New York Times reporter Carl Hulse reports on the role of the conservative organization ‘Freedom Watch’ in holding the Ohio 5th district House seat for the GOP and defeating Democratic candidate Robin Weirauch.

The Freedom’s Watch ad, which had ample air time through an estimated $100,000 buy, was a tough one on immigration — the new go-to issue for Republicans. The ad suggested that Ms. Weirauch supported public health care benefits for illegal immigrants. Ms. Weirauch said she obviously does not support such a thing but instead backed a national health care plan that she said would extend to legal residents of the United States. Nevertheless, she had a tough time explaining her way out of it.

This was the first time Freedom Watch bankrolled ads in a GOP House race, but it is not going to be the last. Hulse speculates that Freedom Watch has “tens of millions” of dollars to pour into political races, to help make up the RNC’s fund-raising shortfall.
While it is unclear from recent reportage exactly who runs Freedom Watch, an earlier Washington Post article by Peter Baker named Mel Sembler, “the big-time Bush family fundraiser and co-founder of Freedom’s Watch,” former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, former White House aide Brad Blakeman, Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matthew Brooks and casino executive William Weidner. Baker quotes watchdog Larry Klayman, who is suing Freedom Watch, saying “its ties to the White House make it likely it was concocted by them as a scheme to circumvent the ban on soft money political advertising.”
Baker also reports that Freedom Watch was launched to spend $15 million in an advertising campaign supporting Bush’s escalation of the war in Iraq. All of which diminishes the cred of Republicans who whine incessantly about the contributions of pro-Democratic “special interests” and wealthy donors.
Meanwhile, Democratic breast-beating about our fund-raising advantage thus far probably needs some reassessment. Apparently, we’re going to have to dig a good bit deeper to win both the white house and a working congressional majority.

Fortune Magazine‘s Washington Bureau Chief Nina Easton’s post “Democrats’ War on Corporate Greed: Mostly Bluster” discusses the comparatively mild messaging of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the topic of corporate abuse in comparison to John Edwards.
Easton was struck with the anti-corporate tone of the Democratic field in Thursday’s debate — in stark contrast to the lack of discussion about the Iraq War and terrorism. But despite the debate’s “symphony of simplistic war-cries against business,” Easton sees the policies of Obama and Clinton as “more nuanced” and cites their “deep ties with supporters and contributors in corporate America.”
She is quite right that Edwards is the high-profile class warrior of the ’08 campaign, having anchored his campaign in anti-corporate rhetoric. His statement in Thursday’s debate in Iowa is emblematic of the core message his campaign has been hammering everywhere he goes:

We’re having trouble growing and strengthening the middle class because corporate power and greed have literally taken over the government, and we need a president who’s willing to take these powers on.

Easton believes that Edwards may have found a resonating message:

Edwards, in particular, has hit on an effective formula with populist-minded Iowans: While the two frontrunners, Obama and Clinton, stab-wound each other, Edwards catches attention by dropping a bomb on corporate America. On Thursday, a focus group of Iowa voters holding dial-meters and organized by Fox News (where I am a contributor) showed a mediocre response when Clinton talked about controlling healthcare costs, but off-the-chart support when Edwards let loose against corporate interests.

The last time a politician ran such a strongly-populist campaign was in 1976, when Senator Fred Harris lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Governor Jimmy Carter. But corporate America’s image has taken some hard hits since then.
The Ethics Resource Center’s 2007 National Business Ethics Survey of employed adults, sponsored by top Fortune 500 companies and conducted 6/25 to 8/15, found that only nine percent of companies “have strong ethical cultures” and ethical misconduct is back at “pre-Enron” levels. More than half of employees say they have witnessed ethical misconduct on the job.
The latest Conference Board survey of 5,000 households reported last February found that less than half of all Americans say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61 percent who were satisfied twenty years ago. Wages are stagnant. Health insurance premiums are out of control.
There is no guarantee that increasing job dissatisfaction will be translated into political discontent, like presidential approval ratings are clearly linked to rising gas prices. Yet, a lot of Americans feel like they are being ripped-off by big corporations and their errand-boy politicians. Edwards’ gamble is that this simmering anger can be converted into votes for the candidate who calls it out, loud and clear. There are no more Democratic debates before Iowa. But if his ads do justice to his message the week after Christmas, he just may win his bet.

