Tag: campaign 2014

Lonegan beats the spread

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Lost in the news about the final shutdown showdown was Cory Booker’s 11-point win over Steve Lonegan in the New Jersey’s special Senate election yesterday.

Lonegan was always a long shot.  Booker gained national attention in 2009 and 2010 for personally shoveling snow for his constituents and allegedly saving one of them from a fire.  A big Booker win wasn’t only inevitable, it was the likely first step in things to come: He was the Democrats’ next rising star.   Known for being a primary opponent to Chris Christie, Lonegan was best known for his outspoken conservative activism – the type of sacrificial lamb a party runs when they know they are going to lose.  In June, Vega$ might have put the spread at, say, 19 1/2 points – and they might have started taking will-he-or-won’t-he Booker bets for 2016.

Lonegan was unsuccessful, but fierce.  He and his allies managed to crawl within 11 points (despite a bawdy interview from his campaign’s head consultant coming out the weekend before the election), and in the process showed Booker’s made-for-TV story is, well, made for TV.  His drug dealer friend T-Bone?  Most likely fiction.   The story where a young man died in his arms?  Not exactly how he remembered it.  That woman he saved from a fire?  Highly questionable.  The city that calls him mayor is deeply infected with violent crime.  He used to own a crack house.

After his first real election, Booker is already damaged goods.  The playbook to beat him – either in 2014 or in 2016 – has been written.  He’ll likely win re-election to the Senate, but it won’t be a slam dunk if the Republican Party of New Jersey fields a good candidate.  Martin O’Malley, Hilary Clinton, or any other Presidential contenders from the left have plenty of ammunition now.  Booker has lost the veneer of inevitability that he enjoyed, and shown that he isn’t the powerhouse he once seemed to be.

Sure, Cory Booker won this week – but that may be all he gets, thanks to Steve Lonegan.

Obama’s data may scale – but will his support?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Democrats are clicking their heels at the prospect of using the Obama 2012 list for the 2014 campaigns.  Fresh off a special election win in Massachusetts, the main concern seems to be how to scale the data from a national campaign down to a Congressional-level race:

That’s not to say, Democrats caution, that there’s nothing lost in the scaling process. Hiring a talented analyst doesn’t mean a campaign will be able to collect the immense trove of data — and update it over and over — the way the Obama campaign did. Not every Senate and congressional candidate will have the wherewithal, or the inclination, to test the effect of slightly varying messages on an experimental slice of the electorate.

But down-ballot campaigns also don’t need that level of data awareness in order to improve their performance in some material way. And if the Massachusetts special election was one case study in transferring data and analytics tools to a nonpresidential level, Democratic operatives say there’s plenty more where that came from.

There’s a big problem, though: there isn’t plenty more where that came from.  Barack Obama is no longer running.

Sure, he’ll “sign” emails – and despite tumbling approval ratings, that will mean a lot to a certain subset of voters.  Even so, starting in 2014, Democrats have to deal with a problem Republicans have  suffered since 1988: the specter of a popular and philosophically grounded President may hang over the election, but the candidates who fill his spot on the ballot won’t match his charisma.  Voters vote for candidates more than they vote for ideas.

And Barack Obama ain’t walkin’ through that door.

 

 

Biden is kind of right on this one…

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Vice President “Diamond Joe” Biden had plenty of choice comments last night while he was helping Ed Markey raise some scratch in Massachusetts.  One of them isn’t so crazy:

“There’s a big difference in this race,” Biden said, according to the pool report. “Barack Obama’s not at the head of the ticket. And that means those legions of African Americans and Latinos are not automatically going to come out. No one has energized them like Barack Obama. But he’s not on the ticket. So don’t take this one for granted.”

Leaving aside for a moment the unintentional racism of assuming minority groups vote as a bloc for members of other minority groups, Biden is right on one point: much of the Democrats’ success over the previous six years came in large part due to voters excited about President Obama himself.   Yes, the 2012 campaign team made unprecedented use of data to identify supporters, but they did so in the name of an exciting candidate.

Edward Markey doesn’t excite people they way Obama does.  Joe Manchin, Max Baucus, and Tim Johnson probably wouldn’t, either, which is a big reason they aren’t running for re-election in 2014.  Corey Booker might, but outside of him or a similar candidate rising through the ranks, the Democrats won’t have candidates who can duplicate Obama’s success.

That’s not an indictment of the Democrats yet – politicians like Obama don’t come around all that often, and the Republican ranks only have a few political rock stars of their own.  But it will become an indictment if Democrats feel like Obama will carry them to victory again in 2014 and 2016.

Bye bye, Bachmann

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The activists of the left won’t have Michele Bachmann to push around anymore.  From Politico’s requiem:

She was a bomb thrower, a master performer, a flashy politician with an appetite for combat and perhaps the strongest TV presence of any Republican in Washington. 

Maybe they were watching a different Congresswoman.  A “flashy politician” usually doesn’t confuse John Wayne with a serial killer.  Google “strong TV presence” and you won’t find media training classes based around looking off into space when receiving the gift of national media coverage.

Bachmann was not a model of the modern politician.  She lost.  Her messaging was incendiary enough for mainstream media attention but devoid of ideas – so while some folks on the right went along for a short ride based on the mainstream media’s shock and vitriol, Bachmann couldn’t carry a movement.  Her staff churned throughout the years.  The allegations that still hang around her campaigns reek more of absolute disorganization than intentional malfeasance; Team Bachmann doesn’t seem smart and organized enough to be corrupt.

She was a mess, but never a serious force.  She fed media coverage for a short time, but had no substance.    The heirs to her attention-craving throne (from the left or the right) will flame out quickly, too.

Michele Bachmann was, succinctly, the political equivalent of the girl you wish you hadn’t started a conversation with at a party: