Trump Campaign “Field”

TPM is doing really good work covering the Republican ground effort and @joshtpm.bsky.social is being appropriately cautious, but a few things stick out to me (even though my ground game work is well past me).

First, there is no clear idea what is going on. What sticks out to me in the stories is that those who are on the inside have different cases they are making which suggests to me this isn’t an effort with clear goals or even theory of the case. That matters because you are running a highly decentralized operation and keeping it on mission requires a consistent message and implementation.

Second, the evidence for the case is the Iowa primary. Marginal caucus attendees are nothing like marginal general election voters. It’s so true, it’s hard to even know where to start. Marginal voters in a general election are the most marginal voters out there–if they aren’t going to vote in the Presidential, they aren’t voting for anything else (sure exceptions, but they will prove the rule). Marginal caucus attendees are people who at least identify with the party and probably vote in every national election if not almost all local elections.

Third, when you get down to marginal voters in the general you are running into people who may not be registered, who may not be able to vote if they have a criminal conviction, may have moved, or are just generally paranoid about people showing up at their door–especially for those who are Trumpy (work a Census and you know these folks). The barriers to voting are more than just showing up is the point here. In a state like Minnesota this is lessened because of same day registration, but that’s not true in several of these states. Some of these states are also deactivating the voters who fall in this category (irony alert).

Even as financial triage this makes little sense. Good field work does several things–identifies those you want to activate, find volunteers, increase visibility, identify those you do not want to activate, and persuade (this isn’t exhaustive). The Trump campaign and the SuperPacs are apparently going after the hardest to reach voters with their limited money. Think about that–it’s just that dumb. I want to be clear that reaching out to such voters in itself is not bad and a solid campaign could do both, but if a campaign wants to maximize votes, it needs to track your supporters to target them to actually get out to vote and this effort gives the campaign only data on the most marginal people who are most likely to vote on election day so you are spending all that time on them and you won’t even bank any votes.

The notion that the suburbs are maxed out is silly for this very reason–if they are maxed out it is because the political canvassing does it and if read Josh’s post he makes a great point in the last paragraph how these aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, it would be a good idea to run a kind of Trump effort on top of a more traditional operation if you could, but choosing the Trump target of very marginal voters is the worst choice in a world of scarcity.

Racist Snowflake Mike Bost is Worried About Maoist Struggle Session at Town Halls #racistsnowflake

Mike Bost’s entire political brand is being an asshole.

 

“Enough! I feel like somebody trying to be released from Egypt! Let my people go!” he hollers. “These damn bills that come out of here all the damn time come out here at the last second and I’ve got to try figure out how to vote for my people!”

The video of those remarks went viral that year. In it, Bost is seen throwing the bill into the air. He whiffs at the pages as they fall, then picks up the papers and throws them again.

 

So now Mike Bost is very concerned about people not acting cordially at Town Halls.  Via Capitol Fax

 

“The amount of time that I have at home is minimal, I need to make sure that it’s productive,” Bost said Friday. “You know the cleansing that the Orientals used to do where you’d put one person out in front and 900 people yell at them? That’s not what we need. We need to have meetings with people that are productive.”

Clearly we have a snowflake here who is need of safe spaces that don’t allow assholes like Mike Bost in them.

Oh, and what the fuck with Oriental?  Seriously?  He’s like 10 years older than me.  He doesn’t get the grandpa racism dispensation for old people saying dumb things.

So for all tweets about Mike Bost remember #racistsnowflake

 

For those not getting his reference he’s talking about Struggle Sessions held in Maoist China where people were humiliated for not matching the party line.  Just a bit different from a politician facing his constituents.

Kirk’s Other Weird Moment – Defending Calling Obama Drug Dealer in Chief

While I don’t want to take away from Mark Kirk’s racist meltdown last night, he also went off on a weird tangent.  Some time ago he referred to President Obama as the Drug Dealer in Chief.

Duckworth brought this up last night:

Duckworth: I also wonder about a Senator who called the President of the Drug Dealer in Chief or a back in 2007 said that one of the best things that we can do to combat illegal immigration from Mexico is be to send contraceptives free to Mexico.   These are not solutions that help.  Frankly even his recent votes and he voted against the equal pay act for women and called it the most sexist legislation ever.  He voted against allowing students to refinance student loan debt.  He even traveled to China and the Chinese not to invest in America because we were not a good bet.

These are not all the the hallmarks of a Senator was looking out for the people of Illinois and the people of Illinois deserve someone who’s going to fight for them every single day because let me tell you something.   When i was in Granite City and I met with steel workers who were laid off two days after Christmas they didn’t want to hear that their senator had gone to China and told the Chinese not to invest in America.  What they wanted was a senator who’s going to fight for them every single day and I will be that person because I’ve lived their lives. I’ve been on food stamps, I relied on student loans, I was a student paying off student loan debt I know what it’s like and I think that it’s time we have a Senator who does his job.

Kirk:I would say that when we talked about drug dealers are that I strongly opposed the 400 million dollar ransom payment that the president made in cash to the Iranians even after he certified that they are the State Sponsor of Terror.   Those a drug dealer words are not mine there they were words of the European Union.  Remember the European Union canceled the printing of the 500 Euro note because they said it… Remember  most of the payment for the  four hundred million dollars was in 500 Euros so if you do the math there eight hundred thousand five hundred Euro notes were in that payment.  They canceled the printing of the 500 euro note because the European Union, and this is a quote directly, they said the note was too involved in drug dealing of terror.

What the hell was that and how is that justification for calling the President the Drug Dealer in Chief?