France ≠ 'Merica

the main problem here, sadly, is that she's not smart enough to know that

I'd say I have three concerns with the Ossoff campaign and the Ossoff/Handel election. It's tough to rank them, but I'll try.

1. The Republicans have zero shame, and the Democrats have failed to find ways they find acceptable to counter that. Example: they blame Ossoff for the baseball practice shooting. Democrats just deny it and condemn the act, right? But, in general that strategy is not effective. It can lead to headlines like "Democrats deny being to blame for Scalise shooting." (I'm just spitballing here, I'm not sure that was the exact outcome here, but in general that's one of the major issues with that strategy.) They linked him to ISIS, as well. These attack ads are insane, absurd, and totally false. Democrats haven't sunk that low, but they absolutely must find effective counter attacks in 2018. As insane as these attacks are, they do get people out to vote and they do fool people.

Now, to the parts you asked about...

2. Execution. I am ranking this higher because a well-executed message can win right now even if it's not the optimal message. Like, if you picked Russia instead of healthcare and it was a little more optimal to use healthcare, you could still win on a well-executed message. Also, because the Democrats overall have struggled on this the last few years even when picking the right message... and I'm more interested in analyzing the whole party for '18 than lambasting Ossoff. That said, he was more aggressive early on and then tried to settle into this cookie cutter moderate Democrat role. Whatever message you pick, the execution damn well better be aggressive. "I'm just going to fine tune it a little, eliminate some wasteful spending, hold the President accountable, and help out our area a little more than it is being helped now," is not a winning execution.

3. Messaging. The party as a whole has been failing to get on a consistent message. Running a poll or doing a focus group, then acting accordingly is a huge mistake... Why? Well, you have to remember that a well-executed message can educate the voters a little, and on some issues they're so poorly educated they don't know how badly they're being screwed. So, for example, a focus group in Georgia may find that voters aren't too worried about Trumpcare and they hate Obamacare... So you run that and shy away from it. Okay, but if you polled those people on their views on Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, Trumpcare and cutting Medicaid, Medicare and healthcare subsidies for people making $50,000 a year, you'd probably find that you did have a winning message on saving the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, Medicare and preserving subsidies... and that those people didn't realize what Trumpcare was doing. So you might have had the most effective messaging strategy right under your nose, but because you didn't dig into it, you screwed the pooch. Using data is extremely important, but you have to make sure it's the correct data and that it is not skewed or biased by the phrasing of questions or by the respondents lack of knowledge on an issue. If there's a lack of knowledge, you have to figure out whether you can change that before the election and if so, whether that's the best use of your time/money.

A great way to think about that is, if you run a focus group on healthcare and the results suggest you ignore it... but deep down you feel like, "WTF? This is the most important issue to these people, why don't they get it?"... Well in that case, you should probably dig deeper.

Last but not least, as for data-driven messaging, I think micro-targeting is going to be extremely important in 2018 given that the Democrats need to turn out their voters while flying somewhat under the radar. In a lot of these red districts, they aren't going to be able to outspend the Koch Brothers in a battle under the spotlight. The Republicans got the edge on this in 2016, and that's simply unacceptable - especially since the Democrats/Clinton were (should have been?) inheriting what should have been a much better technological campaign infrastructure from Obama's campaigns.

I'm not saying Hitler would or would not have risen to power here 80 years ago. I'm saying if he had, we would have been far more likely to reject Trump in 2016 given the experiences we knew about first or secondhand from our grandparents/parents.

Focus groups can be a very effective tool for market research if used correctly. Obviously team Ossof were not the sharpest tools in the shed.

No kidding. They're smarter than to put a Putin wannabe in charge.

I'm not sure if you guys have noticed the screen name, or this has come up before, but 88 stands for "Heil Hitler," to Nazis and white supremacists... So you're likely either arguing with a troll or a Nazi/white supremacist. Obviously, these people usually deny that's what it stands for, or come up with some other reason (in before August 8, 1988 is becky88's claimed birthday), but when someone is making political arguments that seem to line up somewhat, they voted for Trump, and there's an 88 in their screen name... Well, 2+2 doesn't equal 5.

