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I just got home from a local political event. I was concerned when the event was scheduled that I would miss some of the excitement of the runoff election results. However, I became disenchanted with the lack of national interest in the race and some of the most recent polling numbers. I knew that we would have a very disappointing night.
Let me preface this analysis by saying that I have not read any accounts of the results. I've just seen that Saxby has a 58-42% lead with well over 90% of the boxes reporting.
Here's what went wrong for the Dems
1. The Republicans used their upcoming stars to come to the rescue for Chambliss. We saw Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee come to Georgia. Granted each of these folks have their own self interests. However, I do feel that the Republicans did a fantastic job of setting up the firewall argument and rallying the base.
2. The Democrats really seemed to define this runoff as Black versus White. Well we kept being told that this was an election that would break based on the African American turnout. When we learned that the early voting numbers were down for African American voters we just focused on turnout of those voters. I think that may have been a fatal mistake. The campaign at that point should have changed its emphasis on persuasion of all voters.
3. More pressure should have been put on Barack to come in and help Martin. We spent too much time trying to figure out if it would be good or bad. Barack became more popular the minute he got elected and his presence would have encouraged all Democratic voters and perhaps some Saxby voters to change sides.
4. The Dems got complacent and essentially sat this one out. I never got any emails from the DSCC or sitting Senators or popular dems. I think I may have gotten an email from Bill Clinton. I'm not a superstar by any means but in the general and runoff combined I think we raised 7k. I think we should have at least gotten a call or a more personal email asking for help.
Anyone can be an armchair quarterback after the game so please do not put too much stock in my comments. I appreciate all of your hard work and that includes phone banking and knocking on doors and raising money. I only offer this analysis so that we understand where not to go wrong in future situations.
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