This item is cross-posted from the New Republic.
Plenty of liberals and other Americans of good conscience no doubt breathed a sigh of relief when AmeriTrade founder and Chicago Cubs co-owner Joe Ricketts distanced himself yesterday from the $10 million racially-tinged Jeremiah Wright ad blitz that the New York Times had reported he was considering buying. But it would be a mistake to consider that any sort of significant victory against the disproportionate power wielded by super PACs. Indeed, even if big donors decide not to corrode the atmosphere of the presidential campaign, they have already demonstrated–Ricketts did so earlier this week, in fact–their commitment to influencing state and local elections. And it’s precisely in those elections–elections that many of us won’t be paying attention to–that their power over national politics will prove most decisive.
Take Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary in Nebraska, for example. From a national point of view, this was a relatively obscure affair: For many pundits, the only thing they knew about surprise winner Deb Fischer is that she was endorsed by Sarah Palin. Indeed, there was an initial tendency to push the Nebraska contest into the familiar template set a week earlier by the Mourdock/Lugar primary in Indiana: Conservative insurgent beats moderate. This had the advantage of pleasing the otherwise embarrassed conservative activists who had poured much time and treasure into the campaign of third-place finisher Don Stenberg. Democrats also had an interest in reinforcing that interpretation; the more Fischer looked like 2010 wacko Senate candidates Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, the better the fundraising environment for Democratic candidate Bob Kerrey.
But this early conventional wisdom was wrong: A closer look shows that Fischer is a fairly conventional Republican politician, and ideology played little role in the primary’s outcome. (In part because all three major candidates constantly claimed to be true conservatives battling the ever-traitorous RINOs of the national party). A Public Policy Polling survey on the eve of the primary (which pretty much nailed the results) showed that so-called establishment candidate Joe Bruning’s shaky favorable ratings were actually highest among self-identified “very conservative” voters, while moderates felt most fondly towards Fischer.
But even if Fischer never makes it to Washington, this week’s election may have been one for the history books. That’s because what happened in Nebraska is the clearest example yet of what a post-Citizens United landscape is like, and an object lesson in the power of super PAC donors.
What this primary was about wasn’t ideology, but money. One prominent conservative gabber, the Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, pointed to Bruning’s large advantage in funding over Fischer, and suggested her victory showed that “money is overrated.” Others (including PPP’s Tom Jensen and yours truly) looked at the large quantity of “independent” money–particularly from the Club for Growth and Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservative Fund–that was spent attacking Bruning and boosting the hapless Stenberg. Seen in this light, the contest was a money-driven murder-suicide affair, where the two better-financed candidates destroyed each other and left Fischer unscathed to pick up the pieces.
But on the ground in Nebraska, it was Ricketts’ last-minute brace of ads that was actually much more decisive. The ads–one boosting Fischer, one blasting Bruning–represented the kind of strategic, last-minute super PAC ad blitz funded by a single donor that Citizens United encouraged . To be sure, compared to huge individual super PAC investors like Sheldon Adelson (who single-handedly bankrolled Newt Gingrich’s Winning Our Future PAC) or huge super PACs with multiple investors (like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, which has just launched a $25 million anti-Obama ad blitz in battleground states), Ricketts made a relatively modest investment of $200,000. But he made it in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
TNR contributor Jonathan Bernstein best captured the lesson learned from Ricketts’ intervention in the Nebraska race:
Outside money matters more in Congressional races than presidential, and more in primaries than general elections. … And as we’ve just discovered, a single donor can be responsible for the election of a general election Senate candidate — or even, if Fischer wins, a Senator.
Why is that so? Paid media ads matter most in contests with three factors. First, where candidates are not as well known–this is true in down-ballot races, rather than presidential elections, since the public’s perceptions of Romney and Obama are already largely fixed. Second, where factors like party affiliation are less dominant–this points to primaries where candidate allegiance is far more fluid than in general elections. And third, where the cost and scope of advertising provides the greatest bang for the buck–this points to states like Nebraska and many others where you can get your message in front of a large percentage of voters for just $200,000.
This week’s primary contest in Nebraska had all three of these factors, but so will many other contests in the future. Political pros advising politically ambitious tycoons in the months and years ahead will likely use Ricketts’ intervention in Nebraska as an example of exactly the right way to make a big mark in an unregulated system of campaign finance.
Does this mean that big donors don’t have an impact on presidential elections? Not exactly. Yesterday’s furor over Ricketts’ potential Jeremiah Wright ad proved another important point about the impact of rich individual donors in a post-Citizens United world: They don’t have to write a check to have a big impact, even on a presidential general election contest. They just have to clear their throats.
But ultimately, it’s Ricketts’ more quiet intervention in the Nebraska primary that may prove more effective and instructive. After all, it may have provided us with a new United States Senator. And it may have confirmed the most indulgent vanities of the very rich: That they’re invited not only to have a say in our political process, but the final word.
Month: May 2012
MJ Lee reports at Politico that Herman Cain picks up the cudgel after Romney smartly disavows the Super-PAC planned Rev. Wright attacks (for now). Presumably, Cain’s entry into the fray is designed to soften the race-baiting criticism. But it still looks like a concerted “high” road/low road dog and pony show.
From WaPo, quoth an aide to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel: “The Mayor was livid when he read that the Ricketts were going to launch a $10 million campaign against President Obama – with the type of racially motivated ads that are insulting to the president and the presidential campaign…He is also livid with their blatant hypocrisy.” Well. Friggin. Done. When hypocritical rich wingnuts ask for huge taxpayer/public handouts, while funding Super-PAC ads attacking Dem leaders and government as fundamentally evil, they should get pushback from elected officials, especially Dems.
Nate Silver crunches the stats at FiveThirtyEight, and concludes that “Democrats’ Odds of Retaining Senate Improve.”
The Obama campaign is about to launch a new website, “Gotta Vote” to help voters navigate through the maze of voter suppression laws passed by the GOP in the states. According to Politico’s Brian Tau, “The online tool — which will be live shortly — gives voters detailed state-by-state information on how and when to register. It also collects phone numbers and email addresses, offering to remind potential voters when to register. It also seeks volunteer attorneys to become “victory counsels” to help “voter protection efforts” across the country. It also has a Tumblr where voters can ask process questions.”
Here we go again with filibuster reform. Maybe it would be wise to wait a few months.
From John Nichols’ update on the Wisconsin recall in The Nation: “Barrett spent around $1 million to win his primary; Walker has already burned through $21 million, and his billionaire backers have spent millions more on “independent” ads. The unprecedented spending on behalf of Walker and his allies has made these recall elections an example of what campaigning has come to look like in the Citizens United era: Democrats can’t hope to match the staggering level of corporate cash raised by the GOP, so they will have to accelerate grassroots organizing and get-out-the-vote drives. Wisconsin will test the prospect that people power might yet beat money power.”
Ronald Brownstein’s “The Political Class Divide Deepens” at the Atlantic discusses polls indicating that “All whites expect their financial situation to improve over the next year, but those with college-degrees are more optimistic…Non-college whites are somewhat more restrained in their expectations: 50 percent of both blue-collar white men and women expect to be better off, about double the share that expects to lose ground.” Brownstein also notes of Obama’s prospects re the white working-class, “…the “polls consistently showing him falling below his showing last time among whites — especially the blue-collar whites cool to his social agenda and still glum about the economy.”
