I have to quibble a bit with mistermix on this:
Don’t get me wrong—if Crossroads GPS spends $100 million, that’s significant. But it’s not as effective as the Romney campaign spending $100 million, and if Romney can’t tap some more donors, it’s going to hurt him even if Rove and the Kochs step in.
Crossroads raised $100 million in the first quarter. It’s not unreasonable to think they might spend $300 million on Romney’s behalf. That’s a game-changing chunk of change, even if it’s not as effective as $300 million in the Romney campaign’s actual pocket would be.
What this means is that Romney — and by extension the entire Republican party — is almost completely financially dependent on a small group of wealthy donors. I don’t see this changing any time soon, and in the short term it helps Republicans enormously. Don’t know if it’s a long term strategy, though, and if in ten years we’ll be asking “how’s that gildy agey thing workin’ out for ya?”
shortstop
Robert Johnson totally improves my crappy morning.
Culture of Truth
OOPS
Restore Our Future is amending a report to the FEC to change the source of a $400,000 donation from Seaspray Partners LLC, to Gerald and Darlene Jordan of Palm Beach, Florida. Restore Our Future said a clerical error led it to list the wrong address for donor and the contribution had “nothing to do” with Seaspray.
Culture of Truth
True, but Mitt Romney actually has $200 million in his actual pocket, of which he can spend unlimited amounts, and also, his donors can max out in both the primaries and again in general election donations.
danielx
O-kaaay…not to quibble, but this would differ from past financial backing of the Republican party in what way, exactly, other than being more out in the open?
General Stuck
I don’t know if it’s a ‘game changer’ with the current state of fracture in the GOP, but is certainly important. We are likely going to find out though, what, and if there are limits on cash for winning elections. I think right now, this river of money is believed by republicans, that they can bypass the need for a good candidate with purchase power alone turning the campaign and election wheels. And it won’t be like Obama will be on a shoestring budget. But when you have a weak and flip flopping candidate, like the wingers have, I think it will be easy for the tail to start wagging that dog and create more confusion than clarity. Picking a president is a personal action by most voters, at least in part, and money may not be able to buy voter love in the end. But I don’t know any more than anyone else, as this is going into uncharted territory of multi billion dollar political campaigning.
Rhoda
From the current situation; team Obama is at parity with Romney & the SuperPACs. I think that President Obama will be outspent; but it won’t be a decisive margin and the President will have more than enough to get his message out there. The most important thing; he’s used the primary time to build a great ground game that Team Romney hasn’t managed to do and that Crossroads can not do for him. So, Romney will win the air war (in dollars, not in terms of message) and lose the ground war.
The second thing is message: the Republicans don’t have one. Rove admitted that the President’s current messaging is working and the Republicans have nothing to go up against it. Mitt Romney is running on “updated” Bush economic policies as someone from the RNC very helpfully stated on the record; I can’t remember were I read that on my phone but it blew me away. Meg Whitman had the same problem in Cali; her message didn’t resonate with voters and even through she outspent Brown he did an excellent job defining her for the public and stating his own message. Similarly, the President and his team have succeeded in defining Romney and we know this because the Romney general election roll out has all been about Mitt Romney fixing his problems with various interest groups not Mitt Romney’s message to America.
You can’t buy a good message. You can say fuck all if you’ve got the money; but without a message it’s useless. And the fact that this is has been going on now for three years with Crossroads and the messaging against the President has been consistently wingnutty and wrongheaded; the inchoate rage against the President has helped inoculate him in many ways. That visceral hatred repels independents.
Valdivia
I think it is important to note that it matters how the money gets used. All of it on negative ads carpetbombing?
Isn’t there a study about diminishing returns on that?
BGinCHI
The biggest danger here is that Rove knows how to do this better than Team Romney.
Romney’s first bit of outsourcing here: his campaign.
Valdivia
@Rhoda:
cosign. excellently put.
BGinCHI
The biggest danger here is that Rove knows how to do this better than Team Romney.
Romney’s first bit of outsourcing here: his campaign.
jheartney
Assuming Obama wins re-election and gets to replace one or more of the wingnuts on SCOTUS, then Citizens United may be overturned. If that happens, the GOP is up a creek, given their dependence on billionaire donors.
