Coming into the 2008 election, campaign strategy comes back into focus. And once again, the Democrats choose to continue to handicap themselves for no good reason.
The Wall Street Journal recently reprinted an article from Rolling Stone highlighting the structure of advertising contracts in the Democratic and Republican parties. While Republican ad agencies work on fixed cost contracts, Democratic agencies work on a commission basis, where their compensation increases with the number of ads run. This has led to increased total media costs for Dems compared to their Republican counterparts, as well as a greater emphasis on expensive non-targeted TV advertising in the Democratic party. We all-too-painfully are aware that this has not led to electoral success.
It is not the only way that the Democratic party hurts itself. The Republican party demotes its strategists who lose elections, while the Democratic party will hire a strategist who loses again and again. One of the best examples of this is the case of Bob Shrum, whose active participation in a Presidential campaign has been an excellent predictor of Democratic Presidential electorial failure since 1972 (and whose absence on a campaign has been a remarkable predictor of success). In 2004 we saw Shrum's bad advice sink Kerry in the same manner Shrum had sunk other campaigns. While Kerry had a strong primary campaign message, Shrum told Kerry not to take the offensive against Bush during the general campaign. Towards the end of the election cycle, Kerry turned to the Clinton campaign team and became more agressive, but was not able to overcome enough ground.
If the Democrats want to win, they need to become more saavy in managing their resources. This means demoting unsuccessful advisors, and cutting out the costly advertising commission system, forcing their media consultants to become team players. (If you want an incentive-based system for media consultants, make all of the bonus money dependent upon victory.)
While the people-powered revolution that the dailykos and others have fueled have helped reform the Democrats in realizing that they need to stand for values over (badly interpreted) polls, there are many institutional aspects of the party that need to be reformed to ensure that the party (and more importantly, the liberal values that will forge a stronger country) will have long-term success.
While we cannot individually force the Democrats to adopt all of these changes, there is a way to influence this now. I recommend that anyone who is considering giving a campaign donation to one of the Democratic candidates instead mail the campaign a letter of a campaign pledge (for your specific amount), conditional on a pledge from the campaign promising to only hire media consultants working on a fixed fee. If enough people send these letters, the campaigns will realize that they need to spend your hard-earned contributions more wisely, and you will be setting up the Democrats to a spending model that will lead to more victories for years to come.