Barack Obama: Hope And Small Change

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The Obama campaign has trumpeted its volume of small donations and its $3 cover charge via incessant emails for entering various raffles (Win a Chance to Sit Five Tables Away from George Clooney!) and sweepstakes (Join Our Bus Tour for a Gas Station Stop in Iowa!).

But that doesn’t tell the entire emaul fundraising story.

The hardworking staff’s Brainiac nephew Colin sends this dispatch from the Obama emaul front:

The lady friend and I noticed today that Barack is asking each of us for different amounts of money, while the rest of the emails are the same.  Our working hypothesis here is that I gave >$25 to the campaign, while she has not donated anything.  Seems pretty standard from a marketing point of view (i.e., it is easier to get someone to donate again than to donate the first time, so you make the barrier to entry $3), but this seemed up your alley.  I attached one example below, though there are plenty (they are persistent, aren’t they!).

Email #1:

Colin —

Last night, Mitt Romney officially accepted the Republican Party’s nomination to challenge me — and you — in the general election on November 6th.

It’s going to be a hard-fought battle. That’s why I need you to stand with me before tonight’s fundraising deadline. Chip in $25 or more.

After three straight months of being outraised, and recently being outspent — in some key states more than 3 to 1 — your support before the deadlinecouldn’t be more urgent.

What we do right now will determine if we can knock on more doors, make more phone calls, and talk to more voters before November 6th.

I’m proud to be a part of a campaign like ours, but the only way it works is if each of us does our part.

Please make a donation of $25 or more before midnight:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Midnight-Deadline

In less than a week, I’ll accept our party’s nomination for president in Charlotte, and I know I wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for you.

Thank you for all you’re doing.

Barack

Email #2:

Karin —

Last night, Mitt Romney officially accepted the Republican Party’s nomination to challenge me — and you — in the general election on November 6th.

It’s going to be a hard-fought battle. That’s why I need you to stand with me before tonight’s fundraising deadline. Chip in $3 or more.

After three straight months of being outraised, and recently being outspent — in some key states more than 3 to 1 — your support before the deadline couldn’t be more urgent.

What we do right now will determine if we can knock on more doors, make more phone calls, and talk to more voters before November 6th.

I’m proud to be a part of a campaign like ours, but the only way it works is if each of us does our part.

Please make a donation of $3 or more before midnight:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Midnight-Deadline

In less than a week, I’ll accept our party’s nomination for president in Charlotte, and I know I wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for you.

Thank you for all you’re doing.

Barack

Clever, yes?

But not as smart as Colin.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Scott Brown ‘Honorary Girl’ Edition)

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The idiotic remark by Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman John Walsh that Scott Brown is trying to be an “honorary girl” got big play in today’s Boston Herald and no play in the Globe’s print edition. See IGTLTDT for details.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

High-Ground Scotty Brown

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Back in the day, the junior senator from Massachusetts was known as Downtown Scotty Brown for his shooting prowess on the basketball court.

Nowadays, he’s just as adept at the political game.

Case in point: Brown’s Take in the Boston Herald, his comments on the Democratic National Convention – the bookend to Democratic Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren’s comments on last week’s GOP hoedown.

Warren’s Take was pure campaign agitprop. Representative sample:

At tonight’s Republican convention, lots of politicians will probably say they support small businesses. But they probably won’t talk much about how Washington is rigged for big businesses, while entrepreneurs and small businesses are fighting uphill. And every time Scott Brown and his fellow Republicans vote for tax subsidies for oil companies or tax breaks for companies moving money overseas, they help keep it that way.

Brown voted against a plan to extend tax cuts for 98 percent of Massachusetts’ residents and 97 percent of small businesses in order to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent. He voted to protect billions in tax subsidies for big oil companies, and then he worked in secret to water down Wall Street reform.

But Brown – savvy as always – has a much softer approach.

From his first dispatch:

I plan on watching the Democratic National Convention this week and sharing some of my thoughts with you. My purpose will not be to criticize the other party, but to look for areas of common ground. Regardless of what political party you’re in, the challenges we face are the same: Nearly 23 million of our fellow Americans are either out of work or underemployed.

I was honored to be named by Congressional Quarterly as one of the most bipartisan senators in the country. Whatever else separates us, we’re all Americans first.

And Americans are nothing if not opportunistic.

From today’s Herald:

During political conventions, viewers expect to hear plenty of partisan red meat. It’s all great fun and entertaining. But when all the balloons and confetti are gone, we need to put aside party differences, roll up our sleeves and get things done for the people we represent.