In his NYT ‘Campaign Stops’ op-ed, “Reaching Catholics,” Jim Arkedis, senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute argues that there is a strategy that can enable Obama to maximize support from Catholics. In a nut graph, Arkedis explains: “…The Ryan budget imposes “a particular burden on the middle-class and the most vulnerable.” This argument should form the bedrock of Obama’s faith-based appeal to persuadable Catholics…A broad, upbeat theme of social justice will be enough for Obama to reach persuadable Catholics, who can interpret the message in concert with their beliefs. The president might quote Pope John Paul II, who once said, “Radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be, for the world, an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society.” They must hear the message often and at least 15 percent of the time in Spanish.”
Blue Dog John Barrow (D-GA12), makes the case in his WaPo op-ed, “Fewer moderates? Blame redistricting” for “nonpartisan commissions to draw district lines” to reduce what he sees as hyper-partisanship.
A sobering read awaits Dems at Talking Points Memo, where Benjy Sarlin’s “Forget Jeremiah Wright: Democrats’ Real Worry Is GOP Money” notes among his worrisome observations: “…Overall, though, Republicans — and especially Romney — have proven more adept by far at raking in game-changing amounts from big donors…The bigger impact may be on down-ballot races, which will help determine the effectiveness of the next president regardless of party…”Somebody dumps $15 million on the presidential election and they won’t be overwhelming the race,” Hasen said. “But $15 [million] on a Senate or congressional race will be huge and have a major effect, especially with control of the Senate up for grabs.”
The following is cross-posted from The American Prospect:
Ever since the vice president jumped the gun on gay marriage last week, “forcing” President Obama to make an announcement he’d already planned to make, the Dump Biden meme has come roaring back. But if anyone needed reminding why Biden makes an ideal complement to the cucumber-cool commander-in-chief–and some fretful Democrats do–the last two days should have pretty well clinched the case.
Playing his role as the president’s minister of outreach to the white working class, the veep was dispatched to eastern Ohio, traditional Democratic territory where Obama floundered in 2008. Biden grabbed headlines again with his rip-snorting speech yesterday in Youngstown, excoriating the rich-guy politics of Mitt Romney and the Republicans with a pent-up and highly personalized anger. “They don’t get us,” he flat-out hollered. “They don’t get who we are. My mother and father dreamed as much as any rich guy dreams.” This time, it was conservatives who were fuming: This wasn’t Obama’s brand of “class warfare,” which never actually sounds like a declaration of war. This was righteous fury. The real thing. From the gut.
And that, more than the fact that he comes from white working-class stock, is what makes Biden so valuable as Obama’s teammate. He can think, like the boss, but he can also feel–he can’t help it, in fact. In the most compelling defense of Biden’s role in the gay-marriage episode, The New Yorker’s George Packer compared it to LBJ’s nudging of President Kennedy on civil rights in the heated summer of 1963. Some issues, Packer points out, are made “for politicians whose egos are not under tight rational control–who are, come heaven or hell, passionate.” The same can be said for some political moments. And 2012, when Democrats need a populist message that resonates both intellectually (the president’s forte) and emotionally (Biden’s), is one of those moments.
This item by Ed Kilgore is cross-posted from The New Republic, where it was published on May 10, 2012.
President Obama’s surprise announcement yesterday that he now supports marriage equality for same-sex couples brought great joy to two very different groups of people. The first were same-sex couples and LGBT folk, as well as Democrats who no longer have to apologize for a president whose position is still “evolving.” The second group is a little less obvious: the cultural crusaders of the Right, who can now make a stronger argument that social issues should be a focus of the Republicans’ campaign strategy.
Mitt Romney’s campaign strategists are caught in between, left with a strategic dilemma. Using the issue of same-sex marriage to try to mess with Obama’s electorate base–blacks and Hispanics–will be incredibly tempting. But a strident anti-gay marriage campaign, while it may excite conservative interest groups, distracts from Romney’s preferred focus on the economy–and poses a major risk of alienating swing voters and independents.
Republicans can’t ignore that the conservative point of view on same-sex marriage is clearly, if slowly, losing ground in the general electorate. Polls have consistently shown support for marriage equality achieving plurality if not majority support during the last couple of years. Typical was a Gallup survey last week that showed 50 percent of Americans supporting legalized gay marriage, with just 48 percent opposing it. Just as important, the shrinking percentage of Americans opposing gay marriage is increasingly concentrated in the GOP, which reduces their value as swing voters. The same Gallup poll showed self-identified independents supporting gay marriage by a 57-40 margin, far closer to the Democrats’ 65-34 division than to the Republicans’ 22-to-74 split.
And voter intensity on this topic has shifted even more dramatically. According to NBC-Wall Street Journal survey data, in 2004–the last presidential year when this topic was thought to have mattered–opponents of gay marriage enjoyed a greater than two-to-one margin over supporters (62-30). But fully 51 percent of Americans strongly opposed gay marriage, while only 18 percent strongly supported it. As of March 2012, strong supporters of marriage equality (32 percent) have caught up and even passed strong opponents (31 percent).
That’s the demographic reality Obama recognized, preempting what was beginning to look like a real problem for him this summer. There was a growing movement–endorsed already by eleven state party chairs–to place support for marriage equality in the 2012 Democratic platform. Given the president’s total control of the platform process, he would eventually have had to embrace it or squelch it; there’s not much of a middle ground any more on the basic proposition of marriage equality.
Despite all the deterrents for waging an anti-gay marriage campaign, Republicans are sure to fixate on how this will affect two crucial factions of the Democratic voting base: African-Americans and Hispanics. The most recent Pew survey on the subject showed African-Americans opposing gay marriage by a 49-39 margin. That’s a considerable improvement in support for marriage equality from the 63-26 margin of opposition Pew found in 2008, but given the increasingly heavy support of white Democrats for marriage equality, still a pretty striking anomaly. And a 2011 Pew poll suggested that Hispanic Catholics remain more likely to oppose gay marriage than white Catholics. Hispanic Protestants tend to be more conservative on nearly all issues, but as (usually) evangelicals, they are especially likely to oppose gay marriage. Given the GOP’s general problem with Hispanics–due to a recent bender on immigration policy, not to mention hostility to a social safety net–it will be tempting for them to try to make this a wedge issue.
Their model may be Ohio in 2004, when an anti-gay marriage ballot initiative and the Bush campaign’s intensive outreach effort to African-American churches may have made a crucial difference in the state that decided the presidential election. But following that strategy is unlikely to pay off as easily this year. That’s because there won’t be as many gay marriage initiatives on state ballots in November this year as in many recent cycles, and they’ll largely be in states that Obama is certain to carry (Maine, Minnesota, Washington, and Maryland).
So any effort to use the issue will have to involve more overt partisan politicking, which some conservative evangelical ministers–and particularly African-American ministers loath to openly oppose the first African-American president–will be reluctant to embrace. Republicans could deploy targeted, under-the-radar appeals on same-sex marriage, but it will be tricky to do so without letting the passions associated with this and other cultural issues get out of hand, creating a distraction at best and a backlash at worst. Perhaps Republicans would have been better off in the end had Obama “evolved” a bit more slowly.
This item by J.P. Green was originally published on May 9, 2012.
While many believe that Senator Lugar’s defeat by a right-winger, who believes Paul Ryan’s budget is not conservative enough, gives Dems a good shot at a pick-up, yesterday’s elections were generally hailed by conservatives, especially in NC, where voters approved a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage. Campbell Robertson of The New York Times got it right in his lede; the big story in NC was the record turnout.
As expected, North Carolinians voted in large numbers on Tuesday for an amendment that would ban same-sex marriages, partnerships and civil unions, becoming the 30th state in the country and the last in the South to include a prohibition on gay marriage in the state constitution…About half a million people voted early, a record for a primary in the state, and turnout on Tuesday was unusually high as well.
Further down in Robertson’s article, he notes, “Opponents had raised almost twice as much money as the amendment’s supporters and had a robust network of volunteers and get-out-the-vote workers.”
