General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Rachel had it Right, now DU is getting it wrong. [View all]bluestate10
(10,942 posts)loss of votes was expected. I would not call the Obama campaign methods "clever". In my mind "clever" denotes the wrong message, especially since Romney's campaign was doing the exact same things, but just weren't competent at doing them.
Obama of 2008 drew in a lot of starry eyed voters that saw in him a messiah after 8 years of Bush. Obama never claimed to be what they saw him as, but they continued to believe that deep in their hearts. When Obama won and got to the act of governing, those people instantly became disillusioned. They sat out the 2010 mid-terms in massive numbers, an enormous mistake. Many still sat out the 2012 election, them coupled with centrist and right voters that were tired of Bush voting fr 2008 Obama, but many voting for Romney 2012 caused the President to have fewer votes. But getting over 50% of the vote to become only the fourth sitting President to do that in something like 80 years is nothing to sneeze at. Beating your opponent by over 3 million votes with almost everything going against you is no small matter.