Election 2012 Winners & Losers: Buffy Wicks, Big Bird, Karl Rove, Gallup Poll

Ok, now that Election 2012 is history, it’s time to pick out our winners and losers. Some of them will be unexpected people you’ve never heard of, others will be characters, of several kinds. It all will be interesting.

And without any further ado, as they say, here we go:

Winners:

Buffy Wicks: My friend who’s the National Operation Vote Director, Obama for America, has not received a great pat on the back from anyone in the media for her hard work in getting people out to advance the message of the Obama campaign, and getting people registered and to the polls on election day. I first met Buffy when she was doing community outreach work here in California and the San Francisco Bay Area. She then went on to represent the President in the White House, only to become the target of Andrew Breitbart and the ultra right wing for a series of totally unfounded claims. Now, after a right-wing media drubbing, Buffy gets her revenge by being the engineer of the efforts that Obama Campaign heads David Plouffe and David Axelrod enjoy the praise for. Here’s Buffy at the Democratic National Convention:

Big Bird: Big Bird has to be considered a massive winner in all of this, and in a way, the Sesame Street’s lovable large feathered-friend has Mitt Romney to thank for it. It was Romney who mentioned Big Bird in the first presidential debate, and in doing to scared little kids into thinking he was going to murder Big Bird if Mitt became POTUS. In the time between then and the Tuesday election, “Big Bird” became an all-encompassing meme and rallying cry for fans of the Public Broadcast System and those who represented “The 47 Percent.” My video calling Obama and Big Bird the winner of the first debate gained over 42,000 views, and helped Big Bird prove he was a powerful political force for years to come.

Losers:

Karl Rove: Top GOP Strategist, the Legendary Karl Rove, is now equally legendary for his now-many-times-copied disagreement with Fox News people who called last night’s Presidential Race for Barack Obama in Ohio. If you’ve not seen it, here it is:

In a small way, I can feel for Karl because in 2008, Rove stood with Fox News’ Britt Hume when Ohio was called for President Obama. Then, Rove had to sit down and answer the same “What’s wrong with the GOP?” questions he has to deal with again, this year:

Gallup Poll: The Gallup Poll’s once impenetrable shield of self-righteousness was shattered by the work of Nate Silver and a number of college-based political statistical modelers, all who called the election for President Obama and got the state wins right, just as Gallup’s polls projected a win for Romney, leading Gallup’s lead researcher Frank Newport to say that the polls they ran are just for a snapshot in time, and don’t predict an outcome, or should not be used to do so – even those his longstanding media partners, particularly MSNBC, do. Gallup fail.

Stay tuned for more Election 2012 Winners and Losers to come.