Narrative Busting

The vaunted Democratic ground game is building up a big lead among early voters, one that Romney will have a hard time making up on election day.   That's the narrative we've been told for weeks by the mainstream media, dutifully reporting the DNC's spin.

Er, not so much:

GALLUP: Romney Up 52-45% Among Early Voters

The Regular Guy's explanation?   Obama's victory in 2008 led the media to vastly overstate his political skills. With an unpopular President, a weak candidate, an imploding economy, and the first black Presidential candidate, Obama was going to waltz to victory regardless of his campaign's organization or lack thereof. The argument advanced at the time that Obama was qualified to run the executive branch because he'd run his campaign so well was hopeful at best, foolish at worst.

Here's what we know now in 2012 that we didn't know in 2008: based on the evidence of his actual governance, Obama isn't a very good manager of a large organization. So we shouldn't expect him to be a very good manager of his campaign.  That includes creating a not-very-good GOTV organization.

Romney, meanwhile, based on all evidence throughout his life, is an exceptional manager of large organizations.   We would expect him to be a good manager of a campaign, and that would include creating a good to very good GOTV organization.

So it shouldn't be surprising at all that the GOP has a plan, is executing its plan, and will be successful. The early voter turnout numbers are evidence that Romney and the GOP may have known what they were doing all along.