I often watch the news at the top of GMA to see where the national media’s focus is. I was afraid with the convention ending the media would at least temporarily move on to other things and we might lose some momentum.
Sure enough today’s top stories were:
alaska landslide
airport cyberattack
russian attacks across Ukraine
Israel and Hezbollah
However, the 5th slot was a decent summary of the state of the race, including:
Harris’s rise in polling and fundraising
Trump on defense, hitting several swing states this week
Trump Truth about being good for women’s reproductive rights, Vance promising trump would veto a national abortion ban, Harris campaign response: LOL (or more specifically “believe what they do, not what they say”)
Harris this week: bus tour through Georgia and debate prep
Not mentioned: Trump probably chickening out of debate. This is the top headline on CNN right now: “Trump team casts doubt and confusion on debate”.
We long ago blew past any meaningful controls on political giving in American elections. Now we should focus on the rules governing political spending, which are in equally terrible shape. For that we can blame the Trump campaign and the federal government’s feeble enforcement efforts.
Anyone who has spent time reviewing Donald Trump’s campaign spending reports would quickly conclude they’re a governance nightmare. There is so little disclosure about what happened to the billions raised in 2020 and 2024 that donors (and maybe even the former president himself) can’t possibly know how it was spent.
Federal Election Commission campaign disclosure reports from 2020 show that much of the money donated to the Trump campaign went into a legal and financial black hole reportedly controlled by Trump family members and close associates. This year’s campaign disclosures are shaping up to be the same. Donors big and small give their hard-earned dollars to candidates with the expectation they will be spent on direct efforts to win votes. They deserve better.
At least all that money is yielding a robust ground game, right? Right?
It seems likely Mr. Trump is keeping close tabs on donations flowing through campaign vehicles controlled by family members and loyalists. But from early March through July of this year, the Biden and now Harris campaign outspent the Trump campaign three to one on advertising. By late May, the Democratic campaign had opened 200 field offices and hired 1,000 staff members in key states. The Trump campaign didn’t open its first office in the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania until June. The Biden campaign had 24 there in April.
Seems like the answer to the “why would anyone associate with Trump” question for some people is that they can make fat bank:
Maybe the Trump campaign is saving up for a post-Labor Day blitz to the finish line. Or perhaps Brad Parscale, whose strategy firm took in $94 million from Trump-affiliated groups in the 2016 campaign, spent every cent of that to re-elect the president. We know he seems to have paid himself handsomely. He bought a $2.4 million Fort Lauderdale waterfront property, a BMW X6, a Range Rover and a Ferrari. When Mr. Trump learned of Mr. Parscale’s high-rolling lifestyle, he reportedly exclaimed, “That’s my money!” according to Michael Bender’s book on the Trump campaign. Concerns about Mr. Parscale reportedly drove Mr. Kushner to ensure A.M.M.C. was fully controlled by the Trump family and trusted lieutenants.
More of that, and it’s time to start running ads about how RFK Jr as Sec of HHS will ban vaccines and bring back measles.
It’s time for Kamala to start painting Trump as desperate and selling off cabinet posts to cranks for endorsements, trying to cobble together a coalition of fringe crazy conspiracy theorists.
The main thrust of her campaign should obviously remain abortion, second should be middle class stuff (mostly housing), and third should be democracy. But there’s still plenty of time/space left after that.
I think it’s possible to run your positive and negative campaigns in parallel. So your second paragraph is good for the positive campaign, but it doesn’t necessarily need a prioritization over the negative. The RFK stuff feeds into the existing weird campaign. So you just run your positive campaign, and when Trump does something weird like promise HHS to a weird antivaxxer you smash that button opportunistically. Try to keep a steady stream going on both sides of the campaign.
It is time to start spending a little bit of the warchest on a blowout, not because the race is sewn up but because that’s the only way to build a bigger lead. In this polarized climate, Trump’s floor is probably in the 42-44% range and that’s basically where he is. There is no flipping those voters, but what you can do is discourage them so they stay home.
The two best ways to do this are to mock Trump and paint him as a loser. The mocking is going well so far, now create a narrative that TX and FL are in play. We’ve got Cruz +2 and Scott +3 polls, and Kamala within 5 points in those states. Do an ad buy there with targeted ads linking the Senate candidates and Trump to abortion bans - ads like the one BS posted. Then leak to the media that you’ve got internals that show no gap between Trump and the Senate candidates and it’s a 2-3 point race.
Other than trying to demoralize MAGA voters, this may get Trump to blow money on those states and with a cash advantage, we’d go dollar for dollar to drain his accounts on FL/TX in a heartbeat. We’d probably be happy to lay 2-1 on that spending.
Last but not least, this should help keep the energy going on our side. And what we’re really talking about is whether to sit on money that has diminished returns in the “real” swing states or find a +EV use for it. This shouldn’t cut into the swing state spend at all.
This is basically a tournament ICM spot on the money side. If we can spend our surplus 500-600M in FL/TX in a way that triggers Trump to spend a big chunk of his last $100M there, that’s huge.
Honestly (assuming it’s legal) it should be used to pump up state and local races (where money there can go a long way).
Also start thinking long term. Obama got beaten handily twice in Georgia. 12 years later, it is a purple state with two Democratic senators. Is there a Stacey Abrams in, say, South Carolina or Missouri? There must be - use that money and go find them. It almost certainly won’t pay off right away, but you have to start fighting in places like those.
I’m not saying to start spiking the football with regard to Kamala v Trump, but there is enough money to do it all.
If we are looking for the next Georgia, the list of potential states includes FL and TX right? Obama lost Georgia by less than 8%, SC was 12% in 2020 and Missouri was 15%. North Carolina is in play now, so that’s one. FL and TX are the next closest. They’re big so expensive, but we can bleed Trump’s money there if he falls for it.
I asked before but does anyone know if there some sort of “industry” guidelines of how much it costs to “buy votes” in X state by advertising/rally/ground game/etc or there just too many variables they kind of just deciding on the fly based on situation as it stands?