I also wonder how much Team Ossoff became Team DNC/DCCC by the end... I'm not saying I followed it 100% from start to finish, but from what I saw he was more moderate and less feisty in the general than in the leadup to the jungle primary. If the DNC/DCCC had this influence on him it's a huge concern, as they've already shown a pattern of icing out progressives from the Sanders wing of the party... So now also for pushing people toward the middle? That is a losing strategy in '18.

Edited to add: I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with running moderate Democrats in red districts in '18 if there's grassroots support for them and they win the primary. What I am saying is that whoever is running should really not be pushed toward the middle... What won them the primary will be what gives them the best chance in the general.

All the evidence I've seen suggests campaigns are absolutely terrible at interpreting data.

who am i arguing with? i've been making fun of her because her posts are no longer HIM approved

If the data you followed brought you to this, of what use was the data?

(Also in France the mainstream right party roundly rejected Le Pen, they endorsed Macron)

yes, liberals believe facts

that's quite the slam, well done

Sorry, but no. The statement in question is just false.

"People still dislike Hilary even though it has been shown almost all the reasons for their dislike have pretty much been created by fake news stories implanted by Russian hackers and alt right news sources."

Was gonna say we fought for that but then realized my former ones though they're all still alive all dodged like trump did. In a narcissists are evil story--one got her name on the people who fought in the war memorial because nobody bothered to check before permanently engraving it on the stone.

Well, fighting for it and seeing the innocent masses suffer from it as opposed to being related to the innocent masses suffering/dying are very different and have different impacts on society going forward. Not to take anything away from any of the brave people who served in various ways, those who died in the war or lost loved ones in the war, but when the horror stories passed down relate to family and friends in concentration camps, or when you were politically sucked in and played a role in letting it happen, it's different.

At least, that's my opinion on why mainland Europe hasn't fallen for it as easily as the US in the current era.

This is a revealing take on a few levels. I will ignore the tactic of "shaming" and its effectiveness. Your premise in reality is that the polls were accurate in putting Ossof ahead and are concluding that attack ads carried her from a big deficit and a probable loss to a comfortable win. Not sure I'd make the conclusion that the polls were ever that accurate given that this is a Congressional election in a Republican district. You can prattle all you want about TRUMP carrying this district by a narrow margin but this race is for a different office, different branch of government, and arguably about a different kind of representation. Price was carrying this district by double digit margins. Why couldn't the argument be that the attack ads had little effect and that Ossof did much better than a Democrat would have otherwise expected?

Which reasons for disliking her have been proven true iyo?

at the end of the day I really think it is as simple as less taxes and more money in their pocket causes people to vote republican around here (as in suburban north OTP atlanta). That's just the mindset. There really isn't anything more to it than that. Gun control, abortion, yadda yadda, that's all peripheral.

It's odd that people in the area feel the need to lie to pollsters, because there was plenty of concern over Ossof being out of touch, beholden to Pelosi and out of state money, etc.

Of course, people do routinely lie to pollsters, which I don't get. Feels like lying to your doctor or mechanic to me, which I definitely don't see the point of.

I think it's more trying to self-rationalize reasons beyond "they'll take less of my paycheck"

People lie to doctors and mechanics all the time too.

Yeah, I know. It's an incredibly stupid thing to do. But people are stupid.

maybe the pollsters just suck

good reasons to lie to pollsters:

• To make poll results less reliable over time so that people show up and vote more, knowing they can't just trust that reported "4% lead" to be accurate.
• To make the parties spend more money in the race because they can't be sure if the race is really as safe as the polls suggest.
• To force the media to spend more money doing more polling if they want to get an accurate idea of where the race is.
• and other variations on these

The problem with that is the same reason you shouldn't lie to pollsters, partly. The unrelated problem is that it assumes everyone lying is doing so for the same purpose, which would require a staggering amount of coordination that none but the most ardent conspiracy theorists could accept.

The main problem is that such an action would not send the intended message to the intended recipient. This is part of the reason polling exists, because in an election you only have two options for a candidate: vote for them or don't. There's no way to convey which of their policies you agree or disagree with at the ballot box, you simply have to pick one person and back them. Polling can let voters express concerns or support that otherwise just voting doesn't let them. This is all contingent upon people being honest to pollsters, of course, much like it's harder to get an accurate diagnosis from a doctor you lie to.