July 2008

Talking Points Memo has tried to delegitimize certain Republican or conservative strategies  and tactics over the years. For example, Josh Marshall has tried to undermine conservative claims of voter fraud. (Thank God that we now have Election Journal, which is beginning to document the crime that is so systematic in the functioning of machine politics and which so many Democrats defend either implicitly or explicitly) This strategy may have reached its crowning success in the US Attorney scandal. I have heard from a number of sources that TPM’s actions have stalled nearly all election fraud investigations at DoJ.

Now TPM Muckraker reporter Andrew Tilghman appears to be after direct mail fundraising, with an extraordinary series of posts targetting BMW Direct, a conservative direct mail firm based out of DC.

I have two points in writing this. First, direct mail needs to be defended. Second, the reporting by Tilghman is either dishonest or ignorant. The reporting of facts is solid but he does absolutely no work to place it in the context of direct mail practices.  Again, his goal is to smear the practice.

First, the defense. Direct-mail fundraising is one area in which conservatives (more than Republicans) have a significant tactical advantage over liberals. A substantial delegitimization of direct mail fundraising would have the effect of defunding conservative candidates and organizations.

While direct-mail fundraising may not always be super-attractive in the days of internet fundraising, it provides an effecttive method of participation for people who do not trust giving over the internet, especially older voters. Hopefully, over time, we can educate our grassroots over time and move them into lower-overhead forms of fundraising with phone calls or, eventually, email. This is an important point to make. When some Republican consultants deride direct mail as not "effective", they need to ask "effective for whom?" It is still the most "effective" way of engaging some of our coalition.

More on Tilghman’s reporting and the actual practice of direct mail after the jump.

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Now to the actual practices that Tilghman discusses. But first we need to understand two things about direct mail: the relationship between the house list and prospecting and the high fixed costs of direct mail.

A campaign or organization will maintain a house list that contains regular donors. Generally, mailing the house list will turn a net profit. However, building the house list through prospecting is extremely expensive. At the beginning of a fundraising campaign, significant costs are incurred by organizations or direct mail firms.

One of themes of the TPM stories is a distortion of these facts into something nefarious. For example, from one story, they find that sitting Members of Congress, presumably with substantial house lists, get an excellent quarter-on-quarter ROI on their direct mail contract. On the other hand, new candidates and candidates with low-profiles and no house lists are spending an extraordinary amount of money in upfront costs, translation "prospecting."

In other words, TPM is reporting as news something that an intern at a direct mail firm would be fired for not understanding after a week or two.

The upfront costs are so high because … putting a letter in the mail is really expensive. Sending out a mail piece in a prospect may have over $1 in fixed costs, including postage, printing, list-rental, etc. Most of these costs are fixed, making direct-mail fundraising a very low margin business. During prospecting you may get only 1% or 2% response rate, sometimes getting only $5 or $10 return per $100 spent on prospecting and only very rarely breaking even in the initial prospect. The early part of the process is awful. That’s why candidates with no house list spend a lot of time prospecting, getting little return on investment.

It should be pointed out that there are analogues on the Democratic side. In 2006 and 2007, there were reports of Hillary Clinton building up her fundraising lists by … prospecting. These were generally identified by reporters as large postage expenditures.

In other words, there is nothing here. Unless you confuse a reporter who either has no idea what he is talking about or has an agenda with an actual story.

Barack Obama has built a mythical fundraising operation based on small-dollar donors. These were primarily upper-middle class affluents who were energized by a change message. These were also the netroots. Recall that the 3 issues at the core of the netroots are FISA, Iraq, and net neutrality. Obama’s recent actions seem to be going to be undermining his appeal with both of these groups, with potentially disastrous consequences for his small-dollar online fundraising.

Obama has now shifted to the right on FISA. It certainly looks like he is in mid-flip on Iraq. Marc Ambinder asks today:

My question is: is any of this seeping through the filter between politically engaged activists and the rest of the Democratic electorate? In other words: will see enthusiasm for Obama diminish?

In reference to a scathing NYT editorial that also attacks Obama for flipping on guns, the death penalty, and other issues. The NYT ends with:

There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme Court nominations. We don’t want any “redefining” on these big questions. This country needs change it can believe in.

Which must count as a warning on his Iraq position.