The ad war was also fierce in NC, and no doubt GOTV muscle is even more effective in non-presidential elections, in which overall turnout is normally smaller. There was also a lot of interest in the gubernatorial primary and some congressional races — Republicans hope to pick up as many as four congressional seats in NC alone. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the NC vote supports the argument that investing significant financial resources into GOTV is cost-effective, even for conservatives. And it’s clear that tea party GOTV in Indiana was instrumental in defeating Lugar.
Despite Democratic chest-beating about our superior ground game, one of the lessons of yesterday’s elections is that Republicans can leverage it to good effect also. Yes, Dems have a GOTV edge, particularly with experienced union campaign and turnout workers. But Republicans are not clueless about campaign warfare. They will also be investing heavily in GOTV in the months ahead.
Also in The Times, Jeff Zeleny reports on the intensifying debate among Dems regarding the strategic deployment of financial resources in ads or GOTV. As Zeleny reports, key Dems leaders are concerned that a $100 million plan by liberal donors to lift voter turnout could duplicate Obama campaign efforts already in place and undermine Dems air war:
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and other officials conveyed concern that Democratic candidates could be at a disadvantage if the contributors, many of whom had stayed on the sidelines of the 2012 campaign until now, decide not to spend money on television ads that push back against a torrent of attacks from conservative “super PACS” in the presidential election and Congressional races.
…”The idea that these progressive groups are essentially re-creating the wheel is perplexing and troubling,” said David Krone, the chief of staff to Mr. Reid. “Why go off and build a redundant grass-roots and get-out-the-vote organization that the Obama campaign is clearly invested in?”
Zeleny adds that many Dem strategists still believe that “television advertising was the most powerful way to win races. Democratic strategists have spent months trying to lure Mr. Soros and other donors into the fray of election spending…”Why would they rule out this tried-and-true medium?” Mr. Krone said on Tuesday. “I can guarantee the Republicans are covering all bases and will have a coordinated plan.”
The Obama campaign is reportedly in pretty good shape in terms of preparations for the ad campaign, with Jim Margolis as chief ad guru (profile of Margolis and his strategy here). But down ballot, many Dem candidates are in urgent need of funding for ads.
The debate will likely continue until all possible ads buys are made. No one really knows what is the optimum allocation of pro-Democratic funds into the air war and ground game. But Krone is right that it would be folly to assume that the GOP will come up short in funding either offensive.
This item by Ed Kilgore is cross-posted from The New Republic, where it was originally published on May 3, 2012.
The cool, professorial Barack Obama may not be the most natural politician to espouse a populist message. And being the incumbent doesn’t help: Rhetoric that makes voters feel more aggrieved about their current condition isn’t likely to win him any votes. But Obama can still run on a populist platform. In fact, he has to. Not because it’s the best way to argue for his agenda–because it’s the best way to bash his opponent, Mitt Romney.
It’s fitting that most of the discussions of the advantages and pitfalls of populism for Obama are focused on rhetoric. On a policy level, a sitting president has a relatively limited window for populist agenda items. Obama has supported a tax surcharge on the very wealthy, tax penalties on companies outsourcing jobs, greater regulation of banks and insurance companies–these all command strong popular support in the general electorate. But there are some populist positions that Obama simply can’t assume without the kind of reversal of positions that a vulnerable incumbent is not about to undertake. Obama is not going to say TARP (or his implementation of it) was a mistake; that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is a corporate stooge; that economic globalization needs to be resisted by every possible means; or that private health insurance ought to be abolished.
