In a lot of this country, even in booming economies, there isn’t a whole lot to do on a Saturday night. Not every community has an arena where famous people come to entertain them. If they want to see their favorite musical band or some pro wrestling or maybe a popular comedian, they’re going to have to do a road trip. Or, maybe they do have a little arena or a minor league baseball field or a little airport with a big hangar. And if someone as famous as Donald Trump announces that he’s coming to town, that’s some free entertainment and nearly everyone goes out just to see the spectacle. To some degree, this is true for all the other politicians, too, but for people more inclined to watch reality network television than the nightly network news, Trump is a much bigger draw.
What I’m saying is that just because Trump can fill a small hall somewhere in rural America doesn’t mean that everyone in the audience is a supporter. A lot of them are there because they know who he is and have been entertained by him in the past. Others have seen the outrageous things that happen at his rallies and want to experience it firsthand.
But big rallies are deceptive, as Bernie Sanders can tell you. You don’t win elections by having big rallies alone.
Well, you say, Trump just did exactly that, by winning the Republican nomination, right?
My answer to that is “sort of.” Yes, he won with a very unorthodox strategy that spent a lot less on advertising and relied heavily on the free media he could generate with rallies, with asinine Tweets, with off-the-wall statements to the press, etc.
Well, the general election is different because there’s no story in the world that gets more free media than an American presidential election. Trump’s antics won’t give him a comparative advantage anymore because the media will cover absolutely everything both candidates do for every waking hour between now and November.
The lesson Trump has learned is that his opponents are all paper tigers and that he doesn’t have to run an actual campaign. He can just wing it, and rely on the media to carry him over the top.
Trump stunned the political world at every turn during the Republican primary season, prioritizing large rallies over intimate voter interactions in early voting states and operating with a slim campaign operation. Even as he brings in new staff for the general election campaign, he says his emphasis will continue to be on raucous rallies to put him in front of thousands of voters and generate free media coverage.
“My best investment is my rallies,” Trump said. “The people go home, they tell their friends they loved it. It’s been good.”
The businessman said he’ll spend “limited” money on data operations to identify and track potential voters and to model various turnout scenarios that could give him the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency. He’s moving away from the model Obama used successfully in his 2008 and 2012 wins, and which Clinton is trying to replicate, including hiring many of the staff that worked for Obama.
Trump says that these data operations didn’t do much for Obama and that Obama was the one responsible for getting his votes. This is the triumph of rhetoric over organizing, of bluster over science.
Taken alone, Obama’s data operations would have been worthless. What he needed first was a well-trained army of organizers who could use that data to make their operations as efficient as possible. Instead of a walk list that includes every registered voter in a neighborhood, you have a walk list that only includes the people likely to support your candidate who don’t vote in every election and who haven’t already been contacted at their front door. Your organizers don’t waste time reaching the already converted, don’t irritate their own supporters, and infrequently have the demoralizing experience of running into hostile supporters of the other candidate. Happy, productive door-knockers will work for hours and come back for shift after shift. The same is true for the people manning phone banks.
A good data system that is constantly updated can also help you save a ton of money by giving you the ability to microtarget your advertising.
Then, once you’ve done all the groundwork, you can see whether you’re hitting your targets in any given area. If you’re not, you can devote more resources there.
After the 2008 election, the Republican Party realized how badly they’d been mauled by Obama’s organizing and they set out to narrow the difference. They made some progress but also had some spectacular failures, like their Orca app that didn’t work on election day.
Called “Orca,” the effort was supposed to give the Romney campaign its own analytics on what was happening at polling places and to help the campaign direct get-out-the-vote efforts in the key battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Colorado.
Instead, volunteers couldn’t get the system to work from the field in many states—in some cases because they had been given the wrong login information. The system crashed repeatedly. At one point, the network connection to the Romney campaign’s headquarters went down because Internet provider Comcast reportedly thought the traffic was caused by a denial of service attack.
As one Orca user described it to Ars, the entire episode was a “huge clusterfuck.”
The RNC didn’t conclude that these tools weren’t needed. They concluded that they needed to work correctly, and they invested a lot of money to get their data operations ready for the 2016 campaign.
Still, the Republican National Committee has invested heavily in data operations, eager to avoid another defeat to a more technologically savvy Democrat. Trump could make use of that RNC data if he wished.
I’m trying to imagine the exasperation that is being felt at the RNC among the crew that’s spent four years trying to get their operations “just right” for their next nominee.
Hillary Clinton hired as many Obama data folks and organizers as she could. She intends to have an efficient and happy grassroots army.
Trump won’t even try to respond in kind. His grassroots army will be flying blind, trampling all over each other, while gathering no useful information.
And we’ll find out if rhetoric and outrageousness can trump good organizing.
OT: Trump’s promise: `I will appoint judges that will be pro-life’
05/11/16 09:21 AM
By Steve Benen
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared on Fox News last night, where he fielded a question from a viewer who wanted him to “name one specific thing he would do to protect the sanctity of human life.” The GOP candidate quickly turned his focus to judicial nominees:
“I will protect [life] and the biggest way you can protect it is through the Supreme Court and putting people in the court. And actually the biggest way you can protect it, I guess, is by electing me president.”
Trump added that he expects to name “as many as five” high court justices in the coming years, adding, “I will appoint judges that will be pro-life, yes.”
I think there are two broad angles to keep in mind with a quote like this one. The first is the extent to which Trump’s position relates to his party’s Supreme Court blockade. Senators like Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and others don’t like to see it framed this way, but Republican lawmakers aren’t just holding open a court vacancy for a year in order to empower Trump, they’re also doing so to help guarantee the confirmation of “judges that will be pro-life.”
