By: Rachel L. West, MSW LMSW
David Jarman has written a post for Daily Koos responding to Jan Crawford’s CBS article about Romney being shell-shocked by his defeat on Tuesday. In Rethinking Shellshocked Romney, Jarman suggest that there was no way the GOP’s presidential candidate believed he would easily win the election and that the reports of his dismay are all a front meant to save face for the Republican party.
A: admit that you were operating in a bubble, that your pollsters were making faulty assumptions, and that despite the fact that your pollsters were coming up with numbers that didn’t look like anyone else’s, you were so reliant on gut feelings about voter enthusiasm that you didn’t bother to seek a second opinion. (That’s the CBS article, in a nutshell.)
Or Option B: admit that your data looked much like everyone else’s and that you’re smart enough to know that all along that you were losing, but that the rules of the game prevented you from publicly admitting that. That’s partially because, via the ‘bandwagon effect,’ it might depress turnout, but mostly because it would depress contributions from big money donors who don’t want to waste their money — thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy because you then wouldn’t have the money you’d need to even have a shot at winning.
Jarman feels they picked option A. You can read why here. There has also been much discussion since election night about the failures of Romney’s Get Out The Vote effort. A Romney volunteer posted a first hand account of the candidates failed GOTV project, known as project ORCA. Stephanie Marcus wrote about the problem for Huffington Post.
Related articles
- Romney’s Shock (politicalsocialworker.wordpress.com)