Not saying it’s a certainty, just that it’s a high-stakes game for the goopers. If they lose both the demographic race (their voters are dying out) and the financial one, it’s hard to see the GOP staying viable.
General Stuck
@Valdivia:
Yes, but Romney’s favorables, or likeability is already awful, to blunt the usual effect on negative campaign working to drive down the opponents favorables, as well as your own. But Obama is an incumbent, and therefore much harder to swiftboat than as a new candidate in 2008. I don’t think Rove and company will be able to control the urge to run the GOP side by proxy over the Romney campaign and RNC. Which seems like a recipe for disaster to me. People don’t vote for a POTUS candidate they not only don’t like, but also aren’t sure what their plan for governing is.
General Stuck
@Valdivia:
Yes, but Romney’s favorables, or likeability is already awful, to blunt the usual effect on negative campaign working to drive down the opponents favorables, as well as your own. But Obama is an incumbent, and therefore much harder to swiftboat than as a new candidate in 2008. I don’t think Rove and company will be able to control the urge to run the GOP side by proxy over the Romney campaign and RNC. Which seems like a recipe for disaster to me. People don’t vote for a POTUS candidate they not only don’t like, but also aren’t sure what their plan for governing is.
gaz
@DougJ: I think we’re starting to see the law of diminishing returns WRT to money in campaigning.
I started to notice that during the GOP primary debacle.
Almost to the point where CU seems like a good thing. (Well not quite). CU has been pretty kind to us during that clown show/fail parade/primary contest.
feebog
There has to be a point at which the voting public says enough with the ads and the saturation bombing creates a backlash. As I have pointed out in earlier threads on this subject, numerous repetative ads may not have the effect they once had anyway. In the age of the DVR, cable news and the internet, fewer and fewer people get watch live television or get their news from the big three TV networks.
I am far more concerned about the effect unlimited money will have in key congressional and sentate races, close races like those in MO, MT and WI may be affected immensely.
gaz
@Valdivia: LOL, I posted about diminishing returns before I noticed that you said essentially the same thing.
I must cosign your sentiment.
butler
@Valdivia: There are several studies on the subject. IIRC, negative ads do have a diminishing return, and they do seem to reduce turnout, but they also increase voter information (though admittedly negative information).
All told, however, its better to have 300 million in ad buys than to not have it, whatever the marginal effect of the last 50 million or so.
Roger Moore
@Culture of Truth:
A lot of them probably have already. You can actually donate money for the general election before the convention. I know this because Obama kept bugging me to do exactly that after I maxed out my contribution for the primary.
amk
Obama would do just fine. He has his record, his money machine, his seasoned campaign team and best of all, himself. It’s the house and the senate the dem voters should be concentrating on. Take your country back, as it were, from the current teabagging clowns.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@BGinCHI:
This the same Rove got Bush his 51% “mandate” in 2004?
mistermix
My main objection to Marshall’s post was the idea that you can stack all the the money spent by any interested party on a scale and if it balances, Romney’s at par with the Obama campaign. But you’re right that $300 million is a lot and will be very influential no matter who spends it, and I didn’t mean to come off as complacent about that.
A couple other things worth thinking about: Crossroads GPS might be run by a smart guy who is in sync with Romney’s campaign but that doesn’t mean that other SuperPACs will be as smart or disciplined, and they could actually hurt Romney by launching stupid, off-message ads. And as someone pointed out in the last thread, Crossroads apparently can’t put staff on the ground or do GOTV. There’s only so much media to be bought, and at some point you hit diminishing returns.
So, overall, I’m less worried about Obama than about Congress. I could see SuperPAC ads killing some decent Democratic Congressional candidates.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Rhoda:
Perhaps it’s an apples and oranges comparison but I liken this to the CA governor’s race. Brown spent squat relatively speaking but had tons of outside support:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/11/independent-spending-for-2010-campaign-sets-record-.html
Nonetheless, Meg Whitman outspent him a crapload:
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-11-03/news/27080075_1_meg-whitman-oldest-person-california-governor-race
Same end result as we’ll see in the fall. CA is big enough to be its own country and in some ways reflective of the USofA as a whole…or not. It’s not reflective of here in Misery, the Confederacy of the Militia States of the Rocky Mountains. Still…
Teddy's Person
I’ve been lurking here for a while. Since this has become a go-to site for me, I’m dipping my toe in the comment pool.
