Did ORCA sink the Romney Campaign?

Much has been written in the last week about the Obama campaign's superior data system, and the Romney campaign's untested ORCA GOTV tech that crashed on E-Day.  The between-the-lines inference is that the Romney campaign could have won, if only their election-day GOTV system had worked.  And though I worked on Obama's data team during the final five weeks of this cycle, and was nothing but impressed by the amazing data infrastructure that had been built up over the past four years, I still don't believe that what won it for us was superior data.  That helped to facilitate our win, sure.  And I'm proud to have even briefly been a member of that team.  But the real win came from how each candidate presented their message to the voters.

The Obama message was simple.  A continuation of 2008's Tax Relief for the Middle Class talking points, coupled with Joe Biden's war-cry of "General Motors is Alive and Osama Bin Laden is Dead."  The Romney message throughout the campaign was so convoluted that I doubt anyone, especially Mitt Romney, could sum it up in just a few sentences.  He is on-record as having had two different positions on abortion on the same day.  By the third debate, Mitt Romney's message had become "Whatever Obama's Message Is, Well, That's My Message Too, But I Can Do It Better Because I Say I Can".  Mitt Romney was actually using "Hope and Change" as an unofficial slogan within a few days of the election.

Off the Cuff

Back a few cycles ago in a nearby town, a young "tracker", that is: someone hired by a campaign to discreetly record the opponent at events to catch them saying or doing something that could be construed negative, was caught at an event by the congressional candidate he was tracking.  The candidate, a former college athlete and a good ten inches taller than the young tracker, demanded that the tracker hand over the video camera.  The tracker complied, with the camera recording the whole incident.  The candidate put the video up on Youtube.

Any candidate, from Soil and Water Conservation District Manager to President, should know in this age of smartphones, that anything he or she says anywhere could end up on video available to the public. There is no such thing as a "private" campaign event.  And most candidates are not lucky enough to catch a tracker in flagrante delicto.  That is why the concept of message discipline is so important in campaign politics not only when the microphone is known to be on, but even when one does not know for dead certain that everyone in the room is on your side.  

The recent video of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaking "off the cuff" about overprivileged Latinos, grateful Chinese factory workers, the Israel/Palestine conflict, and other delightful topics provides the most excellent recent example.  Mother Jones has posted online the 18 minute video of the candidate in a room full of mostly high-dollar donors.  And one tracker.

The problem with the video, by Romney's own account, is that he spoke "inelegantly".  And that is true.  The substance of what he said was not at all very different from the beliefs he's espoused throughout his entire campaign.  The style, however, was unrehearsed and his jokes were pretty bad, and had he stuck to the script and recited his GOP talking points to that crowd, the audience probably would have been fine with it.


This video is strong evidence of a campaign that has been poorly planned from day one. Romney's advisers should have drilled message discipline into him from the start.  Even a college basketball player cum congressional candidate knows: the cameras are everywhere waiting for you to slip up.  Stay focused, stay on-message, and if someone is taping you, grab that camera and own it.