"How the Dems Won"...an eye-opening op ed. Nice one.

madfloridian

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Sun Nov-19-06 01:26 AM
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"How the Dems Won"...an eye-opening op ed. Nice one.

I knew some of these things, like the radio ads on religious stations, but I did not realize how Steve coordinated some of the committees with the DNC.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/zito/s_480368.html

Democrats knew they needed to get their ducks in a row and at least have a decent showing for the 2006 midterm election. The entire House, one-third of the Senate and a score of governors' seats were up for grabs, and they were staring at a U.S. map that was a sea of red.

First order of business was to place aggressive leaders at the top of their party infrastructure: Howard Dean at the Democratic National Committee, Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Emanuel and Schumer both had one job: to get people elected on Nov. 7.

Dean's job had a different timeline and different intensity; it was and still is -- unless James Carville gets his way -- to build the party and to make it competitive again. He has to do as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, yet do it over the long term. This means investing in infrastructure -- investing in things that pay dividends for the party, not just in 2006 but beyond.

The rest is interesting, but this part especially.

Democrat strategist Steve McMahon, of McMahon Squire Associates, worked with both the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the midterm cycle. Among other things, McMahon was responsible for the national committee's "values messaging" in the reddest of red states. The strategy was to go after the hearts and minds of rural Christian voters through radio -- and it worked. There was no screaming, no partisan attacks; the tone was neither shrill nor harsh. Rather than use traditional political advertising, McMahon's operatives wrote short radio ads, read by a local voice that people hear every day, that were embedded into a radio station's weather, sports, news and farm reports.

In nine red states including Virginia, Ohio and Indiana, some 5,000 of those ads reached an audience of 9 million to 12 million people, all of whom were hit at least three times. That's a lot of voter contact. And Democrats bought out the entire advertisement inventory, so Republicans could not copy them if the GOP got a scent of what was happening.

"These were not overly partisan messages," McMahon says. "They were not shrieking negative ads. They were simple messages that began with 'Are you tired of ...' or 'Think about this ... .' "

She goes on to say that you would think Dean would get some credit for all the work, but that was not the case. It was a collective effort, yet only Schumer so far has menioned his name.

She then goes into calling the Carville attacks just about what they are, and she may be right...we have seen no response from those she mentions.

This is a new DNC, working in a different way. Dean refused to pay for TV attack ads for Rahm and Chuck, and they were working on the ground with other kinds of ads.

What Carville did this week was painful. It was totally unfair. Maybe it happened for the best, we will see. Read the op ed...interesting.