Author: Jim Eltringham

Political consultant specializing in grassroots mobilization, online media, and public relations.

Fearless Forecast for Arkansas

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Picking the winners in most of today’s primary contests is easy, according to the polls.  Much more interesting, though, is reading the tea leaves and trying to gauge what the results mean – specifically in Arkansas.

As mentioned after the Democrat primary was sent to a runoff weeks ago, Bill Halter’s challenge to Sen. Blanche Lincoln is not about her standing with Arkansas’s non-existent liberal base.  It does reflect that many Arkansans feel disenchanted, and the word on the street is that this malaise will bring Halter to victory.

Lincoln has tried to fight back by painting Halter as the puppet of national left-wing interests, working through the most famous Arkansas politician in history:

Bill Clinton, a Lincoln supporter, has gotten in on the act as well, appearing at a Little Rock rally last week and now in a television commercial in which he decries the influence of national unions on the race. “This is about using you and manipulating your votes,” the former president says. “If you want to be Arkansas’ advocate, vote for somebody who will fight for you.”

Clinton then got on a plane and flew back to either New York or Washington D.C., the two places he has lived for the past 17 years since he was elected President and his wife was elected as a Senator from a state that is not Arkansas.

But despite the idea that Halter is “too liberal” for Arkansas, that could dramatically help Democrats’ chances of keeping this seat.

Halter isn’t campaigning to the left of Lincoln in state, but he does benefit from left-wing energy from out of state.  Much like Scott Brown’s insurgent campaign, Halter’s website allows anyone to chip in with GOTV phone calls.  Donations are still pouring in, too.  That won’t subside in the coming months, as liberal activists sense the chance to basically turn a seat from a squishy vote to a solid vote on their key issues.  If Halter can continue to enjoy the fruits of national energy without alienating Arkansas voters, he will be a much more formidable candidate than Lincoln – who, despite the advantage of incumbency, would not have enjoyed those benefits.

Helen Thomas gets Macaca-ed

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Helen Thomas’s resignation from the White House press corps came not because of offensive comments, but because the media landscape has passed her by.

Reporters are, rightfully, under more scrutiny now than ever.  Back when Thomas started, America’s romanticized view of “the media” was something like a mix of Lois Lane, Carl Bernstein, and Bob Woodward – dogged reporters turning over stones, acting as the clear pane of glass through which normal, everyday people could see the world.

But gradually, reporters (including Woodward and Bernstein) became a part of the equation.  Suddenly, people realized that the reporters weren’t just a clear pane of glass, but the entire window, limited in what they showed by their own frame.  Sometimes, to see what was really going on outside, you had to look out of several different windows.

News consumers began to understand that the person telling the story affects the story.  And news consumers care about that.

This isn’t to say that reporters should be completely without bias – but most folks feel they ought to try to keep an open mind.  Thomas’s anti-Israel diatribe was anything but open minded.

That the grand dame of the White House press room was taken down by a citizen journalist – and that it was her own words, rather than any auxiliary commentary, that did her in – speaks to another truth about modern media.  The stalwarts like Thomas are less relevant than ever before.

They did not make this commercial right

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

This new BP commercial takes responsibility for the oil spill in the Gulf, but it leaves lots to be desired:

For starters, the best way to win over the American public is not with an English accent.  Going back to the 18th century, America, Great Britain, and stuff dumped in the ocean that interrupts commerce have a less-than-stellar relationship.  But more than that, it’s clear that the top leaders of BP are not personally invested in the region.  They may care a great deal, but they’re from England – it isn’t their home.

In a previous post, I mentioned that the residents of the Gulf who are helping with the cleanup would have made for much better – and more sympathetic – spokespersons.  Hayward still could have made an appearance in the commercial, but he shouldn’t have been the focus.

Stylistically, the use of still frames is artistically poignant, but doesn’t make the cleanup effort come to life the way video could.

The bottom line is that BP can say very little right now (outside of, “Hey, the oil stopped gushing!”) to mollify a justifiably upset American public.  But their strategy of replying from the highest levels of the company with detached sympathy does them no favors.

The only thing worse would be working for BP

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Chris Kelly’s former job probably seemed like an asset when he jumped into the race for California Attorney General – in a state so closely identified with technological innovation, he was one of the executive leaders of Facebook.

The problem for Kelly now is that his title was Chief Privacy Officer.  Having that position for Facebook is kind of like being a nutritionist for KFC – it doesn’t come with much credibility.

How bad is it?  Not only is Kelly’s opponent using his association with Facebook against him in a television ad, but in that same ad she’s actually bragging about being endorsed by Nancy Pelosi.

The irony, of course, comes in the picture of Pelosi used in the endorsement, which looks to be a few years old and looks nothing like she does now.

In other words, it’s a typical Facebook picture.

Photo finished?

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This picture is not good for our President:

Earlier this week, I talked with Matt Lewis about how the lack of a Bush-esque, detached, looking-down-from-an-airplane-at-disaster picture or video would help save President Obama from the derision and scorn his predecessor received after reacting to a Gulf coast crisis.

