A note on AOSHQDD/ My Brief Reaction to Tuesday

As the returns began pouring in, my volunteers engaged in the thankless task of racking up the numbers. I had some delay at first in getting them in, as it was a busy night, and started to watch the numbers coming from Ohio, Florida, and Virginia.

To say I was upset was a tremendous understatement. Frankly, I lost the will to keep reporting once it was painfully obvious Obama had won Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Colorado. I held off for a bit, then hit the edit feature to put in "Obama wins", and after my network connection crashed, called it a frustrated night. I will update the site stats from my volunteers gathered info. Kudos as well to them, who are still humming along in a Decision Desk email chain with suggestions and reflections on the race and campaigns. We will do this again for '14, hopefully with happier news.

I want to thank all of them for continuing to report, as tough as it was.

I have some thoughts on how polling and data-mining can be used by the GOP, the lessons not learned from the incredibly successful fight against the recall in Wisconsin, and I'll throw them together for a post in the next week or so.

If I had known Team Romney wasn't replicating that June effort from the Badger state, I would have called this race months ago. I had perhaps blind faith that their team knew what it was doing, that it had learned from Obama's GOTV efforts and was ready to match them. As we are learning about ORCA, that was horribly wrong. From now on, the polling reigns supreme. Right in 2008, right in 2012, right in the Recall. Goodbye "unskewed" silliness.

Since polling has all but evaporated post election, I think I'm going to enjoy some stargazing. Dinner with the wife. Definitely going to take time to enjoy some art for a while. Something that will take some of the sting out of Tuesday. Something less discomforting and awkward than the massive fuck-up that was the Romney campaign. So look forward to my next art thread: Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio at LACMA.

I wish I was kidding.

posted by CAC at 06:25 PM

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