My effort to crack down on insider trading is a good example of finding common ground.

Brown is not only finding common ground. He’s finding the right footing for this campaign.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Charlotte Web Edition)

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald have started covering the Democratic National Convention just as you’d expect. See details at IGTLTDT.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Let The Whatever-Billion-Dollar Rumpus Begin! (Oh, Canada Healthcare! Edition)

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Americans for Prosperity, the Super PAC funded by the Koch brothers (who represent the ATM wing of the Republican Party), has just launched a $6.2 million ad buy in 11 states, according to Politico’s Playbook.

The TV spot “features Canadian citizen Shona Holmes talking about the failures of her country’s health care system and accuses Obama of wanting to make the U.S. system more like Canada’s.”

 

The Koch brothers are in turn being whacked by Patriot Majority USA, a Super PAC associated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as CBS News reports.

(CBS News) Patriot Majority USA, a group associated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has launched a new TV ad that doesn’t attack a specific candidate but instead criticizes the wealthy conservative donors David and Charles Koch.

“If you spend $400 million you expect something in return,” the narrator says with an image of the billionaire Koch brothers, who are expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars this election in an effort to defeat Democrats and President Obama. “To buy this year’s election and advance this year’s agenda.”

“What’s their payback?” the ad continues. “Politicians who will pass laws that will benefit special interests but hurt the middle class.”

The ad:

 

This is getting kind of . . . granular, as they say . . . no?

Look for an ad attacking you on TV soon.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Convention Wisdom Edition)

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby and Boston Herald columnist Rachelle Cohen have very different takes on the value of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Details at IGTLTDT.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Grease Anatomy: Forget Politicians’ Body Men – These Handlers Are Their Body PARTS

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

First there was Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s brain.

Next, Eric Fehrnstrom (via GQ): “If Karl Rove was Bush’s brain, then Fehrnstrom is [Mitt] Romney’s balls.”

Now comes FOB Valerie Jarrett (via the New York Times):

If Karl Rove was known as George W. Bush’s political brain, Ms. Jarrett is Mr. Obama’s spine.

So what’s left? Paul Ryan’s nose? Joe Biden’s hair plugs?

The possibilities, unfortunately (think John Boehner’s tear ducts), are endless.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Quote o’ the Day (Learning To Like Mitt Edition)

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

In his column for the September 3rd edition of the Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson “[feels] free to admit, in the full knowledge that nobody cares, that I never liked Mitt Romney.”

Further:

My distaste for him isn’t merely personal or political but also petty and superficial. There’s the breathless, Eddie Attaboy delivery, that half-smile of pitying condescension in debates or interviews when someone disagrees with him, the Ken doll mannerisms, his wanton use of the word “gosh”—the whole Romney package has been nails on a blackboard to me.

But Ferguson, thinking he might be missing something since Romney is in fact the GOP presidential nominee, “resolved to dive into the Romney literature, which I soon discovered should post a disclaimer, like a motel pool: NO DIVING.”

Regardless, he also discovered this (which is the actual Quote o’ the Day):

By my count the literature includes one good book, The Real Romney, by two reporters from the Boston Globe. That’s the same Globe with the leftward tilt to its axis and a legendary anti-Romney animus—which lends authority to their largely favorable portrait. The flattering details of Romney’s life were so numerous and unavoidable that the authors, dammit, had no choice but to include them.

Ferguson, who’s a genuinely tough customer (and a damned funny writer), actually does come to like Romney by the end of the column.

Gosh, Mitt must be poppin’ his buttons!

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Pep Squad Smackdown Edition)

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The Boston Bruins Ice Girls vs. the New England Patriots Cheerleaders. Details at IGTLTDT.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Karl Rove’s Acid Flashback

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

There’s a new Super PAC in town: Crossroads Generation, which is “drawing upon $750,000 in seed money from GOP organizations like the College Republicans, the Young Republicans, the Republican State Leadership Committee and American Crossroads – itself a super PAC that has raised $100 million so far this election cycle to defeat [Pres.] Obama,” according to the Huffington Post.

The name to note in that litany is American Crossroads, one of the Super PAChyderms established by former House of Bush consigliere Karl Rove.

Now Crossroads Generation has launched this hippy-dippy-trippy spot:

 

The ad is part of what HuffPo says is a “$50,000 social media ad campaign targeting younger voters in eight swing states, including Ohio and Virginia.”

Which means it’s lunch money in the current presidential media smackdown.

Regardless, it’s gotten 146,545 views on YouTube.

So it’s not nothing.

But it’s not much of anything, either.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments