bush was still over there at his computer and he s like i don t know what they are seeing, i don t know what numbers they are seeing, i still think it s too close. were you kind of surprised that jeb was is sxwri think jeb was when vice president for called to concede. jeb bush was the governor of florida at the time trying to deliver the state for his big brother. he wasn t the only one scratching his head at gore s concession. our numbers were going back and forth. at headquarters michael hooly, gore s own numbers wizard, kept doing the math with no idea that gore s motorcade was already on the way for his concession speech. how is it that you guys in the boiler room were not told they were going to concede? i don t know. i think they believed the network news. when two two and dan rather said that george bush had won, they thought it was game over. there was a furious scramble to find somebody in the motorcade. maybe a minute after we left the hotel, my white house pager
his charge. when you re in these you feel i could feel us starting to erode in december. but especially toward the latter part of december. was it organization or his 30-second ads? what really he was better organized than we were by somewhat in iowa. hooly at that time was the best in the business. still is. i think plouffe is you can t plouffe has got to be the best campaign manager ever on the democratic side and my advice to obama was save yourself $40 million. florida is incredibly disorganized, very difficult, very expensive. you can win without it. i thought that was the most extraordinary feat of the obama of an extraordinary campaign was winning florida and paul, too, has had a lot to do with that. i would never take anything away from michael hooly. right. for a long time he was the best in the business. he basically kicked our butt. you saw this solidifying three weeks before. harold, when you ran campaigns when did you notice voters really start to
disorganized republican primary i ve ever seen. i ve never seen a primary like this. talk about the race because we re talking about where we are right now. this is we re in november at this stage in 04. i agree with mark. i would guess you were in first place. i was starting to fade right about now. actually kerry was being discounted at this point as being basically like romney, a loser that could never win the nomination and, yet, he won at the end. when do you find voters in iowa and new hampshire really start focusing in? about three weeks before hand. three weeks before hand. what happened was john actually john had to raise a bunch of money. he gave himself a big loan. hired the guy who at the time i think was the best vote counter in the country, michael hooly, went to iowa and just kicked our butt. and he did that over a three or four-week period. so that all started in december is when yeah. when kerry started to make