Why has the left fallen behind on getting any message out in mass emails?

[gatorboy]

If you check out the Truth or Fiction site which keeps tabs on a variety of mass emails,

http://www.truthorfiction.com/index-politics.htm

You'll notice that the majority of political emails that are sent out are attacks from the right on any number of issues. There are a handful of Bush emails and that's about it.

So how did they get the jump on this sort of promotion?

[ixion]

1. because talking sh*t is what they do best

so it would follow that they would pollute the internet with their poorly-spelled, poorly-written fabrications.

[gatorboy]

4. The content isn't the issue. It's why they're so much more successful in getting that content out.

Why isn't the left as successfully organized as the right when it comes to this?

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

16. But it helps when you can just make up content

Saves a lot of time.

[World Citizen]

2. lack of organization nt

[Peregrine Took]

7. Right - also, we don't have the passion in our beliefs that they do.

[spanone]

3. the thugs are way out ahead on this 'domestic drilling' issue...it makes me sick

[Peregrine Took]

9. I wonder if they didn't create the gas price crisis just to "solve" it in a way

that would be anathema to decent Democrats.

[TexasObserver]

5. because they're ignorant old farts who don't read real news, like we do

That's it in a nutshell. They are ignorant, and tend to believe anything in writing anyone over 70 sends them. They don't watch news. They don't read. They're ignorant. They spend more time thinking about football than they do thinking about politics. They want life to be a simple choice between right and wrong, and the things they think of as "right" are often merely nasty prejudices they grew up with.

That brings us to Obama. He's black. That's it. That's the entire reason for all this email shit talk about him. Old, ignorant, racist white people are the army that sends and reads all this anti Obama drivel.

[BurtWorm]

6. Mass e-mails? You mean like spam?

Or do mean like the kinds of e-mails full of shit sent around by gullible lonely people with nothing better to do with their time than forward to everyone on their list every e-mail they're asked to forward to every one on their list?

[gatorboy]

12. Yeah, and it obviously works.

[jobycom]

8. That's how the Republicans have always campaigned.

They've always had thei whisper campaigns through church and local club flyers. Now they've taken it tech. They have web rings, they have plants on liberal boards, they have Drudge and the media. You can watch them work if you look closely. Drudge releases a headline, bunches of people post it here pretending outrage, so that most people find out about it through liberal sites instead of Drudge, the media picks up Drudge's spin instead of the facts, and soon emails begin that take the kernel of the idea and build even stranger fantasies around it.

The insane emails they spread are written or at least distributed through sophisticated marketing tactics. They are circulated through web rings, who circulate them to other email groups, who circulate them widely to groups who have little connection to politics, so that the emails become "conventional wisdom" instead of political strategy. If a politician says it, no one will believe it, but it you learned about it through an email from your Cousin Nelda, who heard about it from a friend of a friend, you think "This is what they don't want me to hear, so it must be true, coming from underground sources like that."

You can't trace it's source, no one can be accused of libel, and the targets can't even bring it up to refute it for danger of spreading the rumors mainstream.

Democrats just aren't built like that.

[0rganism]

10. Organized astroturf banks, some of them salaried

Republicans will hire trolls and spam artists to get their message out using the internet. Dems are way behind on this one, playing catch-up. It's a lot easier to start a nasty rumor than it is to debunk that rumor once it's hit all the blogs and 150,000 inboxes.

[EarlG]

11. Good timing

We're considering a mass email for the first action of the re-awakened DU Activist Corps. Will have more details later today.

[gatorboy]

13. Good to hear!

They've had the upper hand on this sort of promotion for far too long.

[baby_mouse]

14. Because the left is composed of public spirited people who recognise spam as a curse.

Lefties adjust their behaviour with respect to their peers and it is known that spam sucks. So, lefties don't do it, out of politeness.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

15. Becuase we aren't lying liars

Most right-wing "truth" e-mails are just smearing scare attacks. Most people hate them, don't read them, delete them as soon as their obnoxious rightie friends send them. However, there are a few morons who buy right into it.

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. Because the left doesn't get the funding from oil companies/

AEI/Heritage Foundation etc., to pay people to create and send out the crap.

The email campaign is a deliberate RW propaganda campaign, and the origin of all those emails is in some corporate office - I'd bet the farm on it.

[checks-n-balances]

18. Because the RW can pays people to do it

They can afford to prime their pump.