Yesterday I did a post questioning the value of the “Iowa ground game” stories in the MSM. So where does one turn for the real beef? The best thing I’ve read is a long round of diaries at MyDD by someone with the handle of desmoinesdem, an Edwards precinct captain who served Kerry in the same capacity in 2004. The latest (which usefully includes links to six earlier diaries which explain the mechanics of the Caucuses in great detail) addresses the question of the moment: who’s winning in Iowa? And after patiently explaining why staring at polls is probably misleading, demoinesdem goes through the much more subjective measurements that a precinct-level operative utilizes to get a sense of which way the wind is blowing.
You should read the whole thing, but a few nuggets stand out. One is that campaigns tend to overlook potential caucus-goers who appear divided between other candidates; they’re not on the campaign’s radar screen, but could be very important to the actual outcome. Another is the often-forgotten fact that second-place preferences are not just an issue with lower-tier candidates, given the very high “viability” thresholds in smaller precincts. The 2004 winner, John Kerry, was “non-viable” in 222 Iowa precincts. And a third is that late momentum can be crucial, with factors like newspaper and elected official endorsements mattering a lot more in Iowa than in most places.
Speaking of endorsesments, in the comment thread to desmoinesdem’s latest post, there’s a discussion of the Des Moines Register endorsement, which is coming out this Sunday (much earlier than usual). The Register endorsement is universally thought to have helped John Edwards mount a last-minute surge in Iowa in 2004. But this time, the buzz seems to be that either Clinton or Biden will get the nod. And Biden, as desmoinesdem also notes, is the one low-tier candidate who seems to have some momentum at present–not enough to break into the Big Three, but enough potentially to change the dynamics.

Alexandra Alter’s “Reading the Mind Of the Body Politic” in today’s Wall St. Journal should be of interest to those following the buzz about Drew Westen’s “The Political Brain.” Alter’s article, which includes photos, graphics and a video, focuses on efforts to apply Westen’s ideas in current political campaigns. For example:

Last Sunday at a San Francisco hotel ballroom, EmSense researchers fitted five volunteers, all undecided Republicans, with battery-powered headsets made of elastic and lined with bits of copper. As they watched the debate on a big screen, the wireless units, which the company calls “EmGear,” collected data on their skin temperature, heart rate, eye-blinking and brain activity and beamed them to a bank of computers. The data were run through a formula created by EmSense to identify whether a response was positive or negative.
When John McCain ran through a list of Hispanic politicians who had endorsed him, the company says the brain-wave frequencies of the test subjects stayed flat, indicating a lack of interest. When Mike Huckabee argued that withdrawing troops from Iraq would create a power vacuum for terrorists, the volunteers’ adrenaline spiked. Fred Thompson’s discussion of health care caused a pattern of brain activity that suggests the viewers thought about what he said, but didn’t like it. The company, which says it plans to begin contacting campaigns later this month, says it could help candidates vet advertisements or hone their language and delivery in speeches.

Alter discusses other innovative experiments by neuromarketing campaign consultants to mine the subconscious and emotional responses of voters. A good read also for those interested in the newer frontiers of political attitude research.

In his WaPo op-ed column”Homespun Meets Hard-Line,” Michael Gerson sheds some disturbing light on the real Mike Huckabee. Gerson says Huckabee made “a moral blunder of the first order” in accepting the endorsement of anti-immigrant extremist Jim Gilchrist, founder of “The Minuteman Project”:

Gilchrist is not just another voice on immigration. He is one of the most divisive figures in the most divisive debate in American politics. In 2006, responding to pro-immigration demonstrations, he told the Orange County Register, “I’m not going to promote insurrection, but if it happens, it will be on the conscience of the members of Congress who are doing this. I will not promote violence in resolving this, but I will not stop others who might pursue that.” Note the oily formulation — not promoting, but also not criticizing, the resort to political violence. “I’m willing to see my country go into battle if necessary,” he added, “for our sovereignty and to be governed by rule of law.”
Gilchrist has called for the impeachment of President Bush over the issue of border enforcement. He has made noises about running for president as a third-party candidate because of his disdain for Republicans.

Gerson sees Huckabee’s embrace of immigrant-bashing as a sloppy maneuver to top Romney. We look forward to hearing Huckabee explain to Hispanic voters how much of Gilchrist’s agenda he supports.

There’s already been some derisive commentary (viz., from TAPPED’s Kate Sheppard) about the final question in today’s Des Moines Register Democratic debate, asking candidates to reflect on the joys of campaigning in Iowa.
When moderator Carolyn Washburn started into this question, I thought for a horrified moment she was going to pledge each and every one of the candidates to protect Iowa’s primacy in the nominating process now and forever, world without end, particularly as president. It would have been a difficult pledge to avoid at this point, with all of them lusting after every single Caucus vote. But instead, she only asked for a generic pander to Iowans, and only Joe Biden went over the brink and said “Iowa deserves to be first.”
Listening to the paens to Iowans’ sturdy civic virtues and the glories of food-on-a-stick, I’m probably not the only one to wonder what would have happened if the candidates had been attached to lie detectors. And I actually like Iowa.

