The “powerful” database must have been available to Bush, Cheney, McCain, Romney and the GOP.
I worked Bush-Cheney04. The phone banking was pathetic, lots of hang ups, lots of no answers. The *Voter Vault* was cumbersome and we were nagged and cheer-led incessantly to “Git Er Done.” It was very difficult to find volunteers and then, in the last week or so, the Wizards of Washington came in. They were rude to us, rude to donors, blew off photo ops and made themselves hated. They had their own set of clipboards, their own methods and they just gave orders and acted bored.
We won that election (although not in my precinct or District or State), but no thanks to any great ground game, cyber or otherwise.
The Database belongs to Obama and the DNC and their assorted Soros-funded NGOs. It is not the property of whomever sits in the White House or runs as a GOP candidate. Steve is correct: GOP organization is pathetic, does no qualifying and is content to annoy everyone over and over again with the same tired script. They do not reach out to people and snub new members, at least here in my District. They happily take your dues, add you to the mailing list and go on doing whatever it is they have always done.
I had progressives telling everyone around them in 2012 that Romney would take away their birth control, their benefits, their pensions and their freedom. These were educated professionals both disseminating and receiving the information in a closed loop. They are not low information voters. They are one-sided information voters. They refuse to accept one word that is not from a sanctified progressive source and if you can find a dissenter, that dissenter will be purged and their information tainted in the eyes of the base.
It is lose-lose, for us.