Yeah, but when he does it, it means he's "fighting" and that's good.
Yeah, but when he does it, it means he's "fighting" and that's good.
Out of curiosity, is he fully responsible for the exponential increase, or is it to match increased fundraising in general? Like an arms race, except with money - especially since IIRC some law banning big donations by corporations was recalled? I mean, nobody wants to stay behind, it seems like both sides are at fault for this. Which is also why I don't see it stopping soon, nobody wants to e the first to cut down on spending.Originally Posted by Loki
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Sure, it's an arms race, but it's an arms race started by Obama in '08, and an arms race where Republicans have consistently been playing catch up.
Hope is the denial of reality
Fair enough. Followup question, if I may: was Obama's money mostly small donations from individuals, or large donations to those PAC things? In my mind, if more individuals support one politician and that is the reason he has more money (as opposed to fewer people with more money),that does sound vaguely more democratic.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
One wonders what the Republicans have been doing with their money since they're not spending it on ads (although they are).
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Everyone is getting money from every source available. And you're forgetting that the way you get more people to donate is by having a larger campaign staff and more people on the ground soliciting donations.
They're not as good in fundraising. They have historically relied on more rich people being Republican. The post about their voter persuasion strategies.
Hope is the denial of reality
Of course, it's a self fulfilling thing,
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Fundraising is strategical and tactical. Interesting to see how the (R) and (D) have differed in their approaches, how they data-mine potential contributors, and how they spend money to get money.
<Warning: Anecdotal post>
I'm registered Independent in PA. My only political donation was an on-line contribution in '07 for Ron Paul (on behalf of my son who wasn't voting age yet). I also went to the Obama HQ to get some information, and gave them my e-mail. I attended a fund-raiser for a (R) judicial candidate, and gave them my e-mail, too. My (R) district US Congressman also had my e-mail, but announced last year he's retiring.
Fast forward---I received tons of e-mails from Ron Paul (and off-shoot Libertarians), the DNC, individual Democrats, and the Obama campaign. They 'invited' me to all sorts of events, cottage meetings at local homes, student activities, voter registration training, etc. But I got nothing from McCain, the GOP/RNC, or any (R) candidate. Not for midterm elections in '10, or in '12 either.
What I've gotten are a slew of irritating robo-calls....from Rick Santorum, wives of (R) candidates, physicians for (R), women for (R), even Clint Eastwood. It's like Republicans used the Verizon phone book by zip code, connected "me" to their computer phone bank, and began dialing.
*And it's strange I've never been contacted for any of these political polls/surveys. I'm a university-educated white female with children, over age 40, with no party affiliation, in a swing state. I'm one of those "likely voters" whose vote is technically up for grabs. I have a land line phone and e-mail, but never been asked. So, who are these pollsters contacting?
Last edited by GGT; 11-04-2012 at 01:02 AM.
Um, what makes you think that pollsters make it a point to contact university-educated women (or that they know that you're a university-educated woman before calling you)? They're meant to choose people randomly. Assuming 5 national polls a week, with an N of 2k each, you have a 1/30,000 odds of getting a call each week. If you add state-level polls, perhaps that goes up to 1/20,000.
Hope is the denial of reality
Actually...
The money in those PAC things technically isn't Obama's, or Mittens's. Tuesday will tell whether Karl Rove is a shrewd businessman or a blue-eyed ideologue.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Most of the money raised has actually been directly by the candidates. I don't have the numbers with me, but it was something like 2/3 by the candidates and the rest evenly split between the parties and PACs.
Hope is the denial of reality
They're demographically-driven. They don't just choose people randomly, but try to drive into specific subsets: gender, age, education, ethnicity, income, party affiliation. That's how Soccer Moms or Walmart Women got their moniker. Correct me if I'm wrong....but many of the "undecided/swing" voters are thought to be white women with families, in subsets by age, education, income, employment, or region.
They look at those subsets after they have their sample, not before. I'm not quite sure how you'd expect them to have this much information available about you (and everyone else)...
As for the subsets themselves, they're useful in terms of targeting by political campaigns. They are irrelevant to people doing polling.
Hope is the denial of reality
You're basically saying demographers and pollsters are using flawed sample sizes and populations to make their predictions.
No, I'm saying they make adjustments to the results after they collect the information.For example, if they don't have enough women in their sample, they increase the weight given to the women who are in the sample.
Hope is the denial of reality
And I'm saying it's stupid to give more weight to under-represented demographics within a small sample size, after the collection, instead of expanding the sampling population itself.No, I'm saying they make adjustments to the results after they collect the information.
Suffice it to say, pollsters know more about polling than you do.
We all know pollsters and demographers are professional data-collectors, and they "sell" those results to others. Of course they know more about polling methods or statistics than I do. That's their job.
But I can also suggest, in my non-professional opinion, that political pollsters haven't necessarily used basic Marketing data-collection principles to their full advantage. Especially when it comes to "drilling down" into subsets by gender or ethnicity. I can also suggest that Democrats have done a better job at reaching minorities, women, young people, and students....because they weren't relying on conventional sampling (phone surveys), or trying to mine older or existing voter rolls.
You're conflating some things there. First, initial federal spending during the height of the Financial crisis wasn't meant to "stimulate" the US economy, but to keep it from total meltdown. British banks and financial firms were also beneficiaries of US interventions against that global threat, and collateral damage.
