Looking at the HuffPo Pollster aggregates, look at how far we’ve come this cycle. May 19 was Donald Trump’s bump from locking up his nomination. June 7 was the final big Democratic primary date, when Hillary Clinton officially locked up the Democratic nomination. August 8 was Clinton’s post-convention polling peak.
May 19 |
Clinton +3.3 |
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June 7 |
Clinton +6.4 |
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August 8 |
Clinton +8.2 |
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Today |
Clinton +4.1 |
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So basically, we’re almost back to where we started, with just a slight tick up from that May 19 point. All in all, it’s what you’d expect—a stable race. We have two universally known candidates. People’s minds aren’t being changed.
Now consider this:
June 20: Clinton outspending Trump by $116 million on ads
August 9: Analysis: Trump campaign has spent $0 on television advertising
August 10: How Hillary Clinton Has Spent $82 Million More on Television Ads Than Donald Trump
There’s obviously more, but the theme is the same. Clinton is running herself ragged doing rich-people fundraisers, so that they have the money to dominate the airwaves. And? Mission accomplished! Except the needle has barely budged.
What if she spent that time 1) resting, and 2) talking directly to voters? It boggles my mind that they could see what Bernie Sanders raised without an aggressive in-person fundraising effort—$228 million!—and never bothered to try and replicate it. Be present and visible to your supporters, and they’ll fund your campaign. Sheesh. This isn’t a radical theory anymore.
So you’ve got a campaign hoovering up cash for crazy expensive TV ads that no one sees, and compound that with a running mate that has proven himself a big zero on the campaign trail (he revs up no one), and yes—we have a stalemated campaign, with untold millions being absolutely wasted.
No one’s mind is being changed. The GOP could put up a ringworm as a candidate, and we’d have the same numbers today. We have become so hyper-partisan that even a literal white supremacist won’t scare away Republican voters.
This election will be won and lost by turnout. Everything our side does should be focused on identifying, registering, and GOTV’ing our core voters. We do that, Clinton wins easily and—just as importantly—we win big downballot.
But trying to get Republicans to vote for Clinton? That isn’t just a fool’s errand, but counterproductive. We don’t want ticket splitters turning out to vote. We don’t want Republicans to decide Clinton is more palatable, while still voting Republican down the ballot.
Nope, we want to have so many of our core base turnout that it doesn’t matter how many Republicans turn out—our voters can swamp them out all the way down the ballot.
Obviously, some stupid blog post isn’t going to change a presidential campaign’s strategy. And the dynamics (and numbers) still greatly favor us. It’s telling that Trump, even as he’s narrowed his polling gap, is still stuck in the low 40s (42.2 percent, to be exact). Remember Bernie Sanders’ demographic ceiling? Trump has his own demographic ceiling to contend with. Without making deeper inroads into communities of color, he’s kinda fucked.
But the numbers are genuinely stark. As of today:
The dark bar represents supporting superpacs. The light bar is the candidate’s campaign committee. The totals? $435 million to $160 million. And spending-wise, Clinton has spent $339 million to Trump’s $111 million.
Of course, much of Clinton’s spending is in the field—the kind of stuff that will register our marginal voters and drag them out to the polls. But really, the bulk of that spending is TV.
On the plus side, Clinton was far more visible last week. More speeches, more public events, even more press conferences (which clearly put Trump on the defensive). The results? Her numbers stabilized:
Actually, she slightly expanded her lead. And Trump really is stuck down there in the low 40s, with little path to the majority. (His numbers look even worse in the battleground state picture.)
The lesson? TV ads don’t do shit. You need a baseline so people remember you exist, but you can’t swamp out your opponent anymore—particularly one who is on TV every single day, whether he pays for it or not. So quit the fundraising circuit and spend time communicating to the American people. It actually moves the numbers! And if you do that, as Sanders proved, money will come in anyway.
Now there is one obvious argument—that if she hadn’t spent all that money, that perhaps she’d be losing. But if you’re going to make that case, show me the demographic that she’d otherwise be losing. Or put another way, take the Obama coalition, and point to the Obama voters who would be Trump voters today given a lack of Clinton-saturation media. Indeed, that Obama coalition has only increased in numbers in the four years since.
There is a definite sense of “no one ever got fired for buying IBM” at play: playing it safe, running ads like usual. But at some point, someone has to look at the data, the sums spent, the results, and wonder if there aren’t better ways to 1) either spend the money, or 2) spend the candidate’s time.