To rephrase what others have said – how much of this money will be spent preaching to the choir?
jibeaux
I know this is going to have a very DFH vibe to it, but gawd almighty do I wish neither money nor ads made a whit of difference in an election. Rewarding politicians for spending all this dough just makes them keep doing it, more and bigger, like spoiling kids with candy and toys never leaves them satisfied but just feeds the beast.
eemom
This is a lot of words babbling over what I think is a very simple and powerful truth.
The tiny number of people with shitloads of money want Romney. The vast number of people with little money want Obama.
If I could come up with a way to say that more pithily, it could even make a nice bumper sticker.
Catsy
@Rhoda:
This exactly.
American political campaigns are won by three things: turnout, turnout, and turnout.
If your people turn out and theirs don’t, nothing else matters except the counting of the votes–and you’d better believe the DOJ and the Obama campaign both will be watching that part like a hawk for any impropriety.
The rest of this comment is spot-on as well. They’ve got nothing except money, hate, and lies.
BGinCHI
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You have other example of GOP success at the national level since then, or since the 80s?
General Stuck
@mistermix:
Excellent point. And now I’m depressed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Rhoda:
But…but…UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH!
(green lightning issues from diseased fingers…)
butler
@Teddy’s Person: A lot of it, but that’s always the case. The choir gets to vote too. And Romney’s choir isn’t particularly enamored with him so he’ll have to work to try and win them over.
Villago Delenda Est
@Catsy:
Cotton, slaves, and arrogance.
For the win!
BGinCHI
@eemom: Rich Assholes for Romney.
eemom
@Teddy’s Person:
welcome, cool-nymed one.
Is Teddy a doggie or kitty?
PeakVT
That’s a game-changing chunk of change
It would be game-changing if all other things were equal. As others have pointed out, Obama’s campaign infrastructure is much better. Romney’s GOTV effort is likely to be awful given how much even Republicans dislike him. He’ll have fewer volunteers than normal and not enough cash to make up for that deficit with paid staff.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@amk:
This. One thing Dean’s Fitty State Stragety did well was give those candidates some real support. Now? I’m not sanguine. And as I’ve said before, sure, an Obama 2nd term is A. Good. Thing. but if he doesn’t have Dem control of at least one house (better be the Senate because of the Sooopremes), then he’s gonna twiddle his thumbs for at least 2 years until the 2014 elections.
Roger Moore
@Valdivia:
I think there has been some study on it. The part that I remember is that negative ads work best against newcomers who don’t have a well-defined public image. It’s a lot easier to give people a bad impression of somebody they don’t know about than it is to reverse their good impression of somebody they like. So Mitt (R-Money) is going to need some kind of positive campaign message on top of his tons of attack ads if he wants a decent chance of beating the president.
eemom
@Catsy:
That’s right. And THAT is why anyone who doesn’t vote needs to STFU and DIAF. IMHO.
Sentient Puddle
I thought the figure the Obama campaign would pull in was expected to be around $1 billion. Even if Crossroads got $300 million, they’d still be working quite a ways in the hole.
Steeplejack
@Teddy’s Person:
Welcome! Feel free to vent ad libitum.
I had a cat named Teddy long ago.
Face
Is there anything to keep Sheldon Alderson (sp? The Newt Vegas guy), who’s got multiple billions, from having his company drop a cool billion on Mitt?
Is there really no limit, such that a multi-billionaire can now spend billions if they want? The CU decision has me confused.
Schlemizel
@jheartney:
2 really big problems with that theory
Obama will have to replace one of the corporate 5 (and as an adjunct with a non-corporate owned justice)
Then the really huge one –
Someone will have to bring a suit against CU AND the USSC will have to agree to hear it AND they will have to overturn established case law, something judges are loath to do. They might nibble at the edges but they would never completely toss a previous ruling. It will take a constitutional amendment or 2 generations to kill this Frankenstein monster.
butler
@Face: He’d probably have to give the cool billion to a Super Pac who could then spend it for him. But technically he could do it within that system.
JMG
Here’s the thing. Rich people expect a return on their investment. If Romney loses, the NEXT GOP Republican candidate in 2016 will find it that much harder to raise megasums, which will be diverted to far more cost-effective downticket races.
Simply put, you can buy influence with a PResident. You can buy a Congressman or Governor outright. You can lease state legislators.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@General Stuck: I think this is an issue only if Congresscritters run from Obama rather than run with him. Oh yeah, there’s West Virginia.
eemom
@General Stuck:
Oh fer fux sake, mon General, don’t fall for that concern troll shit.
Remember Christine O’Donnell? Whatzername in Nevada? That whole inconvenient teatard monster they created?
That’s gonna do an awful lot to fuck up the so called superpac advantage.
I mean fucking ORRIN HATCH is fighting for his political life.
Schlemizel
@BGinCHI:
2000,
And its hard to not call 1994 and 2010 as success on a national level so yeah
magurakurin
Using 2008 as a baseline, with the McCain states all going to Romney, Obama can let Mitt flip Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and Indiana, and Obama still wins. Romney just polled 9 points down in New Hampshire. Willard has a very tall mountain to climb indeed.
If his boat is 300,000,000 dollars big…he’s going to need a bigger boat.
srv
fyi, Ezra is doing an IAMA at reddit
Villago Delenda Est
@magurakurin:
It’s not just an issue of the size of the boat. Best I can tell, he’s got a crew of utter lubbers.
He’s fucked.
BGinCHI
@Schlemizel: All I was saying is that Rove is the smartest they have (compared to the fuckwads Romney the business genius seems to be hiring). I realize that only makes Rove King of the Dipshits, but he’s still the king.
Brachiator
Since this small group controls a huge pool of money, I would say that this is a feature, not a bug.
Also,too,since wealthy conservatives are also able to buy key Democrats, it appears that this strategy is working fine.
@Face:
Short answer: No.
You can also look for a lot of Israeli hardliner money to flow to Mittens, including perhaps some former Democratic Party donors.
David in NY
@Schlemizel: You’re probably right. The only contrary thing I’d say is that CU was predicated on some dubious assumptions — e.g., unlimited money wouldn’t produce corruption — and if those assumptions proved wrong, there would be precedent for the Court saying it had been wrong.
General Stuck
@eemom:
Not as much with the senate as with House reps. With a small voting universe, and a political ecosystem very sensitive to the effects of campaign money. But you are correct, you can’t buy your way past idiot candidates like C. ‘I am not a witch’ Mcdonnell, or the whackjob tea tard from NV. I don’t think MM is concern trolling this. I think it is a real problem, but can be remedied with comparable dem cash for House campaigns.
priscianusjr
@feebog:
fasteddie9318
You’re all missing the key point here, which is that this is all excellent news for John McCain.
Schlemizel
@BGinCHI:
Sorry it sounded like you were suggesting they had only one win in his political lifetime. The GOP still knows how to do the things it takes to win elections (suppress the vote – depress the Dems, rouse the rabble) and a bit shitton of cash makes that a whole lot easier to do than to actually campaign.
Don’t underestimate the value of GPS and their slimy money
Litlebritdifrnt
Interesting tweet from New Hampshire
danimal
@Teddy’s Person: Just shut up, you ignorant ass.
Just kidding, but you needed a real BJ commentariat welcome.
Martin
Look, nobody reports or opines on the ground game. Every ad will get dissected at Politico, etc. but reporting on and assessing the value of having your neighbor knock on your door with a message is really damn hard work – so they don’t do it.
Almost everything you read about spending and message is what gets delivered directly to the pundits, through their TV in their home. In other words, they’re really only reporting on the messaging that is directed to their demographic. And guess what, the messaging directed at rich, old, white guys tends to be pretty conservative, even when it’s coming from Democrats.
