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Originally Posted by Catdaddy33
The Dems targeted young voters and new voters, which will provide a new and growing base. The use of the internet and text messages to get volunteers active and keep them informed was part of the reason the Dems raised so much cash. Meanwhile, the McCain camp played to the masses that barely won them the elections in 2000 and 2004, and didn't even try to get the young vote.
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The Republicans are technically competent, too. In fact, until very recently, they were better at it than Democrats. Their problem was that they didn't have anyone to use the tools. Here in Wisconsin, the Obama campaign had operations everywhere, in little villages as well as Milwaukee and Madison. That difference is apparent in the county results. Obama won 59 out of 72 counties, everywhere except the Milwaukee & Minneapolis suburbs and a few scattered outposts like Fond du Lac & Walworth Co. Even where the McCain campaign had operations, they didn't have enough people to keep them open. They were empty most of the time. We got robocalls and mailings, but never direct human contact.
They didn't get people excited about their campaign becayse they didn't have a message. The economic crisis and Obama knocked away the two pillars of post-Goldwater Republicanism.
From the passage of the Civil Rights Act up until this summer, the Republicans were able to exploit white resentment & backlash against the civil rights movement. Although they would not and could not admit it explicitly, the identity politics they adopted in the campaign were clearly a politics of whiteness. That backfired against Obama, because the implicit message contradicted the surface projections of neutrality. The conflict in messages made McCain seem either out of control or duplicitous. Voters who wanted to move America beyond race -- which is the GOP message on racial issues & what Rush & Fox say they stand for -- voted for Obama. And that does not mean that Obama supporters voted for him because of the colour of his skin. Alan Keyes would not have defeated Obama. Of course, given the way the party defined itself, Keyes or Rice or Powell would not have won the nomination.
The problems with the identity-based campaign exposed other weaknesses. The biggest of these was the collapse of neoliberalism, another pillar of Republican ideology. McCain and the Republicans at first wanted to deny the problems even existed. When that was no longer viable they announced they were "going negative", in other words, that they had nothing to offer. They're going to have get beyond that kind of reaction.
Where do you go when the terms and operations that define who you are politically no longer function? That's up to them. I'm not a Republican.