What's Your Campaign Strategy?

[Chichiri]

Say you were running a political campaign for a friend of yours -- a guy of average appearance and charisma, and a liberal -- who is running for a seat in the US House of Representatives in your state. You have a budget of $750,000, plus whatever you can fundraise in the five months before the election, and carte blanche to do whatever you want with the campaign. What would you do to get your guy elected? Be as specific as possible.

[Droopy]

1. Tell him to promise support for tax cuts

Profess his faith in Jesus. And accuse his opponent of supporting the gay agenda.

Then when he gets into office he can go about what he really wants to do.

[Chichiri]

2. So you've got a guy in office for 2 years, maximum,

and a bunch of cynical, jaded voters in your district who are now paranoid about getting a REAL Repuke in office.

Now what? :think:

[Droopy]

4. Nothing

It was just a cynical, sarcastic response.

[no name no slogan]

3. Mine's more of a "strategery"

and it is, lie like hell about my opponent, then recruit my buddies in the voting machine industry to rig the election so that I win regardless of the popular vote.

[sasquatch]

5. Have Bob Shrum and Mary Beth Cahill rubbed out

After that you should be able to win.

[existentialist]

6. Run against

President Bush and the "Rubberstamp Congress".

[crispini]

7. hook into the network of community activists

in the specific area. the people who always, always vote. think homeowner's associations, churches, neighborhood newspapers. find out what problems the specific area is having, and speak to them. tap into the local party activists and diehards and political junkies.

tell him he needs to find his voice-- like howard dean, figure out what issues he can speak about, passionately and from the heart.

get educated -- you need to run demographics for the area, know how to use a voter file, and do the math. get someone who can crunch all the numbers and figure out how to target your voters. there's a lot of good campaign manager training out there.

talk to people who have run in your area before -- what worked for the winners -- what do the losers think they should have done better -- that kind of thing.

there ya go, some things to start off with!

[UrbScotty]

8. Lay it on the Bush-supporting opponent (nt)

[Squeech]

9. Tough on crime

Especially white collar crime. Especially politically connected crime.

Talk about Exxon and Halliburton. Talk about the $9 billion that went missing from the $87 billion Iraq reconstruction budget. Talk about the real reason that Kerry voted against it (after he voted for it), that the second version (the one that passed) gave it to Rummy to use as a random slush fund. Talk about the likelihood of New Orleans reconstruction money being a similar boondoggle.

Talk about how badly they did the Medicare pharmaceutical benefit, including the part about how they threatened to fire the actuary who wanted to brief Congress about its real costs. Talk about how Social Security privatization is similar horseshit.

If you're anywhere near Ohio, talk about Coingate.

If you're anywhere near Louisiana, talk about FEMA. I envision a poster of Dumbya and Chertoff looking clueless (not hard to find), with the caption "They made promises. Now they're making excuses."

Also talk about getting out of Iraq, using as much of Wesley Clark's outline as your candidate is comfortable with.

In sum, talk tough, and advertise that tough talk heavily.