Most of Obama’s money will be spent in places that will never be reported on. It’ll be dumped in places like Kay’s district where it’ll feed volunteers and get them out knocking on doors, speaking to unions, organizing rallys, and so on. It’ll go into latino communities where nobody will ever write a blog post about it because it’ll all be invested on GOTV.
The GOP ground game has always been the churches, and that’s going to be a tough sell this cycle. I’m not suggesting that they’re going to work for Obama or that they’re going to switch their votes, but I don’t think they’re going to bust their ass to get Romneys message out at the bake sale. That effort will be replaced with TV ads, and that’s not going to work. 2008 wasn’t a landmark election because a black guy got elected – it was a landmark election because Obama showed how you win – you win it on the ground and you win it $50 at a time. There was no amount of advertising that McCain could buy that would even out the advantage of one of Obama’s 100,000 person rallies.
General Stuck
@Martin:
Exactly
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
Reporting on the ground game requires doing a four letter word that the Villagers hate more than anything else.
Work.
So you’re not going to see any reporting out of the Village (and Politico is very much a Village bastion) on the ground game.
PZ
Always felt that if Obama wins reelection and the Dems take back the House and still keep the Senate, they should launch a ton of investigations into wealthy Republican donors. I realize cause of the filibuster and other structural impediments it will be difficult to get much legislation through. So, I think they should settle for the next best thing-squeezing the GOPs wallet.
Martin
@JMG:
Nah. We’re still talking about pennies here. If I’m as wealthy as Romney, I’m facing a $15 million tax bill over the next 4 years. If you promise to cut cap gains to 0%, that’s $15M in savings for me, just over the time you’re in office. Compound that and stretch it out another 6 years before it’s repealed, and that’s worth an investment of a million. If your name is Koch, multiply that by at least 10.
You get to a billion pretty fast, just on the promise of lowering cap gains.
Bob2
Some naivete in the comments about how powerful negative ads are regardless of the source of money. Just pull up studies on negative ads guys. Every election, everyone seems to forget that they work because they don’t want to believe they do.
edit: Good god, this must be what it feels like to be a Mets fan.
priscianusjr
@feebog:
The Other Chuck
@Bob2: And that’s why Meg Whitman is governor of California?
Nobody’s saying negative ads don’t work. They are saying that there’s diminishing returns on them, and quite probably a point of negative returns.
Martin
@Villago Delenda Est: Right. I still remember the utter shock and surprise at the immigration rallies here in LA: “I heard nothing about this – how did half a million people spontaneously decide to do this?!”
Old (>30) white people have their communication mechanisms, but they’re different than young people, than latinos, than african americans. I was asking one of my (black) coworkers whether she thought we’d see an improvement in engagement from the black community on something we were doing any time soon. “Nope, still too much negative talk at the hairdresser. When that dies down, then maybe things will pick up.” The hairdresser/barber is how news flows in her community – moreso than blogs and whatnot. For Latinos it’s often Piolín and texting. Or Facebook. My kids pass information in surprising ways – Minecraft chat is pretty much their chatroom with their friends.
Obama’s team seems to be pretty good at recognizing this and adapting to it. The GOP has always been terrible at this, and I suspect that the GOP SuperPACS will be doubly terrible at it – as well as Romney. I’m expecting even more of a backlash this cycle from the right – because I think they’re going to be incredibly blindsided this election. Expect a national wingnut variation on that Kael quote: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.” Take that quote, mix in ‘usurper’, ‘racist’, ‘ACORN’, ‘thug’ and we’re probably in the ballpark.
Splitting Image
The one thing I notice in the Citizens United discussion is how the parties’ revenue streams have reversed. The Republicans used to have a strong network of small donors and a more committed get-out-the-vote operation. The Democrats used to have a smaller network of big donors and a more visible presence in the national media.
The Republicans used to use this as an election issue: the Democrats’ funding wasn’t what you would expect it to be if they really were the party of the little guy that they presented themselves to be. There was once a valid argument that the Democrats were over-represented on TV.
The parties have now almost completely switched places. The Democrats’ fundraising is a better representation of the party’s goals and the Republicans’ is a very accurate representation of its goals. Most importantly, the Democrats now have a stronger ground operation for getting out the vote.