What happens to Obama’s fundraising if this march of flip-floppery continues? He loses energy among his "change" constituency as he becomes "just another politician". His netroots, affluent coalition weakens tremendously.

Does his small-dollar fundraising evaporate?

I joined the FISA protest group at myBO. I have copied the text of some of the emails that go out to the list below the fold. The anger is palpable.

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For example:

Since he didn’t even acknowledge his reversal, he did nothing to explain it.  He gave us no new information or circumstances that would explain why he had such a drastic change of heart.  In fact, he seems to be pretending that this is all about a simple disagreement on a policy position as if he had never promised to stand with us.  He must know that this would upset a lot of us even more than his original reversal.

Or:

Rather than to inform and educate on Constitutional and Intelligence issues he chose to lie in his FISA response.

For me, that’s not ok.

Or:

But sending a donation to Ralph Nader at this point in the fund raising season would make the point without risking the Supreme Court.

Or:

If you cave in and actually vote for the FISA compromise bill I will demand my donation to your campaign be refunded.  Of all people, sir, to give in on such an issue. You’re a Harvard educated lawyer not a two-bit Texas hustler. Of anyone, you should know blanket immunity for blatant disregard of the law is not the American way. The rule of law must prevail.

I have, literally, hundreds of these in my inbox right now.

John McCain has famously said that he would rather lose an election than lose a war. He seemingly sacrificed his Presidential ambitions in favor of our national interest.

In Barack Obama, it seems that we have the converse. He had declared the war lost and withdrawal an imperative when it was politically expedient. Now it seems that the reality on the ground (both polling in the US and the security in Iraq, in that order) has shifted, and Barack Obama is about to change his position.

Where John McCain put the war above his election, Barack Obama puts the election above the war, and everything else.

The lesson here is that Barack Obama is willing to sacrifice anything and everything for his political ambitions. No friend is too close, no promise so (seemingly) heartfelt, no principle so great will get in the way of his election.

Now there is a contrast with John McCain.

Over the last 48 hours, senior advisers in Barack Obama’s campaign have articulated (at least) 3 separate positions on Iraq. Chief campaign strategist David Axelrod, campaign co-chair Senator McCaskill, and foreign policy advisor Susan Rice all expressed different positions. Watch them:

David Axelrod said that Obama would listen: “he would listen to the advice of commanders on the ground, that that would factor into his thinking”. That’s reassuring.
When MSNBC’S Monica Novotny asked, “whether Obama will public ly change course before November” when his current position could result in the “return the central government to a state of collapse, Sen. McCaskill said, “No. He will not.” That’s kind of frightening. Making policy in the absence of reviewing the consequences of the policy.
Susan Rice, his foreign policy advisor, says that he will not just “listen to his commanders on the ground”, “he will follow and heed their advice”. Does this mean that Axelrod is saying that Obama will listen but not “follow and heed” the advice of the commanders?

Today, all those advisors–and more–are trying to explain Obama’s policies on the morning shows. Perhaps someone will be able to coordinate these chuckleheads, but it probably won’t be the Obama campaign.

Perhaps you can try to figure out what their policy will be. They certainly don’t seem to know.

Barack Obama is a liar. We know this by now. He lies about what he used to say or think. And he lies about his personal background. For example, he said that he compared his upbringing to Hillary Clinton’s elite upbringing. Never mind that he went to most prestigious prep school in Hawaii, paid for by his grandma, who was VP of a bank.

This time he is saying in his most recent ad that he “worked his way through college and Harvard Law”. FactCheck.org fact-checked and it turns out that it isn’t true. He had two (2!) jobs during college and graduate school. From Fact Check:

But “worked his way” through college and law school? The only back-up the campaign provided for this claim was a quote from Obama’s book “Dreams from My Father” having to do with a construction job he had one summer while he was in college, and an article mentioning his job as a summer associate one year at a big Chicago law firm. We asked campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor if Obama held jobs during the school year, or other summer jobs, but he said only, “He had the two jobs I told you about.” Unless Obama had a good bit more employment than his spokesman was able to describe for us, it’s a real stretch to claim he “worked his way” through school.

Now I wouldn’t argue that I “worked by way though college” but I did work a 20+ hour/week job during the school year and full time during the summer and all vacations.

Sees like the only change he is going to bring to Washington is that of better acting.