The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
I know, it’s hardly new advice to readers here. But apparently things are getting worse with the second fatal attack on pizza delivery guys in a two weeks.
I guess that quest to “minimize” the right to self-defense is working out pretty well for the city. I guess the only hope Philly has for economic recovery is a bustling underground economy that has a side effect of improving the economy of putting people underground.
A California fashion designer launched his fall/winter 2010 line today. I guess the economy really does influence design:
American designer Rick Owens continued to plumb the depths of the dark side Friday, with a fall-winter 2010-2011 menswear collection of gender-bending, space age-y designs ready for the apocalypse. …
Overall, the collection, with its asymmetrical hemlines and great floppy flaps of fabric, looked like the kind of wardrobe the father and son in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic fable “The Road” would have fashioned out of found detritus.
If I were living in California, I suppose the apocalypse would be an apt design inspiration. Might as well be ahead of the pack, right?
Who wants to have a little goof on Friday? More fun from the Pennsylvania Capitol serves as inspiration:
Rep. John Yudichak, D-Luzerne, showed up for work this week. And he was so proud of what he was supposed to be doing in the first place that he felt obligated to put out a press release about it: “Yudichak Participates In Hearing On Establishing State Energy Agency,” was the breathless headline.
If merely showing up is all it takes to warrant a news release, here’s ours: “Micek Blogs, Has Ham Sandwich For Lunch, Enjoys Several Long Contemplative Silences.”
Try it at home … see if you can sum up your working week in a press release headline.
I’m not going to bore you with the complexity of campaign finance laws. Really, it’s tedious. But my prediction is that the end result voters will actually see will be an increase in attack ads.
The Morning Call‘s John Micek has rounded up some insights, one in particular stands out:
Larry Ceisler, a Democratic consultant from Philly, said he thinks that while corporations might hesitate, unions will jump in with both feet. He also said that there’s a risk that unfettered corporate speech might drown out candidates’ own ads, which could cost them control of their own messages.
“For instance, if an entity is supporting a candidate and doesn’t think the message is tough or sharp enough, they can go in and do it themselves,” he told the newspaper. “That could be good for a campaign – or disastrous.”
I would be willing to put money on the fact that groups will now go more negative earlier than any candidate will. It’s unfortunate, but it is the likely result. In the Brown-Coakley race, her campaign worked alongside national groups to bombard the airwaves in the last week with nothing but negative ads against Scott Brown. Yes he was elected, but you can’t really argue they didn’t work. Rasmussen found on election day that voters who made up their minds in the last few days before the election broke for Coakley at a higher rate. He also found that more of Coakley’s supporters were really going to vote against Brown rather than for Coakley than vice versa. Unfortunately for Coakley, she just didn’t get the ads on the air early enough.
After that loss, I would say to expect more and expect them earlier. Though hopefully they will stay off of the Weather Channel this time around.
UPDATE: Marginal Revolution has posted word clouds from both the majority and dissenting opinions to give you a better idea of what each side was focused on.
I would call it gun porn, except said hottie is all dressed up. And here’s a close up.
UPDATE: I would like everyone to note the author on the above post. I have not become a switch hitter, or started to bat for the other team :) -Sebastian
UPDATE: I would like everyone to note that Sebastian just took the fun out of this post. :( -Bitter
It’s been a while since we’ve had content for the How Not to Win category here, and yet it seems we could fill it every day by featuring Martha Coakley’s Gaffe-of-the-Day antics.
We warn all the time about the trouble in dealing with the media if you haven’t prepared for it. Â Martha Coakley’s volunteers should probably remember that next time they encounter a reporter with the video camera already turned on.
Things we can learn:
Just a friendly reminder that if you’re not in Massachusetts today, you can at least send an email or pick up the phone to find out how to help out other pro-gun candidates. If you’re in Pennsylvania, you don’t even have to write your own email, just fill out the form.
If you’re in Massachusetts, go vote today. I know, you’re hearing it from everyone.
Better yet, when you go vote, grab or make a pro-Brown sign and spend half an hour holding it up outside the polling station before you go vote. Then, if you’re excited by all of the thumbs up and honks of support, hold it up for another half hour after you vote.
Sign holding in Massachusetts is fun. Those planning to vote for the more conservative candidates tend to get the most visible support. The Democrat sign holders, even if their candidate is slated to win, usually get taken down a notch or two when they find their voters just don’t care as much. Part of that is due to the divide among left-leaning voters in the Bay State.
Michael Barone has a good look today at some polling in bellweather towns in the Bay State, and if I may, I would like to steal a line from him. He says those towns are “emblematic of blue-collar Massachusetts…despite the prominence of the state’s university communities”.
This is a great point, especially how it relates to this election battle between Brown and Coakley. Massachusetts is known as a Democratic stronghold, and most people vote Dem because for a long time, there really weren’t other viable alternatives, and ‘despite the prominence of the state’s university communities’ that doesn’t mean it is a liberal stronghold. In fact most of Massachusetts comes from ‘hearty stock’, or in other words a Catholic, blue-collar background. And while perhaps not as conservative as other places in the country, as a voting block it is certainly more mainstream than the liberal crowd pulled in and retained by the magnet of Harvard/Radcliffe/Brandeis/Tufts.
