Talking Points Memo has some smart readers. One of them crystallized the debate about whether the Romney campaign's shock after losing was genuine, or a ploy to inoculate themselves against the wrath of their donors:
There’s an old rule of political research: never ascribe to conspiracy what can be more easily explained by stupidity. Was the Romney campaign brilliant masterminds of a coordinated PR strategy to make themselves look stupid? Or we’re they just stupid?
Occam’s razor says the latter.
For background, read Josh Marshall's angst about how the Romney campaign could have missed the facts so completely, even though the campaign ran on a platform of denying evidence that disagreed with them.
Politico's Burns & Haberman explain:
[ORCA] was described as a mega-app for smartphones that would link the more than 30,000 operatives and volunteers involved in get-out-the-vote efforts. PBS profiled it a few days before the election. The app was created and managed by the Romney campaign and was kept a secret among a close circle in Boston, according to POLITICO sources.
It's been reported the system crashed at 4 p.m., but multiple sources familiar with the war room operation said it had actually been crashing throughout the day. Officials mostly got information about votes either from public news sources tracking data, like CNN.com, or by calling the counties for information, the source said. Officials insisted the day after the election that they had still believed they were close, and that they had hit their numbers where they needed to, even as Fox News and other outlets called the race.
The post links back to a Romney volunteer's description of how ORCA failed in the field:
On one of the last conference calls (I believe it was on Saturday night), they told us that our packets would be arriving shortly. Now, there seemed to be a fair amount of confusion about what they meant by "packet". Some people on Twitter were wondering if that meant a packet in the mail or a pdf or what. Finally, my packet arrived at 4PM on Monday afternoon as an emailed 60 page pdf. Nothing came in the mail. Because I was out most of the day, I only got around to seeing it at around 10PM Monday night. So, I sat down and cursed as I would have to print out 60+ pages of instructions and voter rolls on my home printer. ... They expected 75-80 year old veteran volunteers to print out 60+ pages on their home computers? The night before election day? From what I hear, other people had similar experiences. In fact, many volunteers never received their packets at all.
Now a note about the technology itself. For starters, this was billed as an "app" when it was actually a mobile-optimized website (or "web app"). For days I saw people on Twitter saying they couldn't find the app on the Android Market or iTunes and couldn't download it. Well, that's because it didn't exist. It was a website. This created a ton of confusion. Not to mention that they didn't even "turn it on" until 6AM in the morning, so people couldn't properly familiarize themselves with how it worked on their personal phone beforehand.
The project management antipatterns are apparent: Blowhard Jamboree, Smoke and Mirrors, Throw It Over the Wall, and basic Project Mismanagement, for starters. I haven't seen the code, but I can't imagine the management and deployment problems didn't lead to design and construction problems as well.
We software professionals have learned, through painful experience, that software developers have a better understanding of how to develop software than corporate executives. Go figure. Since Mitt Romney ran as a father-knows-best, authoritarian candidate, it should surprise no one that the people he hired couldn't run a software project.
Voters in the City of Chicago (including me) passed a referendum giving the city the authority to negotiate electricity prices on behalf of everyone. Implementation will be swift:
The timing of the deal is important because Chicagoans stand to save the most money over Commonwealth Edison's rate between now and June 2013, when ComEd's prices are expected to drop because pricey contracts they entered into years ago will expire. The timeline has Chicagoans moving to the new supplier in February 2013.
Michael Negron, deputy chief of policy and strategic planning for the mayor's office, said electricity suppliers have shown great interest in snagging Chicago's service. Nearly 100 people packed a conference Monday for the city's "request for qualifications" process. The bidders ranged from multi-billion corporations to smaller providers from all over the country, he said. Industry analysts say the deal could be worth hundreds of millions of dollar to the winning supplier or suppliers.
Residents and businesses may opt out of the scheme and negotiate supply prices separately. As readers of this blog know, I'm desperate for lower prices, and eagerly looking forward to my electric bills next year after the new rate deal hits right after I shut down the Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Data Center.
Not only did the Republican Party lose 3 U.S. House seats in suburban Chicago, they also lost enough Illinois General Assembly seats to give the Democrats veto-proof majorities in both its chambers. Crain's sounds the alarm:
[T]he challenges we face are enormous and vexing.
To meet them, we need a viable, capable and credible opposition party. Put another way: We need Republicans to rethink their very reason for being. In the near term, that means the national GOP needs representatives and, eventually, candidates to come forward with serious policy proposals that have appeal beyond the party's ultra-conservative base. We need pragmatists who are ready to cooperate with Democrats to do the people's work. We need less of a fixation on the social issues that divide us and more of an emphasis on ideas and solutions to our shared problems as a state and as a nation.
