Washington – On the day after the 2010 midterm election that swept Republicans into control of the House of Representatives and decreased Democrats’ majority in the Senate, senior White House adviser David Axelrod had a message for President Barack Obama.
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“I think they just planted the seeds of your re-election,” he told his boss.
“The most strident voices had seized control of the Republican Party and you knew that the nominee who would emerge either would come from that Tea Party base or would have to yield to it in order to be the nominee,” Axelrod told Reuters.
That nominee ended up being former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and Obama’s campaign went on to exploit his ties to the conservative wing of his party and outmaneuver him to victory in the November 6 general election.
Axelrod, who left the White House to oversee strategy for the president’s 2012 campaign, and fellow Democrats attribute Obama’s decisive win on Tuesday to Obama and to a consistent strategy that sidelined Romney in key swing states.
An early and effective effort to define the former private equity executive as unfriendly to the middle class, a superior ground operation to get out the vote, and a deft response to missteps by Romney and his allies helped Obama overcome his own perceived weaknesses in presiding over a slow economic recovery.
“They successfully made this a choice election as opposed to a referendum on the president and the economy,” said Michael Feldman, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to Vice President Al Gore. “They also used the critical months between the end of the (Republican) primary and the general election to better define Mitt Romney than the Romney campaign did.”
That defining process turned out to be key.
In the spring and summer, Obama’s campaign used a massive advertising package to highlight concerns about Romney’s tenure as the head of Bain Capital and pounded the multi-millionaire executive for refusing to release several years of his personal tax returns.
The Romney campaign’s slow response to that onslaught and failure to neutralize the criticism over his tax returns baffled Obama’s Chicago team.
“Their inability to respond to attacks that they knew were coming, I think, was a major mistake on their part,” said one Obama campaign official. “If they had made a decision they weren’t going to release his taxes, they should have had a plan around how to deal with that.”
MESSAGING, POLICY, GROUND GAME
Obama’s campaign made mistakes, too. The president’s first debate performance was widely panned and would have been blamed by many for his defeat if he had lost to Romney on Tuesday. Democrats’ slow acceptance of the financial influence of outside groups known as Super PACs was also cited earlier in the year as a strategic misstep.
But Obama’s strength on the ground and effective messages – which Republicans viewed as particularly negative – made up for those weaknesses.
“They had a ground game that they worked on for five years,” said Charlie Black, a Republican strategist who advised Romney.
“It’s unusual for an incumbent president to run such a negative, divisive campaign, but they pulled it off.”
Axelrod cited Romney’s secretly taped comment that 47 percent of Americans were reliant on government, conservative policy positions on immigration and taxes, and his selection of budget hawk Paul Ryan as a running mate as key factors that tied him to the right and turned off mainstream voters.
“I think it was a mistake,” Axelrod said of Wisconsin Representative Ryan’s selection. “I think it was a way for (Romney) to coalesce his base and get through his convention.”
In an election that was determined by the fight over swing states such as Ohio, where jobs tied to the auto industry are critical, Obama’s team also deftly highlighted Romney’s opposition to Obama’s auto bailout and his published opinion piece that suggested Detroit, Michigan-based companies should be allowed to fail.
“Whoever decided that they should use the phraseology ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt’ should probably not get employed as a political consultant again,” said an Obama campaign worker. “It definitely has haunted them in Ohio in a big way.”
Obama ended up winning Ohio and most of the battleground states that he and Romney both coveted, granting him another four-year term.
He had the Left wing media with him !!!!
All this analysis is meaningless. Obama won because he appealed to every minority in the country and together they formed a majority: the gays, the aborters, the blacks, the Lartinos, the fossil -fuel- haters, the environmentalists, the global warmers, etc. Every kook found shelter under Obama’s wide wing span. Unfortuntately, 70% of the Jews joined them.
Though if obama doesn’t fix the economy the next democratic candidate is going to have the same problem as McCain. Running on the same platform as their predecessor.
I’ve never seen any president so demonized by the Republicans against Obama. I think quite a few people were just turned off by all this negativity and voted accordingly. Even the Aybishter gave him a little help with this storm, Sandy.
Romney is just a sweet talker and contradicted himself several times.Obama is truthful.
It’s not really that complicated.
Republicans and Conservatives were given precious little for which to vote, so they stayed home.
Democrat voters – I believe – overwhelmingly voted for the incumbent simply because they wanted to keep a minority like themselves (or with whom they identified) in office. And also because the Democrats are the party of “free stuff,” as has been suggested by others.
Flawed idealism on the Republican side, and unbridled selfishness on the side of the Democrats, with perhaps a smattering of liberal naiveté.
If the GOP wants to win in the future, they have to figure out a more convincing “pitch.” I.e. what goodies they can offer everyone if they’re elected. Maybe just skip all the health care and housing stuff and just offer free booze like George Washington did. (And no, I’m not making that up.)
Our children and their children will pay forever for this country’s selfish reelection of a money printer just so they can get free condoms and other socialized benefits. What are these people thinking?
We are a country very divided. It was a victory for 53% of the voters and this election is finally over. The problems will get a lot worse if we can not work together. Leave Israel out of the equation and just think about ourselves for awhile. Let’s fix the problems in America and then worry about the rest of the world. WORK TOGETHER.
How Obama Outmaneuvered Romney:
1. Give away free stuff
2. Bankrupt anyone who doesn’t need free stuff, so they can enjoy free stuff too
3. HOPE that your opposition doesn’t like to give out free stuff as much as you do
4. ????????
5. Profit!
This MALE middle aged, white, Jewish, Observant, upper income New England Attorney supported and voted for President Obama. I could not let my daughters be the victims of the Republican Party’s platform. Here in the northeast, the Equal Rights Amendment is part of many of our state’s constitutions, BUT don’t forget it never was ratified and made part of the US Constitution. The neanderthals in the red states would take away women’s rights.
I’m old enough to have started publiuc school when prayer in school was still legal. I don’t want the right wing bringing back forced xtain prayers in the schools.
And, as a non-NYer, I don’t have a bungalow in the Catskills, I have a summer home on Cape Cod. I experienced first hand what a poor job Romney did as governor in Massachusetts and would have wanted him to have that chance nationwide.
So, I don’t fit the profile many of you have assigned to those who reelected President Obama. Don’t color your opinions of Republicans by what the northeast republicans once were. The days of Rockefeller Republicans are long forgotten, the party has been hijacked to the right
simple, Obama promised people better social programs and tax the rich (a small minority of the voting population), Romney promised jobs.
What would you choose? Free money or hard work???
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
Do you know what put Obama over the top? All you need is for some of the14 million additional Americans that are receiving food stamps since 2008 to vote for this empty suit and the rest of us suffer. The government uses our money to bribe the takers in our society and they will keep on voting for these politicians.