Or put another way, GOP senators are operating from an informal plan: partner with Donald Trump so the Supreme Court can roll back the clock on reproductive rights.
I saw this, too. Sends a chill down the spine. No one said Trump’s a fool. In the past, apparently, he was pro-choice, but now he sees one of his main chances to victory. So he’s flip-flopped – IOKIYAR (or say you’re a R) – and now is “pro-life.”
Groan. That WILL succeed in garnering him some votes from the today’s (but probably not tomorrow’s) Never Trump faction.
He’s “seen the light” and “come to Jesus”. Always OKIYAR. Don’t if he gives a shit. just vote getting BS.
When Trump & Hillary debate it will be good for roses.
It’s a potent fund-raising tool for them too.
Because, of course, nothing the Black man did is worth anything. Because, running the kind of operation that he ran didn’t take skill or smarts..it was all LUCK [/snark]
Luck and teleprompter fairy dust magic.
That “teleprompter” thing still pisses me off. Where do they get the fucking gall?
About a law school professor? (At Chicago, not some goddamned Liberty University bullshit…and after making editor of the Harvard Law Review!)
And, from the gang who gave us Reagan and W. and Palin? (Even Palin, a straight-up moron if there ever was one, make the “teleprompter” remarks!)
Yeah, right, but part of it is that Trump is just plain lazy in this regard, plus he doesn’t have the skill to do it. He’s energized by all that attention, doing shenanigans, bloviating on the tube, blah blah… but coming down to real organizing? Eh? Boring, not so much. We’re witnessing on a large stage how this man operates, in general. Works, I guess, for his business empire (such as that is), but probably not so much for the rest of this campaign. Maybe he thinks if his campaign starts tanking, he can declare bankruptcy and come out the winner. Seems to work for him in other regards.
However, we’ll soon see how this pans out.
He approaches this like he approaches everything: be vain and ignorant; bully everyone; demand obsequiousness, tribute, gold plating; know absolutely nothing about the complexities and evince not the slightest iota of taste, talent, skill or judgment. Burn through all the money and create an ugly, badly-made result; blame everyone else…move onto the next thing.
I live in NYC and I fucking hate Trump Tower. I hate the idea of it…the world’s largest reinforced concrete building (meaning, cheap), constructed by the mob and by illegal Polish immigrants with no helmets who never got paid right…and covered in Terrazzo marble and brass, with his name all over it in Fascist, Brutalist big type. It’s the perfect embodiment of his entire appalling schtick.
What was it, two months ago when he said he “didn’t even know what ground game was” and then berated all his volunteers and minions? While making remarks to the crowd about hairspray? God, I hate him…I hate the thing he stands for. He’s the opposite of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Obama, Robert Moses…he’s the opposite of anything good.
Pretty much this.
Trump’s savvy isn’t in running things. It’s in getting other suckers to invest, while he grabs as much profit as possible, before letting the thing fail.
If Trump runs his general election campaign as well as everything else he has run, he should be able to snag a bunch of cash from investors, before walking away from a smoking ruin he doesn’t give a shit about.
You write:
“Well, the general election is different because there’s no story in the world that gets more free media than an American presidential election. Trump’s antics won’t give him a comparative advantage anymore because the media will cover absolutely everything both candidates do for every waking hour between now and November.”
That is of course true, Booman. The problem will arise when Trump’s coverage is 100 times more interesting than is HRC’s. She’s going to put people to sleep with her wonkery while Trump is going to wake them up…and entertain them…with his monkey business. The committed, practical, long-time voters will mostly go for Her Royal Wonkiness…HRC really does have a magnificent ability to dredge up numbers and facts that support her history and positions…but I think that this election is going to come down to who can “entertain” the people who almost never vote sufficiently to get them to the polls and further, if there are enough of them to swing the election in Trump’s favor. This is essentially an un-pollable question, because the people who do not vote are also by and large the same people who do not respnd to..and/or are not even in easy reach of… pollsters.
The real “Silent Majority,” I fear.
We shall see…
Six months and counting to D Day.
E day, really.
Six months of reporting.
Like this:
“Hillary Clinton gave another speech today. Then she went to a restaurant, talked to some people and retired for the night.”
And this:
“Donald Trump today challenged Barack Obama to an arm wrestilng match, insulted the memory of Alice Cooper, gave a speech threatening to ally with Russia against the Chinese menace and then played a round of golf with Arnold Palmer and Mike Tyson. Then he got in his golden jet plane and flew to Monaco for some business dealings. He’ll be back at 6AM this morning to play a game of cards at the Mafia social club in Gowanus, Brooklyn.”
Yup.
Gonna be “interesting.”
Ain’t it.
“May you be born(se) into interesting times.”
Later…
AG
Snort! Made me laugh, but you make some good points.
Am curious about Vote by Mail and how that works with GOTV. Would it significantly increase %s in low turnout elections, our Waterloo?
And interesting discussion…http://ivn.us/2014/07/25/mail-voting-impact-voter-turnout/ and how to goose it even more…https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/12/21/voting-only-by-mail-can-decreas
e-or-increase-turnout-wait-what
I’ve done banking, but never walking.
We’ve have only vote-by-mail in Oregon. Turnout in 2012 was down relative to 2008…at 82.8%. Turnout in 2014 was 69.5%.
Sorry, meant to write “we’ve had only vote by mail in Oregon” since voters approved this system in a 1998 referendum.