How Obama won: By discouraging voters
The sad reality is the lavishly funded ad campaigns worked as intended. A report from a monitoring agency at Wesleyan University suggests that an astonishing 85 percent of all campaign commercials by the Obama campaign and allied groups featured negative messages about Romney. These attack ads aren’t supposed to inspire your people to go to the polls; they’re meant to dissuade the other guy’s supporters from going to the polls. The purpose of negative advertising is to discourage, not encourage, voting.
The advertising avalanche by the Democrats highlighted Romney’s wealth, offshore bank accounts, job-exporting background at Bain Capital, expensive Olympics horse, bad singing voice, mistreatment of his dog, unpublished tax returns, murder-by-cancer of a steelworker’s wife, and general heartlessness and cluelessness. The Obama team knew full well that such messages would never persuade committed partisans to switch support from the Republicans to the Democrats and could even alienate a few of their own backers, particularly women, with their overall nastiness. But if the ugly tone of the campaign kept right-leaning independents or even undecided voters away from the polls then it would be worth it, shrinking the field of potential recruits Romney needed to close the gap and win the election.
In short, the impact of such an unpleasant campaign almost always will prove more damaging to a challenger trying to attract new votes than to an incumbent who needs only to hold on to the bulk of his old base.
Blowback
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How Romney lost: by not encouraging voters
Schadenfreude on November 12, 2012 at 4:46 PM
Well all the ‘poor’ in Ohio will now get the foodstamps cut by the feds? Now that isn’t a nice way to treat your voters for you is it bho?
http://www.toledoblade.com/State/2012/11/12/Ohioans-food-stamp-aid-to-be-cut.html
L
letget on November 12, 2012 at 4:50 PM
the great divider
Bensonofben on November 12, 2012 at 4:51 PM
We need a separate primary debate to focus on how the candidates will structure a national campaign.
msmveritas on November 12, 2012 at 4:53 PM
Oh, bullshit. He didn’t “discourage” voters, he ENCOURAGED them. He ENCOURAGED them to take what isn’t theirs, and convince themselves they deserved it. He ENCOURAGED them to despise successful people, and convince themselves they hadn’t earned that success. He ENCOURAGED them to vote for the total destruction of the nation at some time in the future in order to get theirs now.
The commentary following this election is just pathetic. No insight. No honesty. Just pablum and whining. Zero isn’t the problem; 51% of the American voters are. Zero isn’t the enemy; the guy next door who voted for him is. Makers and takers. Choose your side. THAT is the ugly truth of this election.
Rational Thought on November 12, 2012 at 4:55 PM
Medved is what’s wrong with America.
Dante on November 12, 2012 at 4:59 PM
51% of eligible voters did not vote for Obama. Not even 30% did. It’s likely that barely 51% of eligible voters bothered to vote at all this election. One thing is certainly true. For only the second time in the past century, 1996 being the other, the number of people who voted in this election will be less than those that voted in the previous election. Maybe Obama didn’t discourage them. One thing is for sure, nobody gave them enough reason to vote.
Rocks on November 12, 2012 at 5:04 PM
I don’t like Medved, but this excerpt really hits the primary cause… Though it certainly didn’t help that our candidate wasn’t far enough right to get out our base… Once again the GOP’s Beltway Bandits had no problem attacking the conservatives in the primary, but were way too easy against the leftist in the general…
phreshone on November 12, 2012 at 5:09 PM
Nonsense. The vile sack of excrement spent 900million slandering Romney. 10 million people didn’t vote. He made a mockery of our electoral process and that was the goal. He won by assassinating the character of a good man, making millions of potential Romney voters feel like their votes didn’t count.
jawkneemusic on November 12, 2012 at 5:11 PM
I agree with this 100%. It’s also makes you wonder about the character of those who still voted for him knowing full well he’s a slanderous POS.
The ends justify the means I guess….
jawkneemusic on November 12, 2012 at 5:15 PM
It also doesn’t help when you have the major networks and the entertainment industrial complex as active partners in your re-election campaign…
… They sheilded him, protected him, and attacked anyone who opposed him 24/7/365.
What got broken here…
… cannot be fixed.
Seven Percent Solution on November 12, 2012 at 5:15 PM
From what I understand, Romney won independents by 5, while McCain lost them by 8. Nonetheless, McCain got more votes than Romney. While Medved frets over independent voters, the reality is that you arrive at such a switch in distribution and results if your own base stays home. Although much of what Medved says is right, he’s missing this important fact.
Obama ensured that the hard-left would come out to vote, while Romney had no similar effort for the hard-right (which, given his record, caused them to stay home). Demonizing Romney (which Romney assisted with by way of the 47% video) assuredly hurt Romney among all groups.
Romney was the perfect candidate for the fiscally-conservative, socially moderate weenies, and lost after positioning himself there.
Stoic Patriot on November 12, 2012 at 5:15 PM
How Obama won: He won the dead vote.
nazo311 on November 12, 2012 at 5:17 PM
While I agree with you, let’s not forget that Romney assassinated his own character and discouraging the GOP by never apologizing for RomneyCare’s role in creating ObamaCare.
Perhaps one day he will own that one…
Nah.
beatcanvas on November 12, 2012 at 5:17 PM
Good points.
jawkneemusic on November 12, 2012 at 5:21 PM
Obama definitely succeeded in getting out his own voters while depressing turnout for Romney. The Democrats had a game plan and executed it very well.
While he was getting attacked, Romney spent half his campaign saying Obama was a nice guy who just happened to be wrong. Who would you vote for – the nice guy who’s wrong, or the greedy/evil/racist/sexist monster?
What we often miss is that a lot of the negative messages from the Democrats also serve to motivate their base. The “war on women” got women, and especially young women, to go to the voting booth.
Never mind that two of our Senators played right into the war on women meme with their comments on abortion after rape. Those comments hurt every Republican on the ballot this year. And they shouldn’t have happened.
hawksruleva on November 12, 2012 at 5:21 PM
Lying and cheating were factors in all 57 states.
ProfShadow on November 12, 2012 at 5:21 PM
I won’t argue with that. It certainly didn’t help.
jawkneemusic on November 12, 2012 at 5:23 PM
Medved is just another big government statist neocon. He can just go away like Rove.
MoreLiberty on November 12, 2012 at 5:24 PM
The primary needs to be a dry run of the national campaign ground game, rather than a beauty contest.
Count to 10 on November 12, 2012 at 5:29 PM
Ironic isn’t it? He won the first time by pretending he would unite the country. “No more red or blue states. Only the United States” was how it went right? Then he does a complete 180 and wins the second time by completely dividing the country any way he could.
jawkneemusic on November 12, 2012 at 5:30 PM
Prove it.
jawkneemusic on November 12, 2012 at 5:31 PM
By cheating.
The Rogue Tomato on November 12, 2012 at 5:34 PM
Ooof! The Divider in Chief continues his destruction of America.
jawkneemusic on November 12, 2012 at 5:44 PM
During the primaries many here said that if we nominated a candidate who epitomized “rich white guy,” who had flipped on major social issues and instituted government healthcare in his state that we were handing the Democrats a punching bag. We argued that the Obama campaign was salivating over the idea of running against Romney because he offered such a big target. We were called bigots, RINOs, morons and traitors. And we were right.
It was laughably easy to (dishonestly) paint Romney as an uncaring rich guy. This killed him with minorities. Social conservatives who were tired of holding their noses didn’t want to vote for him from day one and were told to quit “whining” and get on board. Well, this time many of them said “no.”
This was all predicted months ago by commenters right here at Hot Air. The only saving grace I saw was that he was supposed to be a managerial wizard, but now with more and more coming out about Orca and Romney’s consultants it looks like that was just a myth.
Romney’s support was faith-based. Turns out that faith was misplaced.
29Victor on November 12, 2012 at 6:00 PM
How Obama won:
he plays to win.
His opponents? Not so much.
Joseph Russo III on November 12, 2012 at 6:04 PM
How Romney failed to win. He failed to encourage the voters. Who saw this coming? But hey, what we need is a moderate uninspiring progressive (R) to win.
This was the single easiest victory the republican party had lined up in 20 years.
astonerii on November 12, 2012 at 6:23 PM
Or as another great conservative thinker put it, “Barack called Mitt a poopy head!”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2012/11/12/norquist-obama-poopy-head/1699799/
Alpha_Male on November 12, 2012 at 6:27 PM
It’s the ground game that failed. I was actually surprized how inspiring Romney was in the debates. I suspect you didn’t want to be inspired.
Count to 10 on November 12, 2012 at 6:36 PM
He didn’t beat John McCain’s insipid campaign (the one he suspended to go do what Obama wanted?) so the majority of people were clearly NOT inspired.
sharrukin on November 12, 2012 at 6:39 PM
I was inspired in the first debate. I watched it at Romney election joint.
That was the part that got my attention most. Of course, he never went anywhere with that message after the debate, did he?
But the sad part of it is the hedging that was put into that clearly rehearsed statement.
not moral for my generation to keep spending massively more than we take in
Now that sounds AWESOMELY conservative when it is thrown out there initially. But he put the hedge massively. Well, how much becomes not massively. Is it really moral to spend even moderately more than we take in and hand it off to future generations to pay off with no benefit to themselves. It is one thing to spend mountains of money to win an existential war so the next generation can be free, it is altogether another thing to spend mountains or even tiny hills of money to grant extra luxury to this generation which the next generation will never benefit from.
And the amount of debt we’re adding, at a trillion a year, is simply not moral.
So there is the limit, $999 billion is OK for Mitt Romney, a trillion, not so much.
All that trillion dollars and then some is spent for luxury items such as the welfare state, coming in at $1,945 billion for fiscal year 2010 or 2011… I forget which one.
astonerii on November 12, 2012 at 6:44 PM
He thinks we need a new big government amnesty program for one.
xblade on November 12, 2012 at 8:13 PM