The Obama Campaign's Real Heroes

[Dalai_1]

Great Insight into the incredible campaign machine



By Tim Dickinson
December 7, 2012 1:45 PM ET

Now that the dust has settled and the vote totals are nearly certified, it's clear that the 2012 presidential election was never a squeaker. It was a landslide. Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by more than 4.6 million votes nationwide, driving the Republican down to a karmic 47 percent of the popular vote.

Obama didn't win on merit alone. His high-tech, data-driven, socially-networked campaign was one for the history books, turning out key demographic blocks in astonishing numbers. Consider that in Ohio, the president's team drove the African-American share of the electorate to up to 15 percent, versus 11 percent in 2008. That's more than 200,000 new votes for the president in a state decided by a margin of 165,000. In other words: That was the ballgame.

President Obama owes his second term to a masterful campaign team – few of whom are household names. Here are ten heroes of the Obama 2012 team:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-obama-campaigns-real-heroes-20121126

[peace13]

1. Yes! Hats off to Travis Franklin...

A 23 year old college graduate who came up from GA to work his buns off for the President in Ohio. He lived with us for nine months and it was great. These young people never gave up! On election night we had an impromptu party with 12 Obama field organizers here! All young and strong, most of whom were from out of state. The tears did flow when it was called for the President. Screams of joy and sighs of relief. We were so proud of them!

[Dalai_1]

2. I would love to

have been there...I am in awe of each of these people...the technology
was like something from the Twilight Zone dropped in our laps..not to mention
the intelligence behind the technology! Almost as good as those
who constantly work to make DU a great place to be...

[amuse bouche]

3. Team Obama was fabulous, no doubt about that

Every day I was impressed. They left no stone unturned

[geek tragedy]

4. Can't read RS at work--who were the top 10? nt

[BlueCaliDem]

6. Here's the list

1. Jim Messina
Campaign Manager: From the start, Messina broke down the electorate into the president's most winnable demographics – unmarried women, Latinos, African Americans, LGBT voters – and targeted them with a passion for data and analytics unfamiliar in the trust-your-gut world of political consulting. "We knew exactly who we had to go get," Messina said, "and that's how we got the turnout numbers that mattered."

2. Michael Slaby
Chief Integration and Innovation Officer: The task of data integration fell to Michael Slaby, who launched a project – codename: Narwhal – that gave the Obama campaign a key advantage. If John Q. Smith from Columbus, Ohio, texted the campaign a $10 donation, they could know immediately where he lived, how he'd voted in the past, who his Facebook friends were, what issues were likely to drive his support, and the likelihood of converting him from a one-time giver to a big-time volunteer for the campaign.

3. Rayid Ghani
Chief Data Scientist: Ghani's directive was to devise algorithms that could sift through the massive amounts of data collected by the campaign. If you used Facebook to log onto the Obama campaign's website, you revealed to them your entire social network. The campaign also leveraged the work of 2 million volunteers who interviewed more than 24 million voters – and took notes that could be plumbed for their "motivations, attitudes, and protestations."

4. Harper Reed
Chief Technology Officer: Reed oversaw the creation of in-house tech tools, the most powerful of which was Dashboard – the campaign's all-in-one solution to empowering organizers and managing their efforts.

5. Jeremy Bird
Field General: Organizing the Obama campaign's unprecedented army of get-out-the-vote volunteers was Jeremy Bird, a former Harvard divinity student who took to political organizing as though it were his higher calling.

6. Teddy Goff
Digital Director: Teddy Goff directed the Obama campaign's digital operations. That included handling the campaign's email list for fundraising. The campaign famously A/B tested the efficacy of different asks to small groups – emails beginning with "hey" were particularly effective – before blasting the best performer to the entire list. The end result: $690 million raised online, up from $500 million in 2008.

7. David Axelrod
Senior Adviser: As he did in 2008, David Axelrod reprised his role as the campaign's big-picture strategist. Immediately after the shellacking of the 2010 election, Axelrod recalled at the Harvard conference, he recognized that "the gravitational pull in the GOP was very much to the right" and that any plausible Republican candidate was going to "have to pass through that tollbooth to be nominated."

8. Stephanie Cutter
Deputy Campaign Manager: Every campaign needs an attack dog and someone to call "bullshit." Obama 2012 found both skills in Stephanie Cutter, the most high-profile woman on staff, whose nickname in Chicago was "The Ninja."

9. David Simas
Director of Opinion Research: David Simas ran the single most sophisticated polling operation in the history of presidential politics. And his operation helped not only guide the campaign's message on Romney's Bain record and building a better future for the middle class, it also gave the campaign deep confidence going into election day that it was on target for victory.

10. Jim Margolis
Senior Adviser, Adman: Jim Margolis led the president's TV ad blitz, outfoxing Mitt Romney and his allies to air far more television spots despite being outspent.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-obama-campaigns-real-heroes-20121126#ixzz2EfTj8CMA
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

[geek tragedy]

15. Thanks! nt

[Whisp]

5. thanks, love background stuff. n/t

[Dalai_1]

9. Thank you for your reply!

I do also!

[BlueCaliDem]

7. An invaluable team that's worth their weight in gold!

I'm pretty sure these people will be much sought after for the 2014 midterms and 2016 presidential elections! [URL=http://www.sherv.net/bananas.love-emoticon-3192.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[JackRiddler]

8. Oh hooray for their careers!

[BlueCaliDem]

10. Absolutely! eom

[JackRiddler]

12. Because that's what it's all about!

How much they are going to make next year! Hooray!

[BlueCaliDem]

16. Oh!

Your response was

That said, they deserve every cent they're going to make because they got the job done, and all Americans will benefit from a second term of President Obama as opposed to a President Romney. Even YOU can't deny that.

[Dalai_1]

17. Take a look at this

link...seems the republicans are going to tear their "campaign" apart..to
"see what went wrong"

(Thank you BlueCali for listing the top ten for Greek tragedy)


http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/12/10/rnc_to_investigate_what_went_wrong.html

[BlueCaliDem]

18. Thanks for the link!

I don't know why the Republicans can't see what everyone else appears to see: that the Republican platform sucks. Noone - who isn't full of fear and hatred for colored people or uber-rich - believes the Republican platform is worth voting for. That's it in a nutshell. The only review the GOP is going to make by dissecting their failed campaigns, is how to be better at and more effective in bamboozling, fooling, lying, and cheating the electorate enough to get elected, but their policies will remain the same: they suck.

And you're welcome regarding the top ten list I've posted for greek tragedy. It was a pleasure.

[Dalai_1]

19. Rove's 'time out' from faux

is apparently over! I guess the "review" has been completed!

[Dalai_1]

11. I look forward to someday

reading a book about these fine people with more details..

[Tarheel_Dem]

13. This is amazing. I'm astonished that the media's made up narrative about the "enthusiasm gap" was

never really proven, nor was it was it challenged very much. I think we were all amazed that the president's team was able to drive up percentages with key groups, especially given the amount of money thrown at him, and the long knives coming from both the far left and the right.

I'm most delighted that this president will be in the history books, not only for winning in '08, but winning a resounding 2nd term. Thanks for posting this.

[Dalai_1]

14. Amazing how the Republicans

are still scratching their heads..trying to figure out what went wrong etc...
They were working on ideas(to say the least) and campaigning in the last century..or even
the Victorian era compared with the brilliance of these fine
people we had in our Democrat Campaign