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A contrary view to Patrick's Obamamania

Submitted by Ironman on Wed, 06/11/2008 - 06:21
in

Mark Hemingway at NRO opined on Obama's huge infrastructure and got this rejoinder.

"I really found this post lacking specifics.  Based on the primaries, all evidence points to the Obama campaign being a well oiled machine.  They ran a bottom up campaign, with extremely well run field offices. "

 
 
 
Evidently, this person shares Patrick's view that Obama, Inc. is the political version of the 3G  i-phone and is a self-replicating form of unstoppable buzz machine. But let's look at this campaign this way. With $60M monthly cash flow and 700 staffers, wouldn;t seem that once they went "all in" for a primary that this juggernaut would "move numbers" 
 
 
well, let's look at the metrics. In PA, the biggest media blitz in the state's history couldn;t budge a stable 10 point Clinton lead the last few weeks of the race
 
In Indiana, polling showed Clinton taking the lead a few weeks before the primary
 
In NC, he won handily. but had always been ahead and had a 17 point polling lead a month out from the primary
 
Perhaps there was a positive campaign effect in Oregon, but this was always a pro-Obama state
 
I'm not going to bother with the WVA or KY data as they are a place beyond gnarly for Obama
 
The Obama campaign may simply at this stage in the race reached an inflection point in the electorate where trying to overcome its opposition by dint of sheer weight of resources simply does not yield a result.
 
Two parallels come to mind. One is the New Economy dot com with a huge burn rate, amazing buzz, and an inability to consistently deliver earnings. The other is the trench warfare of 1914-1918, where weeks of bombardment usually failed to weaken the enemy defenses and the battle lines moved a few hundred yards at a time.
 
One other metric for those entralled with Apple. Steve Jobs expects i-Phone sales to reach 10M.  That is about 8% of the worldwide smart phone market and in comparison, is a lesser number than the general election turnout in California.  Sure it's made Apple a ton of money, but he didn;t need 50.1% market share to do it.   

 

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Comments

You sir Rock

Submitted by karasoth on Wed, 06/11/2008 - 06:41.

Best counterpoint so far

But compare Obama to McCain

Submitted by Sean Hackbarth on Wed, 06/11/2008 - 11:11.

It's a two-man race (Barr and Nader notwithstanding). Apple has a few more competitors.

As compared to McCain's campaign Obama will outraise it, outspend it, and outstaff it. And from what I see Obama's supporters are more excited than McCain's. You don't see a plethora of user-created pro-McCain graphics pasted across the internet.

McCain is countering with a more decentralized campaign. A real good process story to delve into is comparing the Obama campaign to the '00 and '04 Bush campaigns. Both are tightly-run machines that have well-staged and limiting public events. Look at how Obama does at press conferences and town halls and you can hear an echo of President Bush.