romney regretted it but doubled down because he didn’t want to risk demoralizing his base. - Bain
The Romney campaign never had a good response to the notion that Romney made his money by firing people and cutting wages and benefits. More surprisingly, this has been an issue that’s been dogging him for 18 years now. - Misguided assumptions
The Romney campaign was convinced that polls were oversampling Democrats and that they were actually ahead in states like Ohio when the polls showed Obama tied or ahead. They also over-projected their own turnout and assumed that there was no way Obama would win in a poor economy or mobilize the turnout that he had in 2008. - The technology deficit
This is arguably one of the best advantages an 21st-century incumbent can build against his/her opponent. The Obama tech and data team had been in place for years while the Romney campaign didn’t really assemble theirs until the primaries were over. This led to a huge tech gap. TIME wrote an interesting piece on the Obama data team.
Elections are, at their core, popularity contests and campaigning is an exercise in the art of persuasion. As this election cycle closes, both parties will start strategizing about their next moves. It’s a game of chess as much as it is one of policy. After all, we don’t directly dictate the policy of the country but we do end up selecting people who we think will make the right decisions for us. And going up for re-election is the only thing that keeps them in check once they’re in office.
Shameless plug: I’m also the co-founder of a startup called RiseTogether. Our mission is to revolutionize the way you achieve your goals and we’re currently looking for beta testers so please sign up if you’re interested. Regardless of what your politics may be, I’m sure you can help your friends achieve more in life and vice versa.