It’s another Saturday, so for those who tune in, welcome to a diary discussing the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic Campaign. If you’ve missed out, you can catch up anytime: Just visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide. Every week I tackle issues I’ve been asked about, and with the help of other campaign workers and notes, we discuss how to improve and build better campaigns.
Every campaign cycle, we learn something about how we talk to potential voters. Ads that work, ads that didn’t work, strategies that worked and those that didn’t. On Thanksgiving weekend, in the spirit of Mystery Science Theater, let us gather around and talk about some of the HUGE turkey decisions that came up in the 2019 election cycle.
The biggest Turkey: Facebook
While campaign ads and strategies can be bombs, nothing has been as damaging, or as silly, as Facebook’s decision to allow candidates and elected officials to be exempted from spreading outright lies. Serving on behalf of my state organization, I have argued repeatedly for accountability by Facebook. The widely mocked decision is certainly deserving of being named the biggest turkey of 2019.
The dishonesty, however, doesn’t seem to be universally allowed. The New York Times pointed this out:
In a series of tweets on Saturday, Ms. Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, said she had deliberately made an ad with lies because Facebook had previously allowed politicians to place ads with false claims. “We decided to see just how far it goes,” Ms. Warren wrote, calling Facebook a “disinformation-for-profit machine” and adding that Mr. Zuckerberg should be held accountable.
Ms. Warren’s actions follow a brouhaha over Facebook and political ads in recent weeks. Mr. Trump’s campaign recently bought ads across social media that accused another Democratic presidential candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., of corruption in Ukraine. That ad, viewed more than five million times on Facebook, falsely said that Mr. Biden offered $1 billion to Ukrainian officials to remove a prosecutor who was overseeing an investigation of a company associated with Mr. Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
When you knowingly allow dishonesty and say it is OK? Well, that’s one of the reasons I abandoned the platform.
Blaming Immigrants turned is a HUGE turkey
After the election, Laura Ingraham contended that the reason why Republicans lost is due to immigration. The Washington Post laid out her argument:
On Tuesday, Virginia became even more blue, with Democrats taking control of the state Senate and the House of Delegates. It was part of a strong night for Democrats nationally, one that prompted Republicans and conservatives to try to assess what went wrong.
One of those weighing in was Ingraham, now a Fox News host and a reliably supportive voice for President Trump. She dismissed the election results in Kentucky, where incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin apparently lost in a close race, as a function of Bevin’s own failings and his having not embraced Trump’s agenda properly, somehow.
She reserved a different bit of analysis for Virginia. Among the factors there, she suggested: immigrants.
“Democrats took control of both state houses, giving them full control of the entire government for the first time since 1994,” Ingraham said. “Now the road to Democrat dominance in the commonwealth was paved long before Trump took the presidency. The undeniable fact is that demographic changes throughout the state, but especially in Northern Virginia, have altered what was once a moderate to right-of-center state. And it made it really a Petri dish for radical left-wing ideas.”
If there was a huge anti-immigration vote out there, it sure didn’t come home for Virginia Republicans, who went to bat with wild anti-immigrant mailpieces. From Pilot Online:
In the print ad, Del. Kelly Convirs-Fowler is Photoshopped next to three heavily tattooed Latino men bearing the letters “MS”, a reference to the MS-13 gang, one of the largest street gangs in the U.S., mostly comprised of immigrants from El Salvador.
The ad says Fowler, a first-term Democrat, is “weak on illegal immigration” and accuses her of “putting our safety at risk.” The front of the ad shows a Photoshopped Convirs-Fowler holding a sign that says “Illegal immigrants are welcome here!”
It’s paid for by the Republican Party of Virginia and authorized by Convirs-Fowler’s opponent in the 21st House District, former Virginia Beach councilwoman Shannon Kane. It hit mailboxes Wednesday.
Ads like this one certainly didn’t help Republicans. Net result: TURKEY.
Lining up with the President: the shine just isn’t there.
A lot of Republican candidates for races took time to jump on the President’s back and promote their close ties to Trump. Republican primaries in 2020 are going to reflect this problem, as conservative voters want a Trump rubber stamp, but moderate Republicans aren’t so tickled with full-throated Trump backers. This means that in Democratic lean districts, it is more likely that the Republican candidate gets MORE conservative rather than less, lowering their opportunities to win races.
This is good news for a lot of Democratic candidates and for people who invest in Democratic campaigns.
The Washington Post summed up the 2019 campaign for Trump fans:
That last was certainly embarrassing for Trump, who held a big rally in Lexington on the day before the election, during which he freely admitted that if Gov. Matt Bevin lost, the evil media would say “Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world.”
The star power just hasn’t been with Trump, as Democratic candidates for governor have succeeded around the country in 2018 and 2019, good news for those who want fair maps for their state government after the 2020 census.
Next week on Nuts & Bolts: Most successful call rooms.