Here is Erick Erickson making my point about the need for ground troops in the information war, and he issues a warning about political consultants as well:
With all the hype, celebrity, and media coverage of Campaign 2016, and the worries abounding about guys like Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left, it is important to remember that fundamentals still matter. Television ads will draw people to the polls, but those advertisements will not be enough. There must also be a ground game. Even Jesus had a ground game.
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two[a] others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. (Luke 10:1-2)
The population of the country makes this necessary.
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Barack Obama won in 2012 with 65,915,796 votes, which amounted to 51.1% of the total vote, but was really 45% of the registered voter population in the nation and only 20.5% of the total population and 30% of the voting age population. But, that was an extraordinary election year. The 2014 election year, by contrast, saw a lot of people sit home.
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Trump getting out there and hiring people across the board will help him. The other campaigns need to step up their game. But none of the campaigns should think that an air war really matters. More and more Americans, particularly younger voters, are turning of television and going with Netflix, iTunes, etc. — none of which do advertising.
Targeted advertisements work better across the board. But door to door is the best way to turn out voters. Investment in ground games matter. That Trump appears to be investing heavily in a door to door force is good. But there is also the caveat emptor situation. I know plenty of campaigns over the years that have invested in huge field operations. It turned out that those field operations were really just consultants making tons of cash with little to show for it. That’s actually a real problem for very wealth politicians, particularly on the Republican side. Democrats tend to grapple with their consultants better while rich Republicans have consistently gotten played by their “ground game” consultants.
Read more: Erick on the Radio.com
Image credit: grassrootscampaigns.com.
