Obama’s Election Guru HUMILIATED, Blames Pollsters When Labour Party Loses

09 May, 2015 by Sierra Marlee

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Normally the elections of other countries mean very little to the American people, but in this case it might just interest you. David Axelrod, chief adviser to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, sold his advice to the losing Labour party (who we would consider liberals), for $500,000. After the shellacking they received at the polls, Axelrod actually had the gall to blame the pollsters, saying “all polling” had a problem.

From The Daily Mail:

President Obama’s campaign mastermind suffered a humiliating end to his political career today as the British Labour party he was paid almost $500,000 to help to victory plunged to a catastrophic defeat.

David Axelrod had been touted as the man to get Labour’s Ed Miliband into – and the Conservative prime minister David Cameron out of – Downing Street.

Instead he slunk out of Britain early, as his former Obama campaign colleague Jim Messina, who advised the winning Conservatives, crowed over a victory which had ‘stunned the world’.

Axelrod had already vowed that he was ‘done with campaigns’ after complaining bitterly about the British media and saying: ‘Anyone who underestimates Ed Miliband does so at their own peril.’

In fact he appeared to have dramatically over-estimated the Labour leader, who quit this morning saying he took responsibility for the defeat.

Today  tweeted that polling was to blame, saying on Twitter:’In all my years as journalist & strategist, I’ve never seen as stark a failure of polling as in UK. Huge project ahead to unravel it.’

And the famed pollster Nathan Silver was also humiliated by the British election, with his forecast for the result, like every other opinion poll, completely wrong.

Axelrod earned his stripes in U.S. presidential politics in 2008 as the chief strategist for Obama’s first campaign for the White House, framing the African-American Illinois Senator as a vehicle of ‘change’ compared to ‘Washington insider’ Hillary Clinton.

He also masterminded Obama’s winning strategy to target states that have caucuses versus those that award delegates based on ballot box voting.

The Chicago native went on to serve as senior adviser to Obama at the White House with a focus on messaging. He held that position until 2011 when he joined the president’s re-election campaign full-time in the same role he had in 2008.

Messina served as National Chief of Staff to the future president in 2008 and deputy White House chief of staff.

Obama tapped him to direct his entire re-elect, and afterward, Messina continued to manage the massive group of volunteers the campaign had recruited, re-branding Obama for America into the non-profit Organizing for Action in 2013.

That year he also launched his own political consulting firm, The Messina Group, and took on the reigning Conservative party, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, as a client in August, roughly a year and a half before the UK elections.

He kept a low profile in the election and one of his few public appearances was when Mail on Sunday political columnist James Forsyth revealed he had said: ‘I’ve never lost an election and, believe me, I’m not starting with Ed Miliband.’

Axelrod also left Obama’s service after the 2012 election after proclaiming in an interview with Chicago magazine the year before, ‘I have one campaign left, and it is going to be to try to elect a guy who I think is a great president.’

He returned home after the campaign and established the bipartisan Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, of which he is still the director.

The retired campaign hand was contracted by the Labour party a year ago to help Ed Miliband become prime minister.