Paul Hackett Has a Posse

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday August 04, 2005 · 9:29 PM PDT

2005/08/04 · 21:29

Yes, this is cliche and derivative, but, for those of you who still remember the Andre the Giant stickers around your cities or the Howard Dean ripoff of it, you might find this amusing. My photoshopping skills are awful, so consider this more of an amateur prototype than an implementation:
Read More

Speaking the "language of faith"

Constantine

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday July 21, 2005 · 6:17 PM PDT

2005/07/21 · 18:17

Much chest-beating and rending-of-garments has been done of late of the need of Democrats to be comfortable "speaking the language of faith" to voters. In an earlier dairy, the author complained about how American filmmakers couldn't put together a religious-themed movie, whereas it was (it seemed) easy for low-budget British filmmakers to do so. I commented that the reason for this is that American scriptwriters are just plain ignorant, and it made me think, "politicians don't need to necessarily be Christians or evangelicals, but they have to know whom they're dealing with and understand their language."

I'm going to be practical about this and try to come up with a guide for "What Democrats Need to Know About Faith." Read More

I was counting on conservatism for Kerry

Constantine

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 04, 2004 · 8:13 AM PST

2004/11/04 · 08:13

My take on the election was that to many Americans, Bush represented radical change. As a consequence, my prediction last week was that Americans would vote for Kerry, who was, ironically, the "conservative" candidate. While Bush talked about having a national sales tax, eliminating social security, tax cuts to reward wealth and punish work, and a slew of new worldwide invasions, Americans would be frightened off and vote Kerry. I was right that Americans would vote against radical change, but it turned out to favor Bush.
Read More

America votes to become more conservative

Constantine

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday November 03, 2004 · 6:18 AM PST

2004/11/03 · 06:18

This election wasn't a vote against a "liberal Massachusetts Senator." On Tuesday, the American people voted in favor of conservative change, almost across the board. If this victory was caused by Rove's "4 million new evangelical voters" strategy and the failure of the Democratic GOTV operation to overwhelm it, then things don't look good for Democrats for a long, long time.

In Senate races in Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Kentucky, when voters had the option of voting for a moderate-to-conservative Democrat against a radically right-wing conservative Republican, they chose the Republican. Why did this happen, and how can we recover from it?
Read More

What Dean could learn from Kerry

Constantine

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday January 21, 2004 · 11:50 PM PST

2004/01/21 · 23:50

I always saw Kerry as dead in the water for months, now, yet he won Iowa and surged back in New Hampshire. What happened?

My take on it is this-- John Kerry knew he was in his hour of desperation and retooled and refocused. Several times. People made fun of him for using profanity, driving a Harley, having another campaign kickoff event, and coming up with what appeared to be his tenth campaign slogan (the latest being "The Real Deal"). What we missed is that Kerry was just doing everything he could and sticking with what worked. Do you see him in a Harley, now? No, as we know it doesn't play well at all. Everytime something failed, he regrouped and switched gears until something gained traction. It all seemed to work in Iowa, and now he's polling ahead in New Hampshire.

Contrast this with Dean and the "angry" thing. We can blame the media all we want, but the fact is that noone stopped the Dean campaign and said, "look, we're getting killed with the angry thing. Retool, and work on that voice." We can talk all we want about how lame SNL's opening skit about Dean was last Saturday, but the fact is that Dean inadvertently played into this instead of being more careful, given the opportunity.

I think another good example of this is the letters. At first, they worked great. They were brilliant strategy in the summer and fall. Starting around December, it was becoming clear that they weren't causing any poll movement in Iowa or New Hampshire. Did the campaign switch gears? No, they just kept on writing letters, and the polls went nowhere.

Can Dean learn from his mistakes in time? It wasn't too late for Kerry to shake things up in Iowa, but does he have the infrastructure to run a national campaign come February and March?

States on fire for Howard Dean letter-writing

Constantine

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday January 06, 2004 · 5:21 PM PST

2004/01/06 · 17:21

As many know, the Howard Dean campaign has been encouraging supporters to write letters to undecided voters in New Hampshire and Iowa. I decided to see which states were most on fire for Dean when it came to writing letters to interested voters. As you can guess, I'm desperately trying to think of ways of avoiding work. As of Monday night, 125,744 letters had been written, as can be seen on the Dean for America website, which gives a state by state breakdown

Notice that Massachusetts is #2 on the list, with 11,657 letters, despite having 1/6th the population of California, with 13,021 letters as of 6pm January 4th.

Taking some data from the US Census bureau, I wanted to see how many letters per 1000 population were being written

Through the magic of MS Excel, we can see where Dean's support is most intense.

Let's look at the top 5:

Vermont, pop. 619,107, 2533 letters, 4.1 letters per 1000 population
Massachusetts, pop. 6,433,422, 11657 letters, 1.8 letters per 1000 pop
North Dakota, pop. 633,837, 1073 letters, 1.69 letters per 1000 population
Oregon, pop. 3,559,596, 3340 letters, 0.938 letters per 1000 population
District of Columbia, pop. 563,384, 435 letters, 0.772 letters

The answer, not surprisingly, is that the leader is Vermont, with a staggering 4 letters per 1000 population, followed by Massachusetts with 1.8 and North Dakota at 1.6. The rest of the top ten is rounded out by Oregon, District of Columbia, Washington State, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Arizona. In a development that should prove to be a good omen for swing states, Missouri is #11.

I have to say I'm sort of surprised by the presence of Arizona and North Dakota in the top ten, but to me that's evidence that the Dean campaign appeals to a large cross section of people. (As well as confirming, for those who didn't already know, that ND has a very small population :) Interestingly, support for Howard Dean seems to be strong in North Dakota, where Dean was enthusiastically received by an overflow crowd.

Rounding out the bottom 6, there is South Carolina, Louisiana, Idaho, Mississippi, Hawaii, and Kansas.

No surprises with Idaho, Mississippi, and Kansas, but, really, shouldn't we be doing better in SC and HI? HI is fairly liberal, and SC, as an early primary state, is someplace we should at least be a bit more competitive, when it comes to fervent letter-writers.

The original Excel spreadsheet is available if anyone wants to check my work.

RSS