More likely to hurt Obama is the perception that he is at once corrupt and incompetent.  Politico details the frustration many Democrats have with the White House’s failed meddling in Democratic primaries – but it’s the accompanying hilarious picture which cuts the administration’s political shop deepest.

Majority status, with minority problems

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Politico notes today that the 2008 victory of President Obama is not opening up the floodgates for other black candidates, as evidenced by Artur Davis’s loss in the Alabama gubernatorial primary this week.  Pennsylvania State Senator Anthony Hardy Williams, who finished third in seeking the Democratic nomination for Governor, says that in addition to concerns from Democrat activists over whether black candidates can win general elections, ideology plays a big part:

“I think the Obama era has actually transcended race. Not to say people don’t have biases — of course they exist, they exist in every state,” [Williams] said. “The question I got was, ‘Are you an Obama Democrat’ in regard to spending, not in regard to race.”

This may be why, despite these troubles on the Democratic side, Republicans are enjoying historic highs (for them) in  minority and women candidates.  It also suggests the opening of another interesting door.

The rise of the conservative movement was based in part on the growth of thought leadership organizations, chiefly in the 1960s and 1970s.  Institutions like National Review and the Heritage Foundation built the pillars of conservative thought upon which electoral and policy successes were built.  They were crystallizing – and making palatable – the ideas that candidates and lawmakers would later use.

Today’s challenge for the conservative movement goes beyond establishing a foothold for these ideas in the general electorate.  Today’s challenge is to expand the audiences that are receptive to those messages. It’s not enough for the Republican Party to recruit leaders from minority communities, think tanks and thought leaders must do so as well.

(Word has it that Marvel Comics has already started.)

Is that one of the “jobs created or saved”?

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The White House may or may not have offered Joe Sestak a job to stay out of the primary he won last week.  Either way, it certainly isn’t doing him any favors now.

Sestak is the clean one in this controversy – no matter what the White House offered, he didn’t take it.  That could turn out to be a positive for the Congressman.  But with neither side talking about it, it continues to be an issue – and even though it isn’t damaging to Sestak, it certainly is distracting.  He probably has a lot of things he’d like to give stump speeches about that don’t involve the fact that his story and the company line don’t exactly match:

Two lessons from last week about online campaigning

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With Memorial Day weekend coming up, Campaign Season 2010 is about to hit high gear.  With that, candidates who hadn’t built out their web presence are going to put the foot on the gas.  At this point, that probably applies more to local and state candidates than candidates for most state or federal offices – campaigns where it can be intimidating to put together a robust online campaign.  I recently spoke with a consultant for a state candidate who had just launched a Facebook page.  The campaign was somewhat nervous about the launch for two reasons: 1) the page was still a bit light on content and 2) by its nature, the page would allow the campaign’s organized opponents to post negative comments.

These are both legitimate concerns, but they have legitimate answers.  Some high profile stories from the last week illustrate how to deal with them:

1. When it comes to content, don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

As the Mark Critz campaign made clear, websites and other online presences aren’t static media.  Just as a simple website can expand to include more sections and content, a Facebook page can expand with more wall posts, pictures, videos, or other pieces.

In fact, a phased strategy has an important benefit: with each addition, the campaign can reach out to supporters again with a fresh, relevant message.  On Facebook, this is even more pronounced.  If you join a Facebook page that already has all the content it’s going to have, it becomes easier to forget.  If you join a Facebook page that constantly adds content, you are more likely to see it in your news feed, and possibly visit the site and take some sort of action.  (Which would, in turn, show up in your friends’ feed, and give the campaign further exposure.)

Too many online campaigns fail to understand that a website or social network profile isn’t like a television or radio advertisement – while some seed content is important, adding more content later can actually work to their advantage.

2.  Censoring negative comments gives them more legitimacy than answering them.

Back in good old Pennsylvania, gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett got into a bit of a row with some anonymous Twitterers and issued a subpoena to Twitter calling for their identities.  In doing so, he appeared to be legitimizing his critics through a ham-fisted attempt at censorship.

On any campaign’s Facebook page, there will be detractors who put their mark on every single post.  By smartly building an active and engaged base, a campaign can create a community which will answer this criticism with supportive speech.  There are also opportunities to directly engage the folks who make these comments in a public square – they don’t get to post to your campaign’s wall in a vacuum, after all.

If your campaign is not effective at answering critics directly, Facebook may be the wrong place to be.  But then again, if your campaign can’t answer legitimate questions, electoral politics may also be a bad choice.

Sunday Funnies: The REAL 30th anniversary this weekend

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Despite Google’s little Pac-Man doodle on Friday, this weekend is more notable because Friday was the 30th anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back.

The Empire Strikes Back might be the best sequel ever, and is regarded as the best of the Star Wars trilogy.  But one can only wonder if it would have been as successful with the original ending:

Here’s a bonus one – this is what passed for a trailer in 1980, for the sequel to what was, at the time, the highest grossing movie ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZsrSAwaz-s