I popped over to the other side to see what's going on, in the spirit of this quote (that I found there):
What the people in this country need is to realize that they can't turn to only one source of information for balanced coverage.
The post that caught my eye is titled
Campaign Sources: The Romney Campaign was a Consultant Con Job.
The author dumps on Romney's consultants:
They say that the truth is the consultants essentially used the Romney campaign as a money making scheme, forcing employees to spin false data as truth in order to paint a rosy picture of a successful campaign as a form of job security.
They talk about ORCA, the Romney's campaign secret weapon, and compare it to Obama's campaign.
The Obama training manuals made ORCA look like a drunken monkey slapped together a powerpoint.
Jump into squiggle-ville for more.
Here's a juicy paragraph:
According to all the sources I spoke to, "the breakdown of the campaign can be traced to the primaries". One source saying "they looked at the guy who could raise the most money in history as a ride" adding that money no longer matters. That is the problem,also referring to the campaign overall as the "biggest political flim flam of all time".
In my opinion, one crazy thing is, this is Romney's campaign and his core strength is his success as a businessman. How could a successful businessman run an operation like the one they are describing? I know Romney doesn't run it, but he chooses the campaign's directors. Romney is responsible. If his strengths as a businessman were going to save our country, why didn't his campaign show them off?
The comments are fun, also. Some of them are thoughtful and worth reading. Here's most of the first one:
Yet more evidence that we have been living in fantasyland for too long now. I don't want to hear that this is all Romney's fault, or all the campaign's fault. The simple fact is that in the run-up to this election, we were fed a steady diet of lies, from all our "loyal" sources. We need to hold not only the Romney campaign accountable, but also the conservative press (specifically the Murdoch press - Fox was the worst of the bunch), and the establishment talking heads like Karl Rove and Peggy Noonan. We need to get clear about something: these people are selling us a product. They have been taking our money and telling us bedtime stories. We complain about the MSM, but can we honestly say that the conservative press has been more honest?
That writer echos much of what we've said on Kos over the past years. I feel like what he says has been obvious to me, the liberal, forever.
Another commenter makes the same point I do above:
And his central campaign message was that he was a better manager than Obama.
Here's a response to that comment:
Bush gets full credit for Rove. Obama gets full credit for his (painfully competent) team of Messina/Axelrod/Plouffe. And Romney gets the full blame for not having the basic data, not knowing how to manage a modern enterprise software project (no QA? no on-site stress tests? holy crap), not knowing how to diversify his data sources to cross-check their validity, etc, etc. Color me disgusted.
That commenter gives credit to Obama for a highly competent campaign staff (Note to Sarah Palin, assuming you are reading this: This is what a community organizer does).
Here's a comment that makes me sad, as it's from someone who donated to a multi-millionaire, one that gave his campaign execs huges bonuses last summer:
I donated to the Romney campaign. Not much, but it was what a could afford. I think it came out to about $300. That's grocery money to feed my family. That's gas money to get my kids to school and for me to get to work. And this is how it was spent? To line the pockets of wealthy charlatans? Words can't describe how angry this makes me. And this "good man" allowed this to go on right under his nose. Mitt Romney owes me and a lot of other Americans a huge apology.
Finally, a humorous (to me) comment snippet:
Just because Fox does a better job than the other networks, don't be afraid to shout loud and clear when they also make mistakes. An informed electorate is the brick and mortar of democracy.