Fables of the reconstruction

Obama's Tech Team

Profiled here. Interesting read. Impossible to tell how much of it is true or accurate, of course. They're fucking geniuses, especially in retrospect. Of course.

A couple of points:

1. They are all dudes. You could weave a fucking rug with all the facial hair. Why are they all dudes? What happens to women coders who try to get in the door? Maybe they get laughed at or subtly discouraged. Maybe it's a toxic atmosphere.
2. The article claims the tech guys didn't start out as politically engaged but ended up that way in mid-'12. They had built this great machine to do something, and that was to win an election, and then they became afraid of losing. "[L]osing, they felt more and more deeply as the campaign went on, would mean horrible things for the country. They started to worry about the next Supreme Court Justices while they coded." No mention of a single issue they cared about, so I'm taking that with a huge grain of salt. These guys make bank. Politics does not touch their lives except for things like net neutrality. Suddenly they're politically energized? No, probably, they're suddenly aware they won't be profiled in The Atlantic if they lose.

Whatever. I don't give a shit whether the people working for us actually share our goals so long as their incentives are lined up with ours. 

(Via Cole.)

The Democratic Volunteer and Field Organizer Army

Four years ago, I was heavily involved in the Obama campaign in Philadelphia as a volunteer. I registered a lot of people to vote. And I was a slacker compared to many of the people who volunteered with me. I was just one set of hands among thousands in Philly. Even more impressive were the field organizers who were often in their first (woefully-underpaid) campaign job and who were inspiring, smart, and seemingly indefatigable. 

This year, every single person I volunteered with last time did it again. And the junior field organizers from last time were now senior people. How many tens or hundreds of thousands of people across the country are now veteran Democratic operatives? These people all have experience in both winning ('08 and '12) and losing ('10) cycles. They know how it works. Some of them will go on to run for office themselves. All of them will probably be involved in political activism for life and will bring up their families in the same tradition. 

If I were a Republican, that would scare me a lot more than demographics. 

Demographics are Not Destiny

People talking about demographics have the wrong end of the stick. White conservatives don't vote for white conservative candidates because they're white, they vote for them because white supremacy is at the core of American conservatism. So long as Republicans continue to embrace distrust and fear of non-white people and of women, they will continue to lose those constituencies. It's possible conservatives can change (although I don't see how), so this problem is fixable. And I hope they do fix it, because we'd all be better off if the Confederacy finally accepted defeat.

The Rocket Science of Elections

So what have we learned from all this?

1. Money alone will not buy an election, especially when you tell your opponents you're trying to buy the election.

2. Having a based motivated soley by antipathy for the other guy will not win an election. 

3. Having a great ground game, enough money to be competitive, and a base motivated by support for your guy (and antipathy for the other guy) will win an election.