I apologize for another thread, but I just realized I have to do an essay about a Democratic campaign. It's not difficult, but finding specific references is getting annoying. The topic: Assume the position of a political consultant for a Democratic candidate seeking the presidency. Your job is to devise a successful campaign strategy for both primary and general elections. How should the campaign for the primary be conducted? What media would be the most effective? How should the media be used on behalf of your candidate? What groups should the strategy be aimed at reaching? Remember the candidate is a Democrat. Structure is: Intro Primary v General elections Media Target groups Conclusion I don't have much yet, but any help, direction, or suggestions would be great.
How are they supposed to grade you - originality? Are they asking you to come up with something that they don't do any more or that isn't a carbon copy of what they do now? Just for grins, feed them what the Bushies do. Use surrogates to attack opponents and feed non attributable innuendo and false rumors to the WSJ and Fox News which will publish them as facts. Always have the candidate issuing inane pablum that sounds great in 30 second sound bites. Never allow the candidate to have an open ended interview. Always script and screen any citizen meetings with the candidate. Use third party push polling to smear any opponent. Any news outlet that publishes anything negative about your candidate is instantly accused of being partisan and biased. And this is only for the primaries! Serious advice - the usual line is primaries go for the party faithful and general go for the middle. Use the most successful Democratic candidacy as a model : Clinton. For a shortcut , watch the War Room documentary or read any of the many books written about it from the inside.
Send an email to MacBeth. He'll have this ready for you in about 20 minutes... OR LESS. You'll get an "A."
Hmm, I like the suggestions; it's mainly a quick, generalized essay. Main points I plan to talk about: For primary election: appear more liberal; General election: more centrist; spend mroe time on larger states; make Republicans look bad; look for scandals. Media: mainly TV; appear to be with 'common man'; meet with union members; smear campaigns (media automatically helps with its' liberal bias) Target groups: Target seniors; more time in places like Florida; not as much time in South; Say I want to 'eliminate tax cuts' when I really plan to raise taxes. I think I need specific groups.
You can eat up a bulk of your paper in the general electuion section if you talk about the fact that a democratic candidate should spend more time in leaning democrat states and saty ou tof strong republican states like texas. Feel free to borrow from my post on this in the D&D, yo can even reference John Edwards electoral map as a "visual aid". This topic makes my senior thesis on conflict strategies coupled with chaos theory seem REALLY easy... he he
This is true for any candidate who's a contender. Take out the electoral calculator. Look at previous elections results, do some preliminary polling to get a feel for how you will do. See how many EC votes you can potentially get. Some states are almost gimmes. Some states are essentially out of reach. Concentrate most of your resources in the states that are close. Do polls to see what issues and wordings will most affect voters on the fence.
