but they didn't know which dem until April of 2012. I think the leadership gap in the recall was critical.
1) Re money
The money imbalance really didn't make as big a difference as we might have expected. Ignoring the insignificant 3rd party candidate, it was a 2 person race, Considering the the degrees of freedom in a 2 category analysis, every vote that went from the dems to the rs. actually created a 2 vote difference. -1 for the dems and +1 for the r's. The ~8% difference actually hinged on 4% conversion. All that money and the race came down to 4%. Four percent isn't really unsurmountable. It's a pretty traditional level of difference. So considering the money invested, the r's really got under performance. If I were a republican campaign funder I'd be thinking much of the money as spent for no good effect, and I'd be looking to not do that again.
2) Re rematch
Another great asymmetry, and it hasn't been discussed, was how long each candidate had to organize. Walker and the WI ALEC-republicans knew he'd be running in a recall by May 2011 as the first round of senate recalls gathered steam. That was not only time to raise unlimted money from all over the world, it was also time to strategize and do trial runs on messaging, The r's had time to really use their money advantage in a targeted way.
The dems might have thought there were recalls coming, but they didn't have a clue who the candidate would be. And the message really must be sized to fit the candidate as well as the campaign. Dems and recall supporters didn't really know that for with any confidence until mid-March and it wasn't settled formally until the first week in April. That really got in the way of targeting a message.
One could say the r's also had a 12 month to 1 month advantage in really shaping and pushing a resonant message fit to Barrett.
Barrett spent the first two weeks of the recall campaign doing generic stuff like his previous campaign, that made the recall seem a lot like a rematch. And Barretts stuff was pointless in light of the reality that minds were already made up. There were no undecideds to educate or convert. What was needed was rekindling recall fever. That really failed to happen, although I will admit that I thought I saw hopeful signes toward the end of week 3 of Barrett's recall campaign.
Re: divide and conquer
The stuff from the ABC heiress was priceless and it wasn't used. Maybe because of a lack of money, maybe because of a lack of campaign good consulting, maybe because Barrett is too nice a guy...I can't say cuz, hey, I'm just a little guy like most everyone else.
What's clear is the bad economy in WI scared people. Scared people are conservative people. Conservative people respond to messaging that plays to self-interest (not selfish, but self) and folks like that accept messages that promise relief from social responsibility for education, environment, elderly, equal rights, etc. Scared people love the message, "I've got mine and it's austerity for you." It's a formula for dividing the state into the have's and the you-can't-have-any-of-mine's.
All this was sort of foreseeable to DUers who could step back and get perspective. Why wasn't it foreseeable to Tate and the DNC?
The inability of the WI Dems to get in touch with the anger resulting from ALEC-Fitz-Walker's heavy handed union busting under the smoke screen of budget repair is an obvious factor that hasn't recieved enough analysis.
I honestly think Tate, and others hoped for and wrongly expected guidance and resources from the national party.
I strongly suspect that the messaging conflicts between the recall needs and the National were never resolved. Consequently WI never enjoyed overwhelming Dem celebrity support. What Wisconsin needed to get behind to support the recall was what the National Party didn't wanted to get labelled as supporting.
I suspect that when the analysis nears completion we be finding complex causes to the recall failure.
It's quite likely that there was too little brain-trust, too little money, not enough message, too much recession and too much division between WI-Dems and the National to construct and implement a coordinated winning campaign that involved nation-wide players.
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