Posted on 09/28/2017 2:12:02 PM PDT by Kaslin
RUSH: Another interesting story here from Real Clear Politics: “Political Campaigning May Be Mostly Pointless.” What do you think this story is? Snerdley, you’re highly tuned to this kind of stuff. If you see that headline, “Political Campaigning May Be Mostly Pointless,” what’s this story about? It is about the fact that Hillary Clinton spent more money than anybody spent in the campaign and it didn’t get her a single vote, that Donald Trump didn’t spend a dime, and he won.
And so, again, this is the political establishment being flipped upside down. Money has always equaled victory. Whoever had more of it won. But what a research project has found is that TV ads in the last three weeks to a month leading up to an election were not persuasive in changing people’s minds how they were gonna vote.
And you know where I first saw this story? In an advertising magazine where they’re very, very afraid television and radio stations are gonna lose a lot of money because consultants are gonna figure out it’s wasted money. If spending on campaign ads three weeks out doesn’t change people’s minds, why spend it? Another example of how Donald Trump, outsider, has turned the establishment and its entire world upside down.
And they still don’t know why. And they don’t yet have the ability to be honest with themselves about why Hillary lost and why Trump won. And they keep getting news that shocks them and rocks their world, because the political world, like every other world, revolves around money. A huge spending campaign, do you realize how many people get wealthy off that before the money gets to the TV stations or radio stations where the advertising is bought? I mean, a lot of people get their mitts on that gross amount of money before it gets to the TV station, and if they stop spending it, a lot of money.
Do you know that your average presidential campaign manager, consultant, will get 15% of every dollar spent on advertising? That’s how they get rich. They get the advertising agency commission. So if a campaign advisor, David Axelrod, is telling Obama we need to spend a trillion dollars here in this election, he’s gonna get 15% of it.
Now, the number may float. Obama may say, “Axelrod, you’re only gonna get 10,” or George W. Bush may say, “Rove, you’re only gonna get eight,” whatever, but it averages outs to the agency commission, which is 15%. The more spent, the more campaign consultant, management, that’s how they get paid, whether the candidate wins or loses. Is another reason why ad buys are so big.
Advertising campaigns are a waste of money.
But so are consultants.
No one believes any of that stuff.
Just show me the candidate and have them speak plainly and tell me how they feel. That’s what Trump did. And it worked.
Advertising (and political campaigns) will always matter. However, no amount of advertising can overcome a fatally-flawed product. In Hillary’s case, money was not enough.
Vote to get big money from donors that just gets spent to enrich media and consultants or vote as the voters want?
This wouldn’t be a problem if there weren’t such a HUGE gap between what Americans want and what the internationalist donors want.
Cue Bob Dylan
“The Times They Are A-changin’”
There goes their gravy train.
Freakonomics found out a long time ago that the more attractive candidate tends to win, regardless of the money spent.
“But so are consultants.”
Yeah, these guys have looted the GOPe treasury and brought them bupkiss in terms of winning races. All you have to do is look at Trump vs.16 other A$$holes last year and I rest my case. As you rightly point out, plain speaking “trumps” Madison Avenue BS with the people now, and we can thank President Trump for “flipping everyone’s switch” in terms of waking up their sleeping political brains. Everyone is like “sleeping beauty” now, and Trump is “prince charming!”
Advertising may no longer matter for national races, but in these small fry districts, McConnell can 'nationalize' the money pouring in at a ratio of 10:1 and prevail.
Political campaigns don’t matter—IF—the candidate has nothing to offer except exorbitant spending and taxation, foreign invasion, and giving nuclear weapons to foreign dictators, and is a murdering, boodling criminal, and is tottering to her death on unsteady legs.
Advertising had a huge effect in the Strange-Moore runoff...Mcconnell’s huge spending lost Strange the nomination.
Money = victory, but it was never money spent, it was always money acquired. The candidate who raised more funds (especially more small donor funds) wins. Basically fundraising is a poll, the more people willing to give you money the more people that will vote for you. The ad buys and all that apparently don’t mean diddly, as nobody has ever actually to tie money spent to votes.
In the Georgia 6th district special election the Democrat Jin Ossoff significantly outspent GOP Karen Handel and still lost.
‘When the campaign and party expenditures are combined, the Democrats spent $31.2 million while the Republicans spent $22.7 million.’
YEP!
I sure hope that is the case.
Advertising may no longer matter for national races, but in these small fry districts, McConnell can ‘nationalize’ the money pouring in at a ratio of 10:1 and prevail.
____________
That was last year. The world really is speeding up, thanks mainly to the internet.
Alabama is a small fry state by many metrics:gross earnings, population, *diversity*, cultural relevancy, preconceived notions. Ask McConnell how well money did electing a sitting Senator with a Presidential endorsement in a primary for the dominant party.
We aren’t in Kansas anymore.
In 2014, Huelskamp raised and spent $845k for both the primary and general election...but in 2016, his $945k spent only on the primary could not surpass his opponent's $1.6 million, PLUS $3 Million in PAC money...an amount of PAC money that was 10 times the amount of outside spending spent on the previous election.
Huelskamp was not prepared for it at all...and I have to emphasize, the ads just simply lied. They painted Huelskamp as the establishment candidate...I hope this is all making sense: McConnell controlled PACS (the establishment) flooded a race with PAC money (the PAC money alone was triple what Hueslkamp raised), and bought ads that said Huelskamp was the establishment candidate.
It was a dirty ambush, made possible by large spending. I firmly believe that any primary, but especially a primary that is safely republican (and therefore hasn't seen alot of campaign money being raised in the past) could fall victim to this.
My post wasn’t about small vs large districts. My post was simply to show that the outspent candidate sometimes wins.
As for Huelskamp, perhaps if he’d criticized Obama as harshly as he criticized Trump things would have gone differently for him.
Attractive and capable candidates, proper issue selection, favorable news media coverage, adequate funding, well-chosen campaign spending, and campaigning well all matter greatly, and especially so in primaries. For general elections, only a relative handful of races are genuinely in doubt because party loyalty and the general political environment usually dominate over individual factors.
Above all, with America's affluence and well-developed political system, decent candidates with an objective chance of winning are almost always able to attract the necessary funds and political support to be in contention. Bad candidates though in unfavorable political environments tend to lose even when their campaigns are over-funded.
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