But if by “going populist” one means criticizing the excessive power of wealthy private interests in the economy, society, and politics–and the Republican policies designed to defend or increase it–then the President has significantly more latitude, which he clearly has signaled his willingness to use. How far can he credibly go in the direction of unrestrained rhetorical populism? In his TNR essay on this subject yesterday, Geoffrey Kabaservice argued that Obama would be constrained by his personality: a populist tone, he suggested, is alien to the persona of a President who is “nobody’s idea of ‘just folks.'” But American history has shown that populist rhetoric doesn’t have to come from the heartland. Franklin Roosevelt was nobody’s idea of “just folks” either; that didn’t keep him from inveighing against economic royalists, or from quoting his equally patrician relative Theodore Roosevelt in denouncing “malefactors of great wealth.”
Kabaservice associates Obama with John F. Kennedy’s “cool,” but an identically privileged background did not prevent JFK’s two brothers from striking populist notes. On one occasion in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was speaking to a medical school audience about the need for better health care for the poor, and one of the future physicians asked him sarcastically where he expected to get the money for such social luxuries; without hesitation Kennedy responded, “From you.” As RFK showed, it’s possible to combine populist heat with the progressive light of a “common national purpose” message.
In fact, a more populist tone is not only possible for Obama, it’s essential. While voters may hold him primarily responsible for the economy, they will judge his performance based on their sense of the trouble he inherited from Bush and the resistance he’s facing from Bush’s party. That means, to use the all-purpose terms devised by Democratic wordsmith Bob Shrum, Obama has to convince the electorate that he’s been “fighting for you” and is “on your side” against the policies of a party beholden to sinister rent-seeking corporate actors.
Most importantly, Obama badly needs to make sure this is a “choice election,” and not a referendum on Obama’s first term. That means he needs to run on Mitt Romney’s flaws, and not only on his own accomplishments. And because of Romney’s own background and economic agenda, a populist message is the best way to do that. Romney is running almost entirely on his reputation as a corporate wizard; his economic policy platform is about liberating “job creators” from taxes and oversight; and he has embraced the Ryan Budget, a domestic policy blueprint that aims at a government-engineered redistribution of resources from the bottom to the top of the income ladder. If Obama does not draw attention to the obvious class nature of Romney’s background, agenda, allies, and beneficiaries, then he is in danger of letting Romney get away with the suggestion that he’s simply offering an alternative path to full economic recovery–not a path for the wealthy to acquire more wealth.
For Obama to represent the national interest and the welfare of the broad middle-class, as those fearing a populist approach so often suggest, he’s going to have to establish that Mitt Romney is a creature of moneyed special interests. And like it or not, that means Obama must wage rhetorical battle against America’s elite. That’s not to say that the President will have to model himself on William Jennings Bryan; for the purposes of this election, RFK would suffice.
TNR’s Alec MacGillis comments on Kimberly Strassel’s silly Wall St. Journal article, “The President Has a List,” which likens one of the Obama campaign’s websites posting of “A brief history of Romney’s donors” to Nixon’s ‘White House Enemies List.” According to Strassel,
In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having “less-than-reputable records,” the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that “quite a few” have also been “on the wrong side of the law” and profiting at “the expense of so many Americans.
In other words, “Gasp….How dare they rat out our rich donors!”
MacGillis has a little fun with Strassel’s warped reasoning, and notes,
Got that? Identifying on a campaign Web site the people who are giving to the opponent’s super PAC in six and seven-figure increments is the equivalent of Nixon’s enemies list, which, as John Dean explained it at the time, was designed to “screw” targeted individuals via “grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, prosecution, etc.”
Nixon’s white house enemies list was about harassing citizens who dared to publicly criticize the President. Outing fat cat donors who hide in the shadows is not quite the same thing. MacGillis explains it well, along with citing the hypocritical double standard of the GOP and their media defenders:
When you are giving at levels hundreds of times larger than the $2,500 maximum for a regular donation to a campaign, or thousands of times larger than the size checks regular people send to candidates, then you are setting yourself apart. And the only thing that the rest of the citizenry has left to right the balance even slightly is to give you some added scrutiny–to see what personal interests, biases, you name it, might be prompting you to influence the political system in such an outsized way. It’s all we’ve got, really–the Internet, the phone call, the visit to the courthouse. And yes, this applies to everyone. Why does everyone on the right know so much about George Soros? Because they were outraged at the scale of his giving in 2004 and 2006 and dug up everything they could on him. As is only right and proper. And now people are going to look into Frank VanderSloot, Harold Simmons and Paul Singer and the rest of Romney’s million-dollar club.