As long as they're not raging extremists, I think having a thoughtful opposition helps any policy-making body. Olympia Snowe never bothered me much, for example. If that was the Republican Party (instead of, say, Michele Bachmann), I think the U.S. would be better off.
Also of note in local races, Joe Walsh not only lost his seat by a convincing margin, but he spent more money than anyone else in the state:
[I]n the three top Chicago-area congressional races, those who spent the most money — or had the most spent on their behalf — lost.
In each case, that was the Republican candidate.
The worst bang for the buck?
Tea Party Republican Joe Walsh. Each vote he won on Tuesday cost $70.
Walsh’s challenger, Tammy Duckworth, was a relatively good investment. Duckworth’s totals meant $39 a vote with $4.7 million in spending and 120,774 votes.
Thanks to the right-wing bonanza of Citizens United, this was the most expensive election in history, starting with the two Presidential campaigns spending about $800m each. Yes, readers in the UK: just the top line of the ballot cost us one thousand million pounds. Can you imagine the effects of even a tenth of that amount—£100m—on a political campaign in the UK?
This morning's New York Times:
How about those statistics, hey? Nate Silver went 49 and 0 (with 1 "no decision"):
I'll have more tomorrow, once I've slept a bit and digested some of these results. In sum, though, I am immensely relieved that reason appears to have won and extremism (and bald-faced lying) seems to have lost.
President Obama is about to take the stage at McCormick Place, so we're minutes from those much-anticipated words, "Governor Romney called me a few minutes ago to congratulate me." Meanwhile, there's even more good news coming through the Intertubes right now:
- Democrat Brad Schneider has unseated Bob Dold in my home-town district, the Illinois 10th. With Tammy Duckworth's victory, this makes the north Chicago suburbs a sea of blue, and gives the Democratic Party two more house seats.
- The Denver Post projects that cannabis legalization will pass in Colorado.
- Tammy Baldwin is winning in Wisconsin. If the trend continues, not only is it a Democratic pick-up in the U.S. Senate, but also she'll become the first openly gay U.S. Senator in history.
- With Democrat Maggie Hassan winning the New Hampshire governor race, and Democrat Annie Kuster winning in the New Hampshire 2nd CD, four of New Hampshire's top 5 offices are held by women. With 57% reporting, Democrat Carol Shea-Porter right now leads in the New Hampshire 1st. If she wins, it will be the first time in history a state's entire Congressional delegation is female.
- Anti-gay ballot initiatives appear to have failed in Minnesota, Maine, Washington, and Maryland.
Tonight's election feels to me like a widespread rejection of the far right, and a reaffirmation of reason and patience as principles of governance. We didn't win everything—Michele Bachmann will probably squeak out a narrow re-election—but we won a lot more decisively than I'd expected.
Four more years. No war with Iran. Tea Party extremists thrown out of office. Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who tried to buy himself some politicians, zero-for-six (including Mitt Romney). And Mitt Romney himself, the man who figured he could lie his way to the White House, soundly defeated even before all the ballots were counted in the magical swing states of Ohio and Florida.
I'm really very pleased with the way this turned out. And I'm excited about the strengthening coalition we've put together.
Iowa and Colorado put him over. NBC just called it, before calling Ohio.
Tim Kaine picks up the U.S. Senate seat in Virginia; Tammy Duckworth wins the Illinois 8th; Obama wins California. Well, duh to the last one.
But Obama is also leading in Iowa, Florida, and Ohio, and has a chance of winning Virginia. Pick any two and that's the ballgame. CNN has Obama at 238 electoral votes, NBC has him at 243.
I was mentally prepared to stay up until all hours, taking a break right now to do pub trivia at a local bar. Well, I'm at pub trivia (but I'm not allowed to play because of the laptop), but it looks like I might get to sleep at a reasonable hour.
President Obama is now arriving at Chicago's McCormick Place. My bet: victory speech before midnight. And we won't have actually needed Ohio.
And just before I hit "Submit," CNN calls Iowa and the Denver Post calls Colorado.
Elizabeth Warren wins Massachusetts; Joe Donnelly wins Indiana; Claire McCaskill leading 52-41 with 13% reporting. Was it God's will that Mourdock was too extreme even for Indiana? And did the voters in Missouri look at Todd Akin and find a way of shutting that thing down?
And as more votes get counted, the President is pulling ahead in both Ohio and Florida. Too close to call either yet, of course. But I'm pretty happy tonight.
As I reach for a big jar of Tums, Obama leads Romney by 31 votes (out of 2 million counted) in Florida. But: The President has won Michigan and Pennsylvania; Tammy Duckworth has a commanding lead in the Illinois 8th; with 62% reporting, Donnelly leads Mourdock 48-45 in Indiana; and with 23% reporting, Democrat Elizabeth Warren leads incumbent Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts 52-48.
