"Rove has a lot of explaining to do …The billionaire donors I hear are livid"

[cleduc]

13. I responded to this on Huff post. This is an expansion of what I said:

When Dr. Wang, Nate Silver and Drew Linzer can all predict with such high accuracy where the race stood, Karl Rove et al have some explaining to do to their billionaires who tried to buy the White House.

Those of us who follow the polling closely know a number of GOP biased pollsters had their finger on the scale to keep the perception of a close race alive to help attract donations and give the media something to cling to that would help their ratings: a tight race and as a result, help hide the true perception of their flailing, dishonest campaign. It is all about power and money for a number of these pollsters: Rasmussen, Gravis & others. And it's important to be aware of the others because only one poll by a particular pollster is counted in typical poll of polls -so you usually need more than one pollster to really sway that number. And that's what they did. They did it in 2008 to a lesser degree.

Silver, Wang & Linzer filter out the bias and that's a key component of how they arrive at an accurate result. There's little doubt Rove knew - he's been around in this game a long, long time.

Rove and the Romney camp knew but they also knew that if the billionaires found out, like the public, the money coming into their campaign bank accounts from the billionaires would dry up too or be spent elsewhere. No one wants to make a bad bet.

The Romney campaign was one big lie after another. It was by far the most dishonest campaign of my lifetime. So it's poetic justice that the billionaires who knowingly backed this lie of a campaign got lied to as well and ripped off for hundreds of millions of dollars.

But before taking too much satisfaction in that outcome, I think US democracy dodged a bullet this time. This race was far closer than it should ever have been because of the influence of these wealthy few on the media, the polling, voter suppression and the campaign dollars. And some Democrats down the ticket lost to this overwhelming money - so it didn't entirely go to waste. This administration of the next four years may be a last chance in the near future to wipe this garbage out of US elections. So by all means take a moment to enjoy the results of your hard work. You sincerely deserve it and you've made me proud. But please don't relax for long. Stay on this issue and the voter suppression/fair election issues relentlessly until they have been eradicated - because all Americans and the example you set for the world as a great democracy deserve that.