Fair enough. If rich donors want to use their wealth to influence elections, the notion that they should have their anonymity in doing so protected is not likely to win much sympathy outside their ranks.
Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg report in the NYT that top GOP strategists have joined forces with conservative billionaire Joe Ricketts to prepare for a political ad campaign that may set a new standard for viciousness. According the the authors, one part of the plan includes,
…running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.
“The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way,” says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics.
The ad would reportedly front an “extremely literate conservative African-American” who would say that Obama presents himself as a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.” This particular group of conservatives seems terminally obsessed with the Jeremiah Wright fuss, which the public may now see as a no-longer relevant yawner.
But it is a clear harbinger of the depths of the low road Republican campaign to come. It’s all part of the strategy of using Super PAC’s to do the dirty work, while the Romney campaign stays on the ‘higher’ road:
…Should the plan proceed, it would run counter to the strategy being employed by Mitt Romney’s team, which has so far avoided such attacks. The Romney campaign has sought to focus attention on the economy, and has concluded that personal attacks on Mr. Obama, who is still well liked personally by most independent voters surveyed for polls, could backfire.
…The strategists grappled with the quandary of running against Mr. Obama that other Republicans have cited this year: “How to inflame their questions on his character and competency, while allowing themselves to still somewhat ‘like’ the man becomes the challenge.”
Lamenting that voters “still aren’t ready to hate this president,” the document concludes that the campaign should “explain how forces out of Obama’s control, that shaped the man, have made him completely the wrong choice as president in these days and times.”
The ad would run during the Democratic convention in Charlotte. It also calls for billboards and aerial banners etc.
In his TDS strategy memo warning of a GOP “propaganda campaign of a scope and ferocity unparalleled in American History,” Andrew Levison predicted that the Republican PACs would take the lead in the low-road campaign. “The ads–which will come from Super-PAC’s more than official sources–will be ugly and distasteful: they will portray Obama as deeply “un-American”–foreign and alien to the heartland values and daily life of the “real” America.” the reasons, as Levison suggests,
…By the fall of 2012 Republicans and conservatives will be literally desperate to increase turn-out among a conservative political base that is very ambivalent about Romney and which has extremely little enthusiasm for him or his country-club Republican persona. There is only so much that conventional TV advertising can do to create an artificial “real folks” image for a candidate who is as ostentatiously privileged and aloof as Romney. In order to turn-out the base on Election Day Republican strategists will agree that it will be necessary to create a climate of genuine mass hysteria about the horrors of a second Obama term.
…The most important goal of this low road campaign will be to create a fierce and widespread hysteria among the conservative base–enough to overcome their lack of enthusiasm for Romney and bring them out to vote in record numbers. But this campaign will also have a significant impact on non-conservative, relatively apolitical voters as it circulates via social media and face to face communication. Among the vast majority of average Americans today there are now informal social media networks (e-mail, Facebook, photo-sharing sites etc.) of 10-30 or more family and friends. Within these networks there are almost always a small group of passionate tea-party/Rush Limbaugh advocates–cantankerous cousin Buford who continually passes around all the latest e-mail rumors (“they’re gonna’ secretly implant chips with 666 on em’ into all the dogs when they go to get their vaccinations”) and bossy Aunt Louise who thinks that photo-shopping Nancy Pelosi’s head onto a zombie or vampire photo or using the “fun-house mirror” tool on Obama is the absolute height of mordant satire. These individuals will be the conduit through which the massive low road campaign will circulate virally.