The Republican model helped win them seven out of ten Presidential elections between 1972 and 2008, but now that the Democrats are following it and the Republicans aren’t, the bobbleheads (whose move to the Republican party is itself part of the reversal here) have come to the conclusion that the Democrats’ model must have been the right one after all and having the entire GOP fundraising concentrated in the hands of a few George Soroses is the ultimate in awesome. Go figure.
It’s worth noting that the gang of five would never have passed Citizens United in the Reagan era, “conservative values” or no. They would have imagined it would have benefitted the Democrats more and undermined the Republicans’ advantage in small donors.
Clime Acts
This country’s election/political system is so very deeply fucked up. Utterly corrupt. So sad and depressing when one really takes the time to soak it in.
Roger Moore
@PZ:
Maybe a Democratic Senate could actually think of doing something about those structural impediments, then. It’s not as if they’re written into the Constitution; they’re just part of the rules the Senate approves for itself every two years. If they really want to start running things on a majority rule, competence over seniority system like the House, they can.
Roger Moore
@The Other Chuck:
And they work better in some situations (i.e. trying to define an unknown negatively) than others (i.e. trying to tear down somebody who’s well known and popular). And, of course, they’re more likely to be effective when they’re well written and target things persuadable voters care about. I’m betting there’s going to be a bunch of ads targeting all the favorite wingnut memes about birth certificates, teleprompters, and the like that will completely miss the average swing voter.
Mickey
Dear DougJ,
Your stupid rants are just boring now. Not even funny to laugh at any more they are so dumb.
terraformer
Seems to me that money can buy the election – ground or air game be damned. That is, if you can pay off enough people who are in a position to manipulate electronic voting in key districts in key states, then it doesn’t really matter what’s going on anywhere else.
I’m still amazed at the lack of transparency in the actual voting and tallying.
Clime Acts
@terraformer:
Twelve years after Bush v. Gore, no push for any meaningful action even from the Democrats. No move to get rid of the fucked up Electoral College. Nothing.
Hmmm…wonder why that would be?
It’s no accident.
Elizabelle
Obama’s giving great speech on education funding at UNC Chapel Hill. C-Span.
PS: I wonder if seeing all the crowing about Crossroads money, and the barage of negative ads and lies, will motivate people to turn out even more. Maybe get a few more to go door to door. Take that, Karl Rove.
I doubt Obama’s lost as much support as the MSM would have us believe.
Complacency is deadly, though, with the Senate and House up for grabs.
gaz
@Catsy: I agree with the thrust of your post – and even this statement, although I have to intentionally interpret it differently than how you meant it:
It seems to me that high turnout benefits liberals.
Low turnout benefits conservatives.
In the interest of keeping it short, I’ll omit why, other than to say that the GOP power brokers seem to know this too, or they wouldn’t be pushing all of that voter-disenfranchisement legislation at the state level.
So, VOTE. Everyone VOTE. I don’t care about your personal politics. VOTE.
rikryah
@Rhoda:
Good Comment.
Willard’s been running for President for 7 years, and has no reason WHY someone should vote FOR HIM.
gaz
@Mickey: I could easily write a wordpress plugin that could automatically generate the entire gamut of your statements on this blog. And the codebase would be less than 250 lines. That’s not hyperbole, either. That’s just a cold fact.
You are not one to lambaste someone for being boring. You say the same thing in every single one of your posts.
Teddy's Person
@eemom: Teddy is a delightful GoldenDoodle, a designer dog without the designer attitude.
Teddy's Person
@Steeplejack: Thanks for the welcome. Venting will begin shortly.
ps Canine Teddy’s full name is Teddybear. It’s the name he came with.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemizel:
But as some of us were saying in the thread below, in his previous elections, Rove had Bush as his candidate and, believe it or not, George W Bush was very, very good at running for office. Frankly, I would say it was his one real talent. Bush loved getting down and dirty on the campaign trail, and he knew exactly how to play the Reaganesque “aw shucks” good ol’ boy for the general audience while winking to the 1% (or, as he said in Fahrenheit 911, “they call you the 1 percent, I call you my base”).