If you ever find yourself in Western Mass, go spend a day in Amherst. It’s a town that has its own foreign policy and a weekly anti-war protest that was happening years before I ever arrived and we were years away from Iraq & Afghanistan. But if you spend part of that day at a bar on the outskirts of town, you’ll see the transition first hand. Go in around 4:30 and you’ll see blue collar workers coming in to have a drink after a hard day of work. They clear out by 7 and then the college kids come in and the hip hop comes on. Talking to some of the students, you’ll find they have no clue about who was sitting in their seat an hour before, nor do they have any interest. You could argue it’s that way with all kids, but the difference is that in Massachusetts, those kids stick around as part of elite liberal crowd and they never learn to care about the guy who was sitting in their seat an hour before.
There’s buzz and there’s buzz. Scott Brown has reached the point of buzz.
Buzz is when you start reading things on like-minded blogs that generate little new enthusiasm for a candidate or issue within a demographic that was already likely on your side. Buzz is when it’s so blindingly in your face that not even the mainstream media can hide it from the undecideds. Buzz can win elections, whereas plain buzz is far less likely to have a game-changing result.
How do you go from plain buzz to real buzz? There’s clearly no set formula that always works, but there are important real life measures that we can do with little time and effort for pro-gun candidates. Unfortunately, the fact that I said they take any time and effort means that most readers here won’t bother.
First, there is an online factor, especially in the Brown race. Because this is a special election and it is able to catch the national eye, online buzz can play a role. Ultimately, it helped turn a $500,000 money bomb day into a million-dollar-plus week of daily money bombs. Even then, blogging about it or spreading a Twitter link isn’t what generates the most excitement. Excitement translates best when it takes a bit more effort. If you don’t live in Massachusetts, but you start excitedly discussing a special election there while you sit at your dining room table in Wisconsin, your family is a little more likely to wonder why you think this event is so special.
The second point is the real life factor. This is 99.9% of what drives buzz, not the online stuff. I know a guy who could probably put up 15 astro-turf websites with cool social media share features in a day. But he can’t make 20 people meet for a couple of hours on a cold morning to wave signs for a candidate at a busy intersection. In Massachusetts, your friends are more likely to take notice when you say you can’t meet up for a pre-game beer because you plan to go hang out with a politician who is going to shake hands with the fans outside of said game. It’s that extra effort that shows people this is something worth paying attention to.
Because it’s Massachusetts, you also have the polling factor that’s helping to generate buzz. Only in an extremely partisan state will you find that people getting gleeful that their minority party candidate is only down by the low double-digits, which is how the buzz started. That generated more interest by pollsters & outside organizations. Soon more numbers released showed more interest by Republicans and Independents who tuned in once they heard about this election and that it might be competitive (again, context is that might be competitive means the Democrats might not win in a double-digit blowout). The media was involved in this step, but so were Massachusetts residents who started getting more fired up. As we’ve closed in on Election Day, the polls get closer and that turns interest and murmurs into genuine “I want to know how this turns out” buzz.
All of these factors aside, there’s one common theme. Massachusetts voters started talking about this race at home. They didn’t just run online and find other conservatives. They started talking about the fact that there was an election at home. Then, they talked about the polls on the election. Now they are talking about election events, as evidenced by the overflow crowds that filled the streets of Worcester yesterday. That is the kind of activity that’s actually likely to result in lines at the polls come tomorrow.
The thing is, if you go out and wave a signs with other supporters for a couple of hours, you’re influencing people. First, all of the people who pass want to know what on earth is possessing you to stand outside and wave signs. Curiosity, it’s useful for something other than killing cats. Second, when you mention that you did that in conversation with friends, they want to know why you care enough about the candidate or issue to go stand outside.
I realize that we harp on these actual activist activities a lot, but that’s because they do work. Each little stone leaves a ripple in the lake. When the right campaign is doing its job, that enthusiasm can add up to create a landslide that turns into a tsunami. Is it hokey to go rally outside? Yes. So take your wife or husband and then go on a lunch date when you’re done. Is is awkward to call strangers at home and ask for them to support a candidate? For most of this readership, I would say very much so. But take your kid with you and then head out for ice cream afterwards. Is it a bit of work to walk a precinct reminding voters when election day is? Yes, but since your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, pick up two precincts just to lose another notch on the belt.
Change your perspective and view these activities as part of your civic duty. Make it an errand that just needs to be done in the course of your everyday life. And just like you might tell a story about this nutcase cat lady at the grocery store, your stories might become about the guy who answered the door in only tightey whiteys (actually happened on a canned food drive walk, not a political walk) or the woman who answered the door in the ’80s rock band t-shirt and nothing else (she was a Democrat who moved here from New York). That creates buzz.