Politics 101

 

SOME PEOPLE THINK POLITICS CONSISTS OF FINDING SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH THEM. They get miffed if “their guy” (or gal) doesn’t win wondering what happened to the voters. There’s a lot more to this. First you must find a candidate that not only gets the base, which is 40% of the voters, plus wins the majority of the Independents.  Candidates must be not just in sync with your views but must be likeable, appealing to not only the party activists, but also the people who rarely pay attention to politics, the swing voters, and the one-issue voters. 

            Then comes the problem of money. This wasn’t a problem when a Congressional Rep had 50,000 people in his district.  He could meet just about everybody in person.  But today a Rep has 750,000+; a Senator has 4 million in OK.  Without money, you can’t run direct mail push cards, radio and television time, newspaper ads, a social media campaign.  That doesn’t count the large number of telephone calls and yard signs.  Even to run a state Rep race costs about $75000 today.  Don’t crab about money in  politics. Unless you are trying to get US Congress to expand to 2000 Reps w/ e-votes and repeal of direct election of Senators (state control again) and are kicking all the people who are so apathetic about politics that they can’t begin to keep up with current events. But of course, what all this money means is that your candidate has to be good at raising funds.  Several of the Senate R-candidates were rank amateurs at raising money and that is likely why they lost in squeakers. PACs raise money, corporations donate/buy issue ads as well, big shots (Soros, Steyer) use their personal corporations to donate millions.  RNC raises money but general appeals don’t raise that much.  So Individual candidates have to make a case that they have a movement and without your donation, the movement will wither.  That’s how Dem guys used abortion to raise tremendous money for the last election.

            Finally we must Get Out The Vote. That used to be door knocking, cold calling, literature handouts.  R’s snoozed while Dems ordered lots of ballots in the name of their relatives—Old uncle Clem who can hardly think in the nursing home, and 20-somethings who don’t bother to vote unless there’s beer connected. They hounded everyone to vote and then harvested the ballots over the 60 days many states have for voting, took them to the election board and Lo! Turnouot grew from the old 65 % to 85%.  R’s need to start doing this if they want to win. 

            But you don’t need to get names off of tombstones.  There’s a better way but it costs money. Karl Rove’s landmark research was this: he had young students walk the alleys.  They wrote what they observed for each address.  This garbage can had lots of Field and Stream magazines, that yard had a new swing set, somebody else had a neighborhood watch sign and an American flag.  Then process this with some software and turn all these preferences into likely political preferences.  Better still, Obama bought enormous data from Google and Facebook in key areas.  These data files cost mega-money  and are usually used by businesses to send targeted ads on your phone or computer. (If they know what you read and watch, eat and order on Amazon, they have a likely guess about what kind of ad you’ll respond to) But Obama’s crew developed algorithms to process this data, correlated with voter registrations, to then start a phone campaign to remind the apathetic how/what/where to vote.  Ted Cruz and his campaign manager Kelly Ann Conway mimicked this very thing.  It is the most delightful campaigning you will ever do.  Pick from a list of about 20 Republican issues and you are issued a couple dozen phone numbers and names of like-minded voters to call.  You’ll meet friends you never knew you had just a few blocks away. I met some of the most motivated folks who just need to know what your candidate says about their issue and how to get involved.  Unlike the old cold-calling days where calls lasted 17 seconds and you got a frosty reception, you’ll have trouble shutting off these guys after 17 minutes.  This is Karl Rove on steroids.

            I relate this because so many people think only deciding via FOX news or a friend who posts on facebook is how votes occur.  That’s only the beginning.