The Democrats played the fools gold game and lost again. Relying on the "youth vote" to win an election is a sure path to defeat. What made this strategy even worse was the Democrats relied on third-parties, like MTV and MoveOn.org to get out the vote. In contrast the Republicans built a centralized organization, controlled from campaign headquarters with sub-levels all the way down to individual counties. Apparently they had very accurate voter lists and they were more efficient in getting this vote out. Thus smashing the myth that if there is large turnout it benefits the challenger. I guess that MBA came in handy for President Bush.
You would think that Senator Kerry would have realized the importance of not outsourcing this important aspect of campaigning. To paraphrase his talking points:
Unfortunately, Bush escaped in the mountains of the Midwest. We had him surrounded. But we didn't use campaign forces, the best trained in the world, to go defeat him. We relied on MoveOn.org anti-warlords and outsourced that job. That's wrong.
