November 21, 2004
More election analysis
Yeah, so the election was three weeks ago. Bush won in a blessedly non-contested uncontestable election. Analysis, of course, was to follow. "Who Lost Ohio" is the title of an article by Matt Bai in today's issue of the New York Times Magazine. It's rather long, but it's good reading. It details the election day experience Mr. Bai had with one Steve Bouchard, the Ohio director of America Coming Together, one of the infamous 527 groups that was indirectly shilling for Kerry.
Money quote:
"In hindsight, it seemed significant that Bouchard, months before, felt constricted enough by ACT's legal and financial realities to shift its focus, moving canvassers out of more contested counties and precincts and away from the business of trying to convert undecided voters. In the end, these were the voters Kerry needed. But Bouchard and his troops ran smack up against the inherent limits of a 527 in a presidential campaign. They could turn out the vote, but they couldn't really alter its shape.
Therein, perhaps, lies the real lesson from Ohio, and from the election as a whole. From the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and especially after the disputed election of 2000, Democrats operated on the premise that they were superior in numbers, if only because their supporters lived in such concentrated urban communities. If they could mobilize every Democratic vote in America's industrial centers -- and in its populist heartland as well -- then they would win on math alone. Not anymore. Republicans now have their own concentrated vote, and it will probably continue to swell. Turnout operations like ACT can be remarkably successful at corralling the votes that exist, but turnout alone is no longer enough to win a national election for Democrats. The next Democrat who wins will be the one who changes enough minds.
''I can't think of a thing in Ohio that we could have done more to boost our vote,'' Steve Rosenthal told me three days after the election, as the trauma of the defeat began to subside. ''The shortcoming in some ways is that the national Democratic Party has built this values wall between itself and a lot of voters out there, and the Republicans took advantage of it. The rude awakening here is that I always thought there were more of us out there. And this time there were more of them.''
This would probably be a good thing, but when progressives realize they're in the minority, bad things can happen.
