Bush’s brain gets inside the minds of Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and strategist David Axelrod to explain the president-elect’s success: “Messrs. Plouffe and Axelrod understood that over the last 28 years only 11 of 20 eligible Americans on average cast a presidential ballot. They focused on registering and motivating the other nine who don’t usually vote.” Yes, he said “Messrs.”

(h/t Political Wire)


Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal:

So the two Davids registered millions of voters in states the Obama campaign picked as battlegrounds, especially where there were many heretofore-disinterested African Americans and younger Democrats. Messrs. Plouffe and Axelrod understood that over the last 28 years only 11 of 20 eligible Americans on average cast a presidential ballot. They focused on registering and motivating the other nine who don’t usually vote. This decision, perhaps more than any other, allowed Mr. Obama to win such previously red states as Virginia, Indiana, Colorado and Nevada. It forced Mr. McCain to spend most of the fall on defense, unable to take once-reliably Republican states for granted.

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