Ahm, What Digby said. (Really)

Republicans demonstrated yet again their ability to raise more money than Democrats and to deploy the get-out-the-vote and absentee-vote operation developed by the Republican National Committee.

The committee's chairman, Ken Mehlman, said Wednesday that Republicans had 160 people in this district helping to get out the vote.

"They made 164,000 phone calls," Mr. Mehlman said.

Democrats said the Democratic National Committee had no similar effort on the ground here.

Why wasn't it enough? In the days that followed, theories circulated claiming that Republicans had stolen votes from Kerry by messing with the results from electronic voting machines. But the truth was that the Bush campaign had created an entirely new math in Ohio. It wouldn't have been possible eight years ago, or even four. But with so many white, conservative and religious voters now living in the brand-new town houses and McMansions in Ohio's growing ring counties, Republicans were able to mobilize a stunning turnout in areas where their support was more concentrated than it was in the past. Bush's operatives did precisely what they told me seven months ago they would do in these communities: they tapped into a volunteer network using local party organizations, union rolls, gun clubs and churches. They backed it up with a blizzard of targeted appeals; according to the preliminary results of a survey done by the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, one representative home in Portage County, just outside Cleveland, received 11 pieces of mail from the Republican National Committee.

This effort wasn't visible to Democrats because it was taking place on an entirely new terrain, in counties that Democrats had some vague notion of, but which they never expected could generate so many votes. The 10 Ohio counties with the highest turnout percentages, many of them small and growing, all went for Bush, and none of them had a turnout rate of less than 75 percent.

For Democrats, this new phenomenon on Election Day felt like some kind of horror movie, with conservative voters rising up out of the hills and condo communities in numbers the Kerry forces never knew existed. "They just came in droves," Jennifer Palmieri told me two days after the election. "We didn't know they had that room to grow. It's like, 'Crunch all you want -- we'll make more.' They just make more Republicans."

In hindsight, it seemed significant that Bouchard, months before, felt constricted enough by ACT's legal and financial realities to shift its focus, moving canvassers out of more contested counties and precincts and away from the business of trying to convert undecided voters. In the end, these were the voters Kerry needed. But Bouchard and his troops ran smack up against the inherent limits of a 527 in a presidential campaign. They could turn out the vote, but they couldn't really alter its shape.

Therein, perhaps, lies the real lesson from Ohio, and from the election as a whole. From the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and especially after the disputed election of 2000, Democrats operated on the premise that they were superior in numbers, if only because their supporters lived in such concentrated urban communities. If they could mobilize every Democratic vote in America's industrial centers -- and in its populist heartland as well -- then they would win on math alone. Not anymore. Republicans now have their own concentrated vote, and it will probably continue to swell. Turnout operations like ACT can be remarkably successful at corralling the votes that exist, but turnout alone is no longer enough to win a national election for Democrats. The next Democrat who wins will be the one who changes enough minds.

"I can't think of a thing in Ohio that we could have done more to boost our vote," Steve Rosenthal told me three days after the election, as the trauma of the defeat began to subside. "The shortcoming in some ways is that the national Democratic Party has built this values wall between itself and a lot of voters out there, and the Republicans took advantage of it. The rude awakening here is that I always thought there were more of us out there. And this time there were more of them."

These people are not doctrinaire Dems, they have a lot of conservative ideas. But we, as Dems have to live in the real world and we have to start talking to real people where they live. And most people are not wonks or liberal purists. The Repubs have the advantage still.

August 31, 2005

Kerry and Edwards to Stay in Recount Case!!! Trial to Start in August 2006

Don McTigue, attorney for John Kerry and John Edwards, appeared in federal court in Toledo, before Judge Carr, on August 30th, and told the Court that Kerry and Edwards intend to remain in the case.

Judge Carr set an August 22, 2006 trial date.

Additionally he consolidated the two recount cases, Rios v. Blackwell and Yost v. Cobb & Badnarik. He gave the plaintiffs until September 15th to file amended pleadings (plaintiff's counsel had requested an opportunity to streamline their claims).

Judge Carr set a discovery cut-off of May 1, 2006, and ruled that any summary judgment motions must be made by May 15, 2006.

http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com/2005/08/kerry-and-edwards-to-stay-in-recount.html

February 10, 2006

Associated Press Reports: Ohio Recount Suit Dismissed
According to the Associated Press, the Ohio recount suit has been dismissed:

Judge Dismisses Penultimate Ohio Lawsuit
By JOHN McCARTHY, Associated Press Writer
Thu Feb 9, 10:42 PM ET

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit over Ohio's recount of the 2004 presidential election, leaving only one court challenge remaining from the state's role in the re-election of President Bush.

U.S. District Judge James Carr in Toledo threw out the suit filed by a voting rights group on behalf of the Green Party and Libertarian candidates. Tuesday's dismissal, barring an appeal, leaves active only a suit filed by the League of Women Voters of Ohio.

http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com/2006/02/associated-press-reports-ohio-recount.html