#3 was NOT "utter nonsense" to keep the globally connected Financial/Banking industry afloat. Again, you're mixing interventions and industry sectors. The US auto loan rescue deal was separate from fed interventions for the Lehman/AIG fallout.
Except if they know who they're calling before the sample then it's not random. Hence why they call randomly then adjust accordingly - which works well.
Meltdown? Again nonsense as I said to you at the time. The sky never was falling.
Any failed banks/auto companies could and should have been allowed to fail. GM was in crisis due to mistakes of their own making and better products from the competition. They should have gone into Chapter 11 if need be.
In stark contrast to what every banker/financier/economist was saying at the time? If you're going to maintain a revisionist history on this....go ahead and use open source editing on Wikipedia, citing reliable sources. I dare ya.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_recession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financi...007–2008
This is one of the main reasons I refuse to donate or volunteer for any candidate, political cause. It's like a iron brand that sticks to you for life out there among the databases.Fundraising is strategical and tactical. Interesting to see how the (R) and (D) have differed in their approaches, how they data-mine potential contributors, and how they spend money to get money.
<Warning: Anecdotal post>
I'm registered Independent in PA. My only political donation was an on-line contribution in '07 for Ron Paul (on behalf of my son who wasn't voting age yet). I also went to the Obama HQ to get some information, and gave them my e-mail. I attended a fund-raiser for a (R) judicial candidate, and gave them my e-mail, too. My (R) district US Congressman also had my e-mail, but announced last year he's retiring.
Fast forward---I received tons of e-mails from Ron Paul (and off-shoot Libertarians), the DNC, individual Democrats, and the Obama campaign. They 'invited' me to all sorts of events, cottage meetings at local homes, student activities, voter registration training, etc. But I got nothing from McCain, the GOP/RNC, or any (R) candidate. Not for midterm elections in '10, or in '12 either.
What I've gotten are a slew of irritating robo-calls....from Rick Santorum, wives of (R) candidates, physicians for (R), women for (R), even Clint Eastwood. It's like Republicans used the Verizon phone book by zip code, connected "me" to their computer phone bank, and began dialing.
*And it's strange I've never been contacted for any of these political polls/surveys. I'm a university-educated white female with children, over age 40, with no party affiliation, in a swing state. I'm one of those "likely voters" whose vote is technically up for grabs. I have a land line phone and e-mail, but never been asked. So, who are these pollsters contacting?
You're going to wikifist?In stark contrast to what every banker/financier/economist was saying at the time? If you're going to maintain a revisionist history on this....go ahead and use open source editing on Wikipedia, citing reliable sources. I dare ya.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_recession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financi...007–2008
No I don't need to maintain a revisionist history of this as what I just said I said it to you at the time is entirely true: Do you recall me regularly telling you that I didn't think it would be the end of the world? And it wasn't! I was right.
PS your link has no references at the moment, I've not edited it (I don't edit Wikipedia). Though I would say you were far more Henny Penny than "every banker/financier/economist" at the time.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Yes, because it's loaded with links to research papers, analysis, and opinions in the citation/footnote section.
Oh, I remember those exchanges. I was in the minority leading up to the Financial crisis and Great Recession, often dismissed as Chicken Little when posting about the housing bubble, financial engineering, bank leverage, fuzzy math, global contagion, etc. But I never said it would be the end of the world.No I don't need to maintain a revisionist history of this as what I just said I said it to you at the time is entirely true: Do you recall me regularly telling you that I didn't think it would be the end of the world? And it wasn't! I was right.
PS your link has no references at the moment, I've not edited it (I don't edit Wikipedia). Though I would say you were far more Henny Penny than "every banker/financier/economist" at the time.
Do you still maintain that we did NOT have a Financial crisis in '07-'08? That Paulson, Bernanke, and Bush administration were the real Chicken Littles, scaring the bejeezus out of legislators -- and the public -- for no valid reason during the AIG/Lehman debacle, when the banking/financial industry began to melt down, and credit markets froze up?
Refresh. Something not discussed much here are the candidates' "surrogates". One thing that's bothered me about Romney/Ryan -- and RNC/GOP in general -- is their reluctance to disavow big donor Birthers like Trump, and using divisive voices like Sununu or Guiliani to trump up anger under the guise of Patriotism.
Yeah, only Republicans do that. Seriously, how deep does your cognitive dissonance go? Are you going to blame Romney for Sandy next?
Hope is the denial of reality
The Pubbie engine runs on hate, fear, xenophobia and colonialism, American Exceptionalism, and most of all FUCK YOU, GOT MINE
The supporters want to be angry, bitter, hateful, spiteful, they need that message fed to them day in and day out both as affirmation and as a joint declaration of faith. People have Fox & Friends on as background noise, they listen to local talk radio heads spewing hate on their commute, they tune in to see Sean and the rest of the chuckle-fucks. In order to exist in their bizarre alternative universe, they need The Message constantly ringing in their ears. The candidates cannot distance themselves from the hate machine, they need the hate machine in order to appeal to their core constituents. That Christie told Fox & Friends to basically fuck off got him crucified in the relevant outlets.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
There's plenty in the DNC and Democratic "machine" that bothers me, too. It's part of politicking's cognitive dissonance, not mine.
The way I see it, if R/R and GOP can't distance themselves from the wingnuts and crazies during primaries AND general elections -- either because they're major funders or "surrogate" voices that incite their "base" -- there's a snowball's chance in hell they'd do the same if elected.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
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