The best Democratic response suggests Levison, would be a “communications campaign that aggressively attacks the low road slanders from a relatively “middle of the road”, moderate perspective and which puts pressure on Romney to either embrace or repudiate them…forced to choose between alienating his conservative or moderate supporters.” Examples of messages Levison suggests include “”This election should be an honest debate and not a smear campaign using secret money” and “Oh come on. Get real. I’m sick of hearing lies every day on my TV and telephone.”
Clearly the Obama campaign needs a quick response team dedicated, not only to launching strong counter-punch attacks, but also sound bite-sized responses that appeal to average voters’ sense of decency. The right-wing Super PACs are poised to take the tone of campaign 2012 way south in terms of sleaze, and Dems should get ready to rumble.
Yes, we posted on the ungainly demise of Americans Elect just yesterday. But Paul Krugman’s short, but juicy obit on the hapless organization and their fruitless search for a standard-bearer merits a plug. As Krugman opines,
And the center not only did not hold, it couldn’t seem to get any attention whatsoever. Americans Elect, a lavishly funded “centrist” group that was supposed to provide an alternative to traditional political parties, has been a ridiculous flop. Basically, about seven people were actually excited about the venture — all of them political pundits. Actual voters couldn’t care less.
Krugman shines brightly on the why of the disaster:
Why Americans Elect? Because there exists in America a small class of professional centrists, whose stock in trade is denouncing the extremists in both parties and calling for a middle ground. And this class cannot, as a professional matter, admit that there already is a centrist party in America, the Democrats — that the extremism they decry is all coming from one side of the political fence. Because if they admitted that, they’d just be moderate Democrats, with no holier-than-thou pedestal to stand on.
Americans Elect was created to appeal to this class of professional centrists — which meant that it was doomed to go nowhere. Because outside that class, the large number of people who believe in all the good stuff the centrists claim to favor are, you know, going to vote for Obama. The large number of people who don’t believe in any of that are going to vote for Romney. All AE could ever have been was a distraction; and it turns out not to have managed even that.
Conceived as it was on the flimsiest of premises, Americans Elect never had much going for it, other than the support of false equivalency pundits, who clearly don’t know squat about coalitions or what it takes to build a real protest movement.
At The Washington Monthly’s ‘Political Animal’ blog, Ed Kilgore has a post up addressing the Democratic response to Karl Rove’s forthcoming $25 million ad buy, and it’s not encouraging for Dems:
…The people behind the three biggest pro-Democratic Super-PACs (the Senate-focused Majority PAC, the House Majority PAC, and the presidentially-oriented Priorities USA Action) are planning a gigantic, coordinated blowout fundraising effort at the Democratic National Convention. In a collective lapse of imagination, they are calling it “Super-O-Rama.”
Gotta say, folks, this news bears the aroma of desperation, or at least procrastination. Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS has just committed to buying $25 million in ads during the next month, matching the Obama campaign’s ad blitz. Not to be intimidated, Democratic Super-PACs are talking about raising some serious jack in September. In case it’s slipped anyone’s mind, the election is in November, and I suspect an awful lot of ad time will be off the table by September.
Kilgore acknowledges “the logic of using the convention for a fundraising blitz,” with its “unique concentration of political and non-political celebrity talent…” But he warns, “…The Super-PACs will be competing for the attention of big money people with an awful lot of other events…The very features of a convention that make it an ideal place for money and star-power to come together also make it a logistical nightmare.”
On the upside, Kilgore adds that “…It’s good the money-hustlers have some idea of how they will get within shouting distance of conservative money this year,” and they will have an edge with an incumbent president, a smaller, but well-heeled donor base and better ground game resources.
Nonetheless, Kilgore concludes, “it would be helpful to ensure that Democratic Super-PACs aren’t in a position of “competing” with Rove and company by dominating the critical 2:00-3:00 a.m. time slot.” It’s a high stakes poker game, and it sounds like Dems could use a better hand.