It’s not that Rove is a genius on his own — it’s that the combination of Rove as advisor and Bush as candidate made a great team. Half the dirty campaign tricks in 2000 and 2004 came straight from Bush, not from Rove.
I’m way more worried about the bad effects of CU money in the downticket races than I am in the presidential election. Rove may have gotten the two-term governor of Texas close enough to steal the election, but Plouffe and his team got a half-term US Senator an outright win.
Teddy's Person
@danimal: Gosh, I feel like one of the gang already.
Bob2
Let’s run down some of the consequences for Mitt Romney.
He now gets to disavow any Superpac ads for him because he didn’t sign off on them. He can’t put his own foot in his mouth this way. The less he talks, the better it is for him.
He now gets to put out a lot fewer negative ads that could backfire on him since everyone else is doing it for him too, though he’ll miss the money he could spend on GOTV and other things.
Meg Whitman was a spectacularly bad example given how much media play her nanny issues caught, which was an own goal. Liddy Dole bombed when she tried to accuse her opponent of being an atheist and it completely backfired.
If the goal is drive down turnout, all they have to do is hammer Obama on the economy in ad after ad. What we’re seeing in diminishing returns is difficult to quantify as normal given the massive recession that was going on at the time. Likewise, there are fewer independents than there once were as many have picked red or blue at this point.
The gist of it is that the candidate with more money wins over 80% of the time, and I doubt it matters who spends the money so long as the airtime is there.
gaz
@terraformer: So far, even with the help of SCOTUS, diebold, and corporate backing, they’ve only demonstrated the ability to swing close-ish elections (the SCOTUS thing being their biggest triumph against the democratic process – at least in modern politics. gore won the popular vote by up to half a mil votes, as I recall)
Particularly with the diebold thing, they walk something of a fine line. If they rig it too much, they show their hand (criminal charges and cries of treason to follow).
CU may change these dynamics. Luckily they picked Romney. That gives Obama a natural and permanent boost in his favor. The 27%’rs don’t seem to like either of them very much =). ETA: Maybe we’ll see historically LOW turnout among the “bugfuck crazy” demographic. =) It’s a hope, at least =)
Culture of Truth
shout out for golden doodles!
Catsy
@Villago Delenda Est:
That worked out so well for them the last time around. :>
rikryah
@Roger Moore:
Outside of calling the President a Ni-clang outright, they’ve said everything else over the past 3 years
AA+ Bonds
Yes indeedy doo, I’m glad people are realizing that Crossroads is the one-stop shop here
AA+ Bonds
@Martin:
I don’t think this was exactly demonstrated given Obama’s overall totals vs. McCain
It’s possible but not “shown”
eyelessgame
2012 is the year of the billion-dollar election.
martha
I want all of the Democratic surrogates to weave into their talking points two simple sentences and repeat them over and over and over again:
“Who are the men behind the curtain? Who’s giving all this money to run these negative ads and what do they want?”
Follow the money. It’s always the best line of attack.
eyelessgame
The big thing negative ads might be able to do is to flush 2007-2008 down the memory hole and make everyone believe Obama caused the economic downturn.
It’s tricky to counteract, because you can look like a whiner blaming it on your predecessor (however legitimate the claim) – you can’t just put up the panty graph and expect it to resonate.
I have faith in the Obama election machine that they’ll find a way to show it, but it’s going to be hard, and I don’t know how well they’ll be able to push this into the downballot races, as everyone’s said already.
Valdivia
totally OT and late (hopefully not too much so) but related to the title of the post. (and this is for DougJ specially and those who love this song.)
Listen to this RadioLab about bluesman Robert Johnson and the origin of the crossroads legend. Absolutely fascinating
shortstop
@Valdivia: A subject of longstanding interest to me! Haven’t checked out your link yet, but want to recommend the play I Just Stopped By To See the Man for more on this.
Valdivia
@shortstop:
So happy you will find IG of interest ! Will check out the play.
Valdivia
@shortstop:
ps sorry for the typo phone posting. ugh.
IG=it