28th June 2016, 8:04 PM
(This post was last modified: 28th June 2016, 8:23 PM by A Black Falcon.)
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Why do you think she needs a million dollar campaign anyway? She'll have free news coverage because she's a major candidate.Multi hundreds of millions of dollars campaign, not just a "million dollar campaign". That wouldn't get you anywhere.
Quote:Here's a secret: I've never once seen a political ad, at least not as an actual ad (I've seen them mocked on The Daily Show, for example). They are absolutely ridiculous. The reason I don't see them is because Oklahoma isn't considered a swing state, so no one ever bothers putting political ads on TV around here. Even on cable, the advertising "slots" seem to be adjustable, because again, never seen one.Huh, that's kind of crazy, even if I assume that you mean you've never seen a presidential TV ad; I'm sure there are state and local races (governor, US House or Senate, state house/senate, etc.) races in Oklahoma that have had plenty of TV ads. But yeah, it does make sense that no Presidential campaign would waste money on one of the most Republican states in the country, that is true.
Quote:I still am able to make informed decisions on which candidate I want to vote for though. Fancy that!TV ads are generally targeted at not so highly-informed voters. There are a lot of them, sadly.
Quote:What is the worst that you think might happen if a presidential candidate didn't bother with millions of dollars of ad spending, anyway?You would lose, simple as that. It is possible for insurgent, poorly-funded campaigns to win some races, if they either get really lucky or have enough money to compete even if the other person has more, in lower-level races. Chipman had a lot less money than Russell, for example, in that recent Dem primary here, but he had enough to compete. Russel had more and larger flyers, but Chipman had some too so it wasn't a hopeless funding gap. In contrast, the local State House race had two people running, but only one had the money to run a credible campaign; I got only one flyer from the other guy, and no phone calls, versus some of both for his opponent, and I saw only one sign around with his name on it, versus lots for the guy with money. And indeed, as expected the guy with an actual campaign won by a wide margin.
But at a presidential level, you need a LOT of money. There are a lot of things to spend it on -- campaign offices and staffers in at minimum all competitive states and maybe all states; TV, radio, and internet ad campaigns; your core campaign staff at the main office; and more. TV ads are the most expensive part of that, the thing which drain hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars out of political campaign coffers every other year, but all of that stuff costs money. So, campaigns raise lots of money to pay those bills, because while ads are usually just ignored, if your opponent is on TV and you aren't it makes you look bad and probably will hurt you at the polls.
This year, however, we're seeing a campaign running a race that will answer your question here, "what will happen if you don't spend that kind of money?" That candidate is Donald Trump. Between his idiosyncratic [racist] campaign focused mostly on himself and his inability or unwillingness to ingratiate himself with the traditional core Republican donor base, Trump has only a tiny fraction the amount of money Hillary has right now. He has only a tiny fraction the number of staffers nationwide that she has, very few campaign offices in key states, and very few TV ads. And with Trump's refusal to do the kind of "be on the phone a lot and go to lots of big-dollar fundraisers" campaigning that is sadly required to make money to fund American campaigns today, this disparity looks set to continue. Sure, Republican PACs will flood TV with ads -- the Kochs some time back promised to spend $900 million on this year's campaigns, for example, and no liberal PAC will have anywhere REMOTELY near that kind of money -- but the Kochs don't love Trump, so that money is more likely to mostly be spent trying to save the Republican's majorities in the House and Senate, and to win state-level races. The Kochs have been extremely successful at winning congressional, state, and local races with their money, but we'll see how well it works this year, given the huge drag Trump is likely to be on everyone below him. I'm sure at least some Koch money will go into anti-Hillary attack ads, though, regardless of if they try to defend Trump.
But yes, this Trump campaign is very interesting from a political-science perspective, which is something I've seen remarked on -- it'll show us what happens when a candidate refuses to run a normal political campaign, and relies almost exclusively on their national and state parties for local offices, volunteers, and staffers, instead of doing that themself. The expected result is that this will significantly hurt Trump versus how well he would have done with a full normal campaign, but we'll see. I sure hope it hurts him! It should, though.
Quote:Also, you're ignoring that Sanders has managed to fire up a whole voting block without getting those millions.Primary campaigns cost only a small fraction of what general election campaigns do. He got plenty of money to have a well-funded primary campaign, but funding a whole presidential campaign from only small donors would have been a huge struggle that probably would have failed to raise the kinds of money you want.
Quote:Anyway, I think we've reached an understanding on most of this, but I wanted to focus on your "anything that reduces ownership sounds good to me" comment. Yes, it's a serious issue and real legislation needs to happen. Yes, the NRA has way too many politicians in their cold dead hands. Yes, that sit in was disappointing. BUT, don't ever go down the "no matter the cost" road. I've seen what happens when we go down that road. The Patriot Act and the Iraq war come to mind, and the NRA's ridiculously huge program to spy on American citizens that is only defended using said Patriot Act.Sure, the no-fly list should have oversight, but it's not an issue I have looked into much. How racist is it really to consider religion in such things, though? Yes, most mass shootings in this country are not committed by religious Muslims, but of the crimes made in the name of religion worldwide, a whole lot of the worst ones, and a lot of the ongoing wars today, involve Islamic extremism. While incorrectly targeting people who are in the large majority of Muslims who do not support such things is unfortunate and should be improved on, you can't just pretend that all religions are the same where violent terrorism is concerned, I don't think it's true. There is a bad vicious-cycle element to this, though, where some people get alienated by that stuff and turn to terrorism, but you can't just ignore terrorism, that's not helpful and probably opens you up to attack from more committed terrorists. (See: 9/11) Hopefully eventually most of the Islamic world modernizes as the Christian world has over the past 500 years or so, but they're still in the difficult period of that, unfortunately. That kind of change needs to come from within of course, not from us, but there are liberalizing forces in the Islamic world... the problem is that the ones standing against them have a lot of adherents, and weapons.
You said you are nervous about how we go about restricting political ad campaigns, and frankly the only citizens that affects are the people in charge to begin with. I'm not about to say gun regulations are "an attack on civil liberties" (heck, the second amendment specifically states that the militia should be "well regulated"). BUT, the no-fly list is a big problem. The moment we decide to start adding restrictions to that list is the moment all the people in charge can say "the American people have tacitly confirmed that we need extra-judiciary power, FOR SAFETY)". The no-fly list needs to be massively overhauled, with proper due process applied so that people can actually go to court over it and so the people in charge of that list answer to the citizens. Without that, I don't want a single power added to that list, even if it's as sensible as "terrorists shouldn't have guns". Again, there is a way out of this. Add that oversight to the no-fly list, and I'll certainly be willing to add things to it. Or, if that's a political impossibility right now, go with my other suggestion and add that restriction to the FBI's most-wanted list, which actually has some oversight (as far as I understand it at least). It's worth noting how racist the current no-fly list has ended up, with a disproportionate number of middle-eastern people stuck on it.
Quote:Oh, and I thought I should add this. The Republican committee that were so desperate to indite Clinton have concluded two things. One: Yes there was a lot of incompetence involved in the Benghazi attacks. Plenty of blame to go around. Two: Hillary isn't a part of that blame though, as the report clears her of responsibility. Coming from the Republican group formed specifically to attack her, that's saying something. Too bad Fox News is going to ignore it. Three: A group of soldiers working for the leadership America overthrew are the ones that saved the soldiers that survived the attack. I like stories like that.Yeah, it's pretty amusing that they finally gave up and admitted she did nothing wrong. :)