PUMPING OUT THE VOTE: Bill Bradley writes: “As he steams smartly toward hoped for re-election four weeks from today, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a secret weapon, the largest and most technologically sophisticated voter mobilization operation California Republicans have ever seen.”
UPDATE: Reader Michael McFatter emails:
It’s not just California. Rove has been refining this machine for the last three elections and some smaller ones in between. This is the real reason they call him The Architect. When you hear The Architect you should think The Matrix, not building designer. This guy pioneered direct mail for politics in the 80’s to extraordinary success. Every election the system gets better. He experiments every election too, in select districts to see if new strategies work and then collects huge amounts of data back after the election. Newsweek had an article that brushed the surface of this, but it got buried under the Foley scandal. I think there are going to be some very, very surprised Democrats come November 8. It doesn’t matter if you lead at the polls if the other guy gets 95% of his supporters to cast their vote and you can only manage 65%.
A lot of Republicans are counting on this. But will the supporters turn out this time? Only if the Democrats overplay their hand as usual.