Micro-targeting, my ass!
You can draw up statistical voter models to your heart's content, give them a fancy name like "72 Hours to Victory" and then sell the package to the media as an unstoppable juggernaut that turns out rubber-stamp Republican voters like American flags coming off a Chinese production line.
But you cannot put lipstick on a pig and call it an eagle. And you can't run a phone bank without committed volunteers living on nothing but pizza if you treat them like Wal-Mart part-timers with pre-existing medical conditions.
And no matter what the numbers in the fancy computer analysis say, you can't wrap a red bow around Republican hamburger and sell it as ground steak. Or at least that's how one member of the GOP GOTV Elite Hit Squad saw it in an essay he penned called "Life as a GOP Slave."
This is the story of a GOP activist sent up from washington as part of the very expensive and utterly futile campaign to save Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chaffee and the Republican majority. The operative wrote this essay, which U.S. News and World Report got a hold of and has published.
The gathering looks exactly how I expected it to. A random collection of sleep-deprived Hill folk clutching Dunkin Donuts coffee in a nondescript airport hotel lobby. Ahhhh, yes, it's campaign time once again. Time for sign waving, door walking, and Republican bonding.
Of course, you can see their first mistake right away -- Dunkin' Donuts. Everybody knows Krispy Kreme donuts provide a much biger sugar jolt to sleep-deprived workers. How can you talk on the phone to a voter with a caky Dunkin Donut in your mouth? Nonetheless, they carry on ...
I get assigned to Barrington, an old-money hamlet along Rhode Island's Eastern Shore. Good enough. I've brought warm clothes, a Red Sox hat (to look like a local despite my distaste for the team), and the afore-mentioned Dunkin Donuts coffee. I drive down in my mother's car with an affable political appointee from USDA.
We pull into a little strip-mall where I assume we're going to set up camp before we get out to the soccer games or the neighborhoods or whatever. No, we're informed by our "captain" that we're going to be making some calls this morning. The "captain," aka The Slavedriver, is a fast-talking Hill staffer.
Ah yes, the hard-driving, vaunted GOP machine is ready to kick some Democratic ass -- as the media lets us know.
It’s a highly intensive, volunteer-driven effort to identify Republican and potential Republican voters through techniques such as micro-targeting used by businesses and introduced into politics.
These slick Republican pros quickly soothe the angry New England electorate.
No worries, I find an empty cubicle and dive into the stack of numbers. I quickly learn the average Rhode Islander is a woman in her mid 50s. She really has no desire to be disturbed at 9:00 on a Saturday morning. She hates Bush and thinks the war in Iraq is a huge mistake. She's met Senator Chafee a few times and was always happy to support his dad. While she likes him, she concerned a vote for Chafee is essentially a vote for Bush. Quite frankly, she thinks none of this is my business and wishes that these @$%#ing phone calls would stop.
Despite the difficulties, the volunteers march -- Victory clearly in sight -- because they are all team players -- just a giant GOP fire ant hill.
Hours go by while our captain supplies us with more coffee, donuts, and pretzels. I haven't heard her make any calls yet, because it did take her a good hour-and-a-half to find the Dunkin' Donuts across the street. After take-out pizza for lunch, she has an announcement. She has "statewide numbers." Lovely, I'd love to hear some internal polling or geographic data. Oh no. She's going to inform us of how many calls our team did during the "morning shift." WHAT?!??! They're actually tallying how many calls we do and scolding us if we don't hit "our numbers?" Really? Oh, but she wasn't finished.
"Lauren, you made 105 calls during the first shift, Drew 85, Beth 101..." Yup, they're keeping individual stats. This seems a little harsh considering that we are, ya know, volunteers.
Well, you have to crack some eggs to make an omelet, ya know. It may seem harsh, but it gets results, as The Hill reminded us, right?
While there are sporadic reports that the RNC's vaunted GOTV program is running into burnout problems in states like OH, MO and PA (three states that saw the program first introduced in '04) wherever the RNC has introduced the program for the first time this cycle, they've seen results. From CA 50 to RI SEN, the RNC and the WH are probably getting cocky about their abilities to "save" elections.
And if you are going to save elections and stop the unwashed Democratic hordes from taking back that tax break for your second house in The Hamptons, you can't start molly-coddling the phone-bank slaves.
You give them a little pizza and the next thing you know you have a revolt on your hands.
The first rule in slavedriving school should be: Never let the underlings talk to one another. We ask one another why on Earth they flew us up here to make calls when we could have sat in D.C. and done them. Anyway, the four of us decide to make a stand today against the Slavedriver.
The first shift arrives with a challenge and a moral dilemma. The challenge is that the top two callers get to do door-to-door in the afternoon. The moral dilemma is whether or not to fill in the bubbles for people I never called to get through more sheets to earn the prized release from cubicle hell. I decide not to, not because I feel any responsibility to bug this fine New Englanders, but rather I realize I would feel sorry if I beat out another volunteer would was doing his/her calls legitimately.
I lose the contest, eat the horrible take-out for lunch and go back to my cubicle. Fortunately, Nicole has given me her Mac laptop so I can track my fantasy teams. We also have a visitor from the campaign. She's come to tell us how great we are. We learn she lives in D.C., but has been up in R.I. since June. We begin to get curious what you have to do to incite an individual of authority at RNC Headquarters to yell, "Damn it! You! Off to Rhode Island!" Did she not raise enough money? Make a bad joke about Bush? Break a fax machine? We're all left to wonder.
Ungrateful little shits! Don't they realize the CORPORATE AGENDA IS AT STAKE!!!!!!!!
Monday comes with more calls, but from a new location, a hotel room on the third floor. The Slavedriver tells us that if we're really good, we might get a special treat in the afternoon. Apparently, she doesn't realize that anything that keeps us in this room is probably not welcome. After she leaves for another multi-hour trip to Dunkin' Donuts (where we can only assume the menu is written in Hindu), Terri, a recently engaged LA, begins to incite rebellion.
Upon her return, we're lectured about being team players. Apparently, the Slavedriver has a spy in the room so she knows what we're saying behind her back.
Now we're all in the same room and doing our best to crack each other up. We're leaving messages as K-Fed, talking to citizens with horrible British accents, and making up songs about Chafee.
Apparently, the best thing about the 72-hour blitzkrieg is that it only lasts 72 hours. Finally, Election Day arrives.
After more take-out, which looked a lot like the same take-out we had for lunch, we're supposed to keep calling until 8:30. "We've called over 2000 people today," the Slavedriver says. I'm opposed to her using the pronoun "we" since she doesn't make calls. Oh, she also informs us that we're not invited to the victory party.
If people were annoyed about being bugged before, they're FURIOUS about it now. I'm called a "douche bag" by one gentleman. Erica tricks a citizen into revealing his vote with "Aniston or Jolie?...okay...Chafee or Whitehouse?"
The last call goes out at about 8:15 when the Slavedriver declares we're allowed to stop. We go to the victory party after all, even though it is certainly not a victory and barely a party. Linc's lost 53-47. CNN makes the call even before I get my suit on.
So now I'm back at my desk. It's raining. Emails have piled up. Both my fantasy teams lost. Burns and Talent are done and Allen's about to be. I glance around what is, for now, my office. My wife calls. She's thinking about picking up some take-out for dinner.
The moral of the story?
You can lead a voter to the Kool Aid, but you can't make him drink.
And you can feed volunteers pizza, but you can't treat them like shit.