I watched the Des Moines Register Democratic candidate debate partly out of sheer curiosity–to see if the Register or its editor and moderator, Carolyn Washburn, adjusted to the savage criticism they received after yesterday’s GOP debate.
They did, to some extent; there was no prohibition on discussion of key issues, and relatively little “Nurse Ratched” scolding of candidates for violating petty debate rules. But the format remained one that provided few opportunities for candidate interplay, pretty much letting them broadcast their messages to audiences in Iowa and elsewhere. There was also, as occurred yesterday, a heavy focus on the Register‘s peculiar obsession with fiscal policy.
Given that basic framework, the debate enabled the Big Three to sharpen their central pitches. HRC got in one very good defining line, though it may have been too subtle for many viewers: Some demand change (Edwards), some hope for it (Obama), but I know you have to work for it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her develop that line in the next three weeks.
But Edwards and Obama got to strut their stuff more often and more effectively. If it’s possible to hone a message into a blunt instrument, Edwards has done so with his anti-corporate theme, which he reinforced with almost every breath. And Obama achieved a nice balance between his wonkiness and rhetorical uplift. In the Frank Luntz focus-group reaction to the debate on Fox, Edwards and Obama scored very well. Indeed, it was a good reminder of how little attention regular folks pay attention to campaigns that several focus group members seemed happily surprised by Edwards’ I’ve-fought-corporations-my-whole-life routine, which us political junkies have heard him do about 5,000 times.
The other candidates, denied any chance to spark a fight, did the best they could, with Dodd touting his experience, Biden his expertise, and Richardson his folksiness and resume (though he seemed to have been surprised by the Wen Ho Lee question). The only candidate who had a really bad day was Dennis Kucinich, who was excluded.
The only other points worth making were again by Luntz, who noted (a) that his Dem focus group participants were vastly more positive about all the candidates than the GOP focus group he convened yesterday, and (b) that all his research in Iowa convinces him that the Democratic turnout on Caucus Night is going to be very, very heavy. Regardless of how that affects the outcome on January 3, that’s a good omen for Democrats next November.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

We’ve arrived at an interesting stage in the Democratic presidential contest. The chattering classes have all pretty much come to agreement that (1) it’s All About Iowa, (2) Iowa’s too close to call, and (3) in a close race, field organization totally rules. So naturally, there’s a huge appetite for insight into the Real Story, i.e., Iowa field operations, or “the ground game.”
Efforts to feed this beast are popping up all over the MSM, with mixed results.
The most overt “peek inside” piece is by Jay Newton-Small for Time, entitled “Inside Obama’s Iowa Ground Game.”
Newton-Small focuses on anecdotal information from mid-level Obama staffers and volunteers, not the high command, and his basic question is whether Obama is another Jimmy Carter or Howard Dean in terms of mobilizing new Caucus-goers. Carter basically put the Iowa Caucuses on the national political map with a big 1976 showing. Dean proved you could finish third with a head start in the polls, all the money and endorsements imaginable, and hordes of hyper-energized volunteers.
The reporter doesn’t really answer his own question, but instead lets Obama’s folk make the case that he’s doing outreach right, with particular emphasis not only on college students, but on indies and Republicans, and on supporters of lower-tier candidates whose second-round support on Caucus Night could be crucial. Without third-party verification, who knows how intensive or effective Obama’s field organization really is?
If Newton-Small’s piece illustrates the shortcomings of microanalysis of the Iowa “ground game,” the perils of macroanalysis are on display in a big Washington Post article on Clinton’s Iowa campaign by Anne Kornblut. A quick read of the piece conveys the impression that Clinton’s campaign is in panic mode, and is just now coming to grips with the harsh realities of Caucus politics. But in her effort to provide a big-picture look at the challenges facing HRC’s campaign, Kornblut telescopes many months of developments.
The Clinton campaign’s “crisis summit” over Iowa that leads the piece occurred back in October, light years ago in campaign terms. Moreover, the employment of battle-tested Iowa pros by HRC began last spring, when she picked up Tom Vilsack’s endorsement and placed her Iowa organization under the consummate field pro, Teresa Vilmain. And the internal struggle over Iowa that’s the subtext of the entire piece was about candidate time in Iowa and the need for additional field personnel, not the Iowa organization’s Caucus savvy. By all accounts, these internal issues have been resolved, so it’s not clear how germane they are to the current environment, unless you think Clinton could have crushed all opposition with an earlier start (hard to believe, since no one could beat John Edwards’ head start in Iowa).
I don’t mean to sound too critical here; there are real insights to be gleaned from both Newton-Small’s and Kornblut’s essays. And we’d all like to get a glimpse behind the veil of the Iowa campaigns.
But here’s the real problem: all of the Big Three have highly competent Iowa managers, excellent field operations, and all the money they need for the home stretch. One may prove to be better than others, but it’s a probably a matter of degree, and if one campaign is doing something really revolutionary, they’re probably not going to tell us about it. Perhaps in the end, Obama’s outreach and microtargeting program; the HRC/Emily’s List effort to radically boost turnout by women; or Edwards’ focus on rural precincts, will make a crucial difference. Maybe there will be a last-minute tactical agreement between candidates for second-choice support. And yes, the weather could matter a lot. But nobody knows right now, best I can tell from a sounding of my own contacts among political reporters and Iowa veterans.
We may just have to wait until Caucus Night to discover the real Ground Game story in Iowa.

A new study by ad and marketing research firm PQ Media provides a revealing breakdown of the way ’08 political ad campaign spending is shaping up. According to Steve McClellan’s Adweek article, “Political Ad Spend to Soar“:

Political ad spending across all media is projected to reach $3.03 billion, and account for 67.2 percent of all political media spending in the 2008 election cycle…broadcast TV would command the largest share of political media expenditures in 2008 with 51.3 percent of the total…direct mail…is projected to generate more than $1 billion in spending for the first time in 2008…Internet ad spending is expected to exhibit the fastest growth during the 2008 campaign, up an estimated 84 percent compared with 2006…Other media projected to exhibit high double-digit gains are public relations, promotions and event marketing (56 percent), direct mail (53 percent) and broadcast TV (46.2 percent).

As for the kinds of campaigns that will do the most ad spending:

The presidential race is expected to command the largest share of spending in 2008 at 37 percent, or $1.67 billion, while the Senate and House races will account for 19.4 percent and 21.4 percent, respectively. Due to significantly fewer gubernatorial races (11 versus 36 in 2006), spending by gubernatorial candidates is expected to account for less than 4 percent of overall expenditures, while local races and spending on referendums will account for the remaining 18 percent.

Martin Kaste’s article “Democrats Take Civil Approach in TV Ads (For Now),” at NPR’s website notes the relatively tame tone of current political ads of leading Democratic presidential candidates broadcasted in early primary states. Kaste seems to attribute the temporary civility to the approaching Christmas season. Seems a little early to make nice, but it makes sense to tone down for a couple of weeks. Candidates probably shouldn’t risk looking too negative close to the holiday.
Don’t be surprised, however, if the civility truce starts curdling in ads beginning December 26. Why? Because candidates across the political spectrum know that attack ads are effective. Republican strategist Roger Stone explains it this way:

The problem with negative advertising is: It works. The very same voters who tell you in the polls that they don’t like it, that they hate it, will turn around and tell you the exact content of the ads. And we know, from intensive polling going on now, that these ads do move voters from over here to over here.

Negative ads can backfire, particularly if they degenerate into a vicious ad hominem attack. One frequently-cited example is the 1993 Canadian election in which the Conservative Party appeared to mock Liberal Party leader Jean Chrétien’s Bell’s Palsy partial facial paralysis, and the conservatives were damaged in the polls.
And accuracy of attack ads is critical, as Stone cautions:

…If so-called negative or comparison advertising is going to be effective, it should be footnoted, it should indisputable on the facts…And I think it is ineffective. Voters are not stupid. They can see through a late, unsupported charge.

There’s an ongoing debate about whether or not political attack ads have a depressing effect on voter turnout. One major academic study reported in the American Journal of Political Science indicated that attack ads do not depress turnout, and a more recent Journal of Politics article provides evidence that attack ads may often increase voter turnout.
There is an important distinction that needs to be made here — personal attacks vs. attacks on policies, although the lines between them are often blurry. What candidates should avoid is looking mean-spirited. But sharp, well-articulated critiques of policies, backed by credible alternatives, is what really makes a candidate look good. Ads that meet this standard win the support of swing voters who care about issues.

In my last post on the Des Moines Register‘s Republican candidate debate, I allowed as how there had been some grumbling about moderator (and Register editor) Carolyn Washburn’s handling of the event. That seems to have been an understatement.
There’s a general feeling that the debate format and moderator behavior made the debate meaningless. But some went further: viz., Dean Barnett of the Weekly Standard, whose post on the debate was subtitled “Why Carolyn Washburn should keep her day job.” If that wasn’t clear enough, Barnett said Washburn–or “Nurse Ratched,” as he called her–had “ruined” the debate with “her idiotic rules.” Wolf Blitzer must be very relieved.
In any event, it makes you wonder how or whether the Register will adapt before tomorrow’s Democratic candidate debate, which given the close three-way contest in Iowa, will be a truly big deal. Could there be a call to the Register‘s bench, where the columnist so often treated by fawning politicians as the God of Iowa Politics, David Yepsen, along with the Register‘s chief political reporter, Tom Beaumont, are waiting?