Why Michele Failed

At the Des Moines Register, a withering look at the failed presidential bid of Michele Bachmann, including nine reasons she failed. Here’s one:

1. Supporter cards remain shelved

At the straw poll, about 6,000 Iowans filled out Bachmann supporter cards with their contact information, an invaluable resource for galvanizing a base of activist caucusgoers.

But the trail went cold for eight weeks when the supporter cards sat in limbo at the national headquarters, said Kent Sorenson, her Iowa chairman until the last week of the campaign.

Rumblings of staff turnover, in both the state and national ranks, simmered after the straw poll. The national campaign aides demanded the cards be shipped to the D.C. office — an unspoken attempt to keep them from disappearing into another campaign.

But by early September, national campaign manager Ed Rollins and national deputy manager David Polyansky, two respected strategists, had left the team — with a parting reminder that those little cards, a campaign’s bread and butter, were languishing on a desk.

“We lost almost eight weeks of hot contacts,” Sorenson said. “People wanted to help, but this communicated that we were not interested in their help.”

The campaign had by August identified more than 30,000 Iowa supporters, but failed over the course of the summer to remain in contact with them.

Read the rest.