By J. Christian Adams
The Democrats and the institutional left have a new political tool that allows them virtually to ignore moderates yet still win elections.
This tool, the Catalist database, was employed in the 2012 election. That election defied conventional wisdom: Mitt Romney sought and won independent voters overwhelmingly, but still lost. If you wondered why the conventional wisdom about independents and moderates didn't seem so wise in 2012, the answer is Catalist.
Beyond winning elections, Catalist also allows the Democrats to turn the policy narrative upside down and suffer no political consequence for implementing radical policies which appeal to their base. The Obama administration's lurch to the far left without consequence can be understood by understanding Catalist. Obama thrives politically by satisfying his base. Simply, Catalist is a game changer not just for politics, but for policy. It is the left's machinery for fundamentally transforming America.
And candidates, organizations, strategists and consultants who do not understand what they are up against in Catalist risk being overrun.
I'll explain how it works in a moment. I had the opportunity to explore the functionality and architecture of Catalist in a way few – if any – others on the opposite side of Catalist have had, and what I discovered sure explains a lot about the last six years.
No longer are Democrats anchored to the preferences of Americans in the middle. Bill Clinton's triangulation is as obsolete as color film and bag phones. Obama has pushed policies far outside the mainstream, and even far outside popular will, but succeeded in wringing out an Electoral College majority in 2012 because of Catalist.
Unfortunately, Republicans have no functioning counterpart data tool to Catalist. They have multiple and competing shells of Catalist, but they have nothing on the collaborative scale as Catalist, largely due to the fact that Republicans won't collaborate and are fiercely territorial of their competing data sets. Democrats and the institutional left, in contrast, have created a collaborative and fully integrated system that allows them to ignore the middle while extracting unprecedented turnout from a micro-targeted, ideologically far-left base.
Catalist is an example of the consultant, profit-driven culture of the GOP being beaten by the messianic crusader culture of the left.
2 examples of the power of the left's data tools
During the 2012 election, a producer for a conservative news network received a knock at his door in a key swing state. Two neighbors were standing on his stoop campaigning for Obama. They weren't there to talk to him – they were there to talk to his wife. They knew she was employed in a profession which the Obama campaign had decided to microtarget: folks who deliver services to special needs children. The two neighbors were already armed with this personalized information. The Obama campaign didn't just send a direct mail piece to the target or make a telephone call. Instead, the campaign matched a microtargeted demographic (special needs service providers) with a highly motivated Obama volunteer in close neighborly proximity to the target. Then they armed the neighbor/volunteer with data to visit the target.
The best the GOP has done to mimic this event is to give "walk and knock" lists to volunteers who are not from the neighborhood, and certainly not armed with particular messaging. Or, the GOP bothers the target with telephone calls or a direct mail campaign containing at best a whiff of microtargeting.
The second example involves a recent statewide election. In a state where one Democrat and one Republican must be appointed to run each precinct, an election official described for me a problem encountered with the Democratic Party. It seems the Democrat she nominated to run the polls wasn't sufficiently ideologically pure. What evidence did the party have to object to her bona fides? A response to a telephone survey many years earlier in which the nominated poll official wasn't supporting the Democratic nominee for United States Senate.
Republicans don't have anything even close to this sort of data, where answers to poll questions in years past could be employed in future fights.
The development and use of Catalist by the left has serious political consequences for Republicans in Congress, consequences I fear consultants, candidates and strategists haven't even begun to contemplate. Consider the course charted by some GOP leaders: While they have sought to steer a middle course between Democrats and the tea party, Catalist is rendering moderation obsolete.
Steering a moderate (and cautious) course made perfect sense before Catalist. But now, failing to appeal to an activated and motivated political base spells doom, as the last two presidential elections have demonstrated.
To understand the power of Catalist, you must understand the complex Catalist architecture, and how it is different than anything used by the GOP or conservative causes, and I’ll explore that in my next column.
Editor's note: J. Christian Adams' new eBook, available on Oct. 7, is "Crimes Against the Republic: How the Democratic Party's Voter Fraud Is Fundamentally Transforming America":
A conspiracy to undermine the very foundations of our republic is unfolding right under our noses. Democratic Party operatives are manipulating elections, the cornerstone of our representative government, and the Department of Justice is turning a blind eye. But one man refused to look the other way: whistleblower J. Christian Adams. In this diary of his experiences exposing voter fraud, Adams tells a chilling story of the abuses of power inside and out of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Adams has been a PJM columnist since November 2011. An election lawyer who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice, he is part of the rare brotherhood of uniquely American heroes: the whistleblowers. He has helped expose the Department of Justice's failure to prosecute the radical New Black Panthers group, and he co-authored PJ Media's "Every Single One" series that revealed the politicized hiring practices of the Obama Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Adams continues to write about the Department of Justice and other legal matters at his PJ Media column, "Rule of Law." His experience working at the DOJ gives him intimate knowledge of his area of focus: elections. At his column, Christian decodes the "system" for people unfamiliar with it by providing keen insight into what is happening.
As the midterms loom ever larger next month, stop by PJ Media’s new website, The Grid, your one-stop shop for everything in the 2014 mid-terms elections. Run by PJ Media editors at large Bryan Preston and Liz Sheld, The Grid, an evolution in presenting highly visual and straight-to-the-point content, will curate the best election coverage from the PJ universe and beyond, in a format that will let you see what's happening at a glance on your computer, tablet or phone. Your election coverage, your way. Check out The Grid at Grid.PJMedia.com.
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