Looking at it as objectively as I can, Pres. Obama was pretty good at it and has doubtless improved with experience and practice, but it's important to understand that he, and most candidates, really don't have deep skill at that sort of thing, way more than most people do but the experts are the various people who actually do the organizing for them, who via trust in the candidate or money or a combination of both agree to handle that. He's a smart man and his early background did emphasize that sort of thing a bit more than many would but probably more varsity or college football than NFL, and the Dems and GOP both have NFL.



Yes I do, because they tend to. And when it comes down to one on one they will start to become passionate about Romney even as a lot of Hillary voters who didn't like Obama or were so-so on him did, and had he lost people would have defected afterwards as many did with McCain and Palin, or Kerry/Edwards. Also keep in mind that there are definitely differences in party base psychology, in terms of general broad strokes, the GOP base is older on average and not on the whole the sort to rally around a leader with grand ideas till after they've left office. Enthusiasm for the candidate does matter to getting the base out, to the polls or to the fundraisers, but probably not as much as for the Dems. Romney only really needs to generate enthusiasm in the moderates and indies and most of them, the ones genuinely up for grabs anyway, really do tend to have short term memories about this short of stuff.