BUT HE IS MISSING THE REAL POINT. J. Christian Adams has written a fascinating article about a giant computer database called Catalist. It was the tool that Team Obama exploited to stunning success in the past two election cycles: an enormous database containing EVERYTHING about each person in the country, updated constantly by hordes of participating liberal individuals and groups. You really need to read this; it explains -- in part -- how the Democrats are cleaning the clocks of Republicans at the ballot box. So, how does Catalist work? ...the data feeding the central Catalist database are coming from a wide swath of sources. Public records, pollsters, campaigns, non-profits, activist groups, unions, parties, commercial data — scores and scores of sources are feeding the central database data. For example, when an environmental group does neighborhood door knocking for cash, the results of those contacts are fed into Catalist. You have your own individual voter file in Catalist. Everyone does. Under that file might be a massive amount of information about you — more than probably exists in any other database in the world. Whom you work for, what car you might drive, donations you have made, assumptions based on your neighborhood, anything in a public government database about you, consumer preferences, partisan preferences, what licenses you have, what you might have said to pollsters on the phone, memberships, how you treated the young left-wing activist knocking on your door a few years ago, and on and on and on. And: In the vast central database, these data are organized, structured and housed by Catalist, a limited liability company with offices in Washington, D.C. If you contribute data to the database, you can also be a customer of the database. And the customer list is vast — including the effort to reelect President Obama. Customers receive tailored information to suit their needs and microtarget voters. But here is the real pay dirt: The most important thing Catalist allows the left to do is _drive deeper into the pool of extreme left-wing Americans who are otherwise unmotivated to actually vote_. Catalist allows customers to identify potential voters on the far ideological fringe, but who are usually unmotivated to vote. Catalist allows the left to then identify issues, concerns, or other lifestyle facts which would permit a customer to motivate the usually unmotivated on that fringe to vote.... Obama won reelection because he drove deeper into his ideological base than any Democrat ever had. His campaign largely ignored the middle and instead used Catalist data to wring out nearly every possible far-left vote they could.... While Romney pivoted to the middle after the primaries and tried to attract moderate and independent voters, Obama used Catalist to create a bigger base. Obama’s message was a leftist message, even during the debates. The idea was to drive turnout on the far left ... and to identify Americans on the far left who would usually be unmotivated to vote.... Catalist is also devastating to Republicans because it sends them on an expensive goose chase to spend gobs of money to target moderates and independents while Democrats turn out their base cheaper, and with more certainty. A “moderate” voter costs more to persuade than a far fringe ideological leftist. Even a usually politically unmotivated welfare recipient is cheaper to get to the polls than a “moderate” and “thoughtful” undecided moderate who speaks in terms of “voting for the candidate on issues and not the party.” Let that sink in. Observe that the DEMOCRATS have been chiding the GOP for tea party extremism, and urging it to go after moderates and middle of the roaders and independents. Now really, people -- why do you suppose the Dems would be telling the GOP how to WIN elections? What the Dems know, and the knuckleheaded RINOs and pragmatists of the GOP do not, is that the REAL opportunity for GOP wins are when they GO AFTER THEIR HARD-CORE CONSERVATIVE BASE. In practical political terms, the stampede for a moderate image is political suicide. You would think that a long gray line of GOP moderate losers -- the Fords, Romneys, McCains, Doles, kinder, gentler GHW Bush, etc., would drive home the truth that this strategy isnt working. Instead, who are the GOP moderate leaders turning AGAINST in their own party? Who are they desperate to shun and defeat in primaries, then sabotage in general elections? The very candidates who would be their salvation. What Adams discovered is the the Catalist program is utilized by the Dems NOT to identify and pursue independents and moderates, but their LEFT-WING TRUE BELIEVERS. And it plays right into their electoral strategy to sucker the GOP to do the precise opposite: to go after the hard-to-attract skeptics. Ill have more to say below, in the comments. For now, take 15 minutes to read the article and absorb the charts and graphs. Its empirical support for what many of us have been saying for years: The ONLY way to win is to run PRINCIPLED CANDIDATES AND PRINCIPLED CAMPAIGNS, and thus inspire and rally the base. pjmedia/jchristianadams/2014/09/17/obamas-catalist-database/?singlepage=true
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 23:24:38 +0000
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