Finally, at 65% by my Kindle, into "These Truths" Mad Dog stumbled onto what he had been looking for, or, at least, an open window into the room, through which he could see some of the truth.
Jill Lepore reports on a meeting which occurs at Harvard after every election, in which men who headed the campaigns of each of the candidates sit around and talk about what they had done running those campaigns, like generals after a war, or, as Lepore puts it more pungently, as butchers with no sympathy for the pig.
The managers of each of the 17 campaigns for the Republican primary candidates were there. Now, of course, as Lepore had demonstrated, what the campaign managers wrought was only part of the story, as campaigns get out on the internet and into the public discourse, but there was such an illumination when Trump's campaign manager spoke, you knew there was important truth there.
Corey Lewandowski said:
"We were going to ...run on our wealth, and not run from it, and to monopolize the media attention by using social media unlike anybody else. What we know is that when Donald Trump put out a tweet, Fox News would cover it live."
Lepore reports: "Field organizing was over, he said. Newspapers, newspaper advertisements? Irrelevant, he said. 'Donald Trump buys ink by the television station,' he said. Trump hadn't run in any lane. Trump had run from a plane."
Lepore noted that during the 2016 campaign 37,000 polls had been conducted using 3 billion phone calls and more than 90% had refused to speak with the pollsters.
The crisis within the polling community was profound, as an entire industry realized their product was a sham. Nate Silver and his 580 group tried to explain that he had not been wrong to say there was a 70% chance Clinton would win because that meant there was a 30% chance, a real chance, Trump would win. That argument appealed to only the most sophisticated. What we wanted from Silver was the answer and he had given the wrong answer. He had said: Trump wins. And if he did not say it, that is what we heard. Why would we even be listening to Silver if all he had to offer was: Well, nobody really knows. It could go either way.
Mad Dog finds in this report, great relief.
At a meeting with Hampton Democrats before the recent Nov 6, 2018 election, he had asked about investing in exit polling and was immediately confronted by the chairman of the Rockingham County Democrats with an irate, "We can't worry about that! We have to worry about winning!"
The head of the "Senior Democrats" also bellowed, exit polling, any effort other than getting Democrats knocking on doors (canvassing) or writing letters to the editor of the Portsmouth Herald, anything other than what Democrats had done for the past fifty years to win elections was a dangerous, energy sapping formula for defeat.
Mad Dog looked at these two men and could only groan, inwardly.
Old men, whose identities were tied to old methods, railing against the machine. Cobblers of fine shoes who raged against assembly lines and mass production.
Luddites.
Why were these men even at this meeting? They were both retired. They found meaning in doing what they do for campaigns. It made them feel important, relevant. It afforded them the sense of still being in control.
But their time had passed. They were like those old, gray haired school teachers who insisted children should still be memorizing Latin declensions.
Mad Dog had insisted since Nov 8, 2016 the Democrats had no idea what hit them.
He had "canvassed" every weekend for months in the run up to that election and saw teams of Democrats knocking on doors, and never a single Trump canvasser. And yet, in certain towns, Kingston, Hampton Falls, he saw a sea of Trump lawn signs.
Where did all those lawn signs come from? They were like phantoms...no people visible, but signs everywhere.
Now Corey Lewandowski had answered that question. Trump had had no "ground game" because he had an airplane. He had campaigned from the top down, not the bottom up and he had reached millions.
He still disdains retail persuasion--he flies to huge arenas, crows about the lines wrapping around the buildings trying to get in, stokes up 20,000 fans at a time and then flies away. Three times a week.
Meanwhile, in Hampton, New Hampshire, we have pairs of citizens in blue jeans, knocking on doors, and it's a good morning if 5 out of thirty citizens even bother to answer the the knock at the door.
When he knocked on doors prior to this "blue wave" election, Mad Dog learned, again, the pollsters and the two old men back at the Democratic headquarters on Route 1 had no idea what was out there, driving decisions. He heard from men and women who had benefited from the Trump tax cut for the rich who said they were going to vote Democratic, straight down the ticket, "Because of him." And they did not have to say who "him" was.
"But what do you not like about him? What are your issues?" Mad Dog asked. "Immigration? The Wall? Guns? Opioids?"
They'd just shake their heads and say, "Him."
These reticent citizens, it should be noted were educated, wealthy, privileged.
The best Mad Dog could guess is that Mr. Trump's insistence on rejecting the standards of "reasoned" argument, of basing everything on "you hear that" or "they are terrible people" offended their notion of what reason, intelligence and fairness is all about.
But we have no real exit studies. We cannot really know.
In medicine, sometimes a single well studied case can tell you more than a study of 20,000 patients who you know little about.
Maybe the same is true here. We just have to study a few voters, but really question them, really keep asking until we figure out how they actually think.
Whatever we do, going forward, we cannot beat the foe who is flying airplanes, by riding along the ground on our horses, waving swords at the air.
Those two old men and Ray Buckley and all the Democrats in place now claim their methods were proven correct on Nov 6, 2018. Democrats swept into majorities in the state House of Representatives, the state Senate and the Executive Council.
Of course, the Democrats cannot really explain why they lost the Governorship.
Rockingham County Democrats recently met to congratulate themselves on their success this past election. But looking at the results, one can only conclude the success at the state house did not accrue because of efforts in Rockingham County--it must have been from other parts of the state. It is true, Hampton and Exeter went blue, but Candia, Deerfield, Nottingham, Raymond, Sanddown, Londoderry, Derry, Windham, Salem, Danville, Hampstead, Kingston, Atkinson, Plaistow, Newton, Kensignton, South Hampton, Seabrook, Hampton Falls sent a grand total of two Democrats to Concord, against 54 Republicans.
