The Bush Machine

I, for one, "misunderestimated" the Bush campaign's unbelievable organization this year. In 2000, Bush officially received 50,456,002 votes. Bush's current tally for 2004 is 60,480,957 votes. That is almost a 20 percent increase in raw votes.

Charlie Cook says this:

You have to give enormous credit to the Bush campaign, which unquestionably was the best planned, best executed presidential campaign ever. . .

The true measure of the quality of the effort by the Bush campaign, the Republican National Committee and the business community, is in the turnout figures. In key state after key state, the John Kerry campaign, the Democratic National Committee, organized labor and most of all, America Coming Together -- the 527 committee charged with the get-out-the-vote operation on the Democratic side -- not only hit but exceeded their target number of voters they thought were needed to win. But the Bush/Republican/business/social conservative coalition got even more.

In Ohio, for example, Kerry got 25,000 more votes than the goal ACT had set, but Bush got 130,000 more. This was also true in Florida. No one stands in more awe of the Bush campaign than the folks on the Democratic side. They put up a hell of a fight and yet were still bested by the Bush/Republican/business/social conservative effort.

All of this further convinces me that the Bush machine won this election much more than Kerry lost it.

(To view cross-post at Centerfield and comments posted there, click here.)