And we still don't know what hit us.
Jill Lepore reports on a meeting which occurs at Harvard after every election, in which men who headed the campaigns of each of the candidates sit around and talk about what they had done running those campaigns, like generals after a war, or, as Lepore puts it more pungently, as butchers with no sympathy for the pig.
The managers of each of the 17 campaigns for the Republican primary candidates were there. Now, of course, as Lepore had demonstrated, what the campaign managers wrought was only part of the story, as campaigns get out on the internet and into the public discourse, but there was such an illumination when Trump's campaign manager spoke, you knew there was important truth there.
Corey Lewandowski said:
"We were going to ...run on our wealth, and not run from it, and to monopolize the media attention by using social media unlike anybody else. What we know is that when Donald Trump put out a tweet, Fox News would cover it live."
Lepore reports: "Field organizing was over, he said. Newspapers, newspaper advertisements? Irrelevant, he said. 'Donald Trump buys ink by the television station,' he said. Trump hadn't run in any lane. Trump had run from a plane."
Lepore noted that during the 2016 campaign 37,000 polls had been conducted using 3 billion phone calls and more than 90% had refused to speak with the pollsters.
The crisis within the polling community was profound, as an entire industry realized their product was a sham. Nate Silver and his 580 group tried to explain that he had not been wrong to say there was a 70% chance Clinton would win because that meant there was a 30% chance, a real chance, Trump would win. That argument appealed to only the most sophisticated. What we wanted from Silver was the answer and he had given the wrong answer. He had said: Trump wins. And if he did not say it, that is what we heard. Why would we even be listening to Silver if all he had to offer was: Well, nobody really knows. It could go either way.
Mad Dog finds in this report, great relief.
At a meeting with Hampton Democrats before the recent Nov 6, 2018 election, he had asked about investing in exit polling and was immediately confronted by the chairman of the Rockingham County Democrats with an irate, "We can't worry about that! We have to worry about winning!"
The head of the "Senior Democrats" also bellowed, exit polling, any effort other than getting Democrats knocking on doors (canvassing) or writing letters to the editor of the Portsmouth Herald, anything other than what Democrats had done for the past fifty years to win elections was a dangerous, energy sapping formula for defeat.
Mad Dog looked at these two men and could only groan, inwardly.
Old men, whose identities were tied to old methods, railing against the machine. Cobblers of fine shoes who raged against assembly lines and mass production.
Luddites.
Why were these men even at this meeting? They were both retired. They found meaning in doing what they do for campaigns. It made them feel important, relevant. It afforded them the sense of still being in control.
But their time had passed. They were like those old, gray haired school teachers who insisted children should still be memorizing Latin declensions.
Mad Dog had insisted since Nov 8, 2016 the Democrats had no idea what hit them.
He had "canvassed" every weekend for months in the run up to that election and saw teams of Democrats knocking on doors, and never a single Trump canvasser. And yet, in certain towns, Kingston, Hampton Falls, he saw a sea of Trump lawn signs.
Where did all those lawn signs come from? They were like phantoms...no people visible, but signs everywhere.
Now Corey Lewandowski had answered that question. Trump had had no "ground game" because he had an airplane. He had campaigned from the top down, not the bottom up and he had reached millions.
He still disdains retail persuasion--he flies to huge arenas, crows about the lines wrapping around the buildings trying to get in, stokes up 20,000 fans at a time and then flies away. Three times a week.
Meanwhile, in Hampton, New Hampshire, we have pairs of citizens in blue jeans, knocking on doors, and it's a good morning if 5 out of thirty citizens even bother to answer the the knock at the door.
When he knocked on doors prior to this "blue wave" election, Mad Dog learned, again, the pollsters and the two old men back at the Democratic headquarters on Route 1 had no idea what was out there, driving decisions. He heard from men and women who had benefited from the Trump tax cut for the rich who said they were going to vote Democratic, straight down the ticket, "Because of him." And they did not have to say who "him" was.
"But what do you not like about him? What are your issues?" Mad Dog asked. "Immigration? The Wall? Guns? Opioids?"
They'd just shake their heads and say, "Him."
These reticent citizens, it should be noted were educated, wealthy, privileged.
The best Mad Dog could guess is that Mr. Trump's insistence on rejecting the standards of "reasoned" argument, of basing everything on "you hear that" or "they are terrible people" offended their notion of what reason, intelligence and fairness is all about.
But we have no real exit studies. We cannot really know.
In medicine, sometimes a single well studied case can tell you more than a study of 20,000 patients who you know little about.
Maybe the same is true here. We just have to study a few voters, but really question them, really keep asking until we figure out how they actually think.
Whatever we do, going forward, we cannot beat the foe who is flying airplanes, by riding along the ground on our horses, waving swords at the air.
Those two old men and Ray Buckley and all the Democrats in place now claim their methods were proven correct on Nov 6, 2018. Democrats swept into majorities in the state House of Representatives, the state Senate and the Executive Council.
Of course, the Democrats cannot really explain why they lost the Governorship.
Rockingham County Democrats recently met to congratulate themselves on their success this past election. But looking at the results, one can only conclude the success at the state house did not accrue because of efforts in Rockingham County--it must have been from other parts of the state. It is true, Hampton and Exeter went blue, but Candia, Deerfield, Nottingham, Raymond, Sanddown, Londoderry, Derry, Windham, Salem, Danville, Hampstead, Kingston, Atkinson, Plaistow, Newton, Kensignton, South Hampton, Seabrook, Hampton Falls sent a grand total of two Democrats to Concord, against 54 Republicans.
And we still don't know what hit us.
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