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It's gotv, yall
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# ? Nov 1, 2014 01:51 |
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# ? May 11, 2024 12:34 |
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# ? Nov 3, 2014 21:09 |
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Good luck everyone. We're almost done.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 15:44 |
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Just wanted to say that if you're in New York State, please resist the temptation to vote for Hawkins. You're going to have to vote for Cuomo on the WFP line if you want to ensure any meaningful change in the future. I did it, and I'm not proud that I did, but it had to be done.
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 15:51 |
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# ? Nov 4, 2014 16:56 |
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I've got a new project to get done in the next two years. I'm going to design a setup that includes a tablet PC and a small printer (like a high resolution receipt printer) to allow a volunteer to hang out near polling stations and help people print out bills to prove their address. The smaller the better!
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# ? Nov 5, 2014 01:00 |
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I'm just so tired right now.
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# ? Nov 5, 2014 09:43 |
I'm freeeeeeee (unemployed)
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# ? Nov 5, 2014 13:09 |
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Well. That was certainly a night.
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# ? Nov 5, 2014 16:01 |
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That was a bloodbath.
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# ? Nov 5, 2014 23:27 |
Network Pesci posted:In a society where a media corporation can fight a court case to lie on the air and call it "news" and win, where ignorance is considered a legitimate point of view, representative democracy cannot work. Therefore, I don't vote.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 02:10 |
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40,000 20 to 35 year olds thought that way in Massachusetts and now we get to say hi to Charlie Baker.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 05:15 |
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Funemployment!
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 07:18 |
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3679299&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post437302073 Add "civil engagement" right under "cops" and "bitcoin" on the list of things GBS hates. These fuckers really don't want to vote.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 07:24 |
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Being employed after a shellacking like that is somehow worse than being unemployed. Post-mortems suck
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 00:43 |
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I am in an area that didn't get whalloped too bad but here some Democratic thoughts after this election 1) Holy poo poo, actually have a message. I don't care if the President is unpopular say something about the good you have done instead of looking like chickens. People want to vote for something and it seems the Dems just meandered through the election like it was loving inevitable that we would lose. 2) off of this, I am sick of hearing about the midterm problem for democrats. If it's a problem the DCCC and the DSCC need to ACTUALLY invest in doing something about it or create a strategy to gain some of those voters back. Either we need to engage the communities that drop off during the midterms or we need to create a platform that talks to midterm voters. 3) This is for all of the people on the left, start running people in City Council/County Assembly/Selectmen races. The republicans have all these back benchers ready to go and run because they ran before and they have experience in the government. I feel the Democrats (and the American Left) in general ignores these thing and tries to skip steps. Think of it like minor league in baseball, it's good to have your prospects ready to go and with some experience before you throw them in the majors. This is especially true of rural/exurban districts. We completely ignore them and wonder why we aren't making any headway. Oh well, anyways, thoughts?
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# ? Nov 11, 2014 16:02 |
Mooseontheloose posted:Oh well, anyways, thoughts? Of course, it's hard to provide any post-election commentary when my race has yet to be decided.
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# ? Nov 12, 2014 05:55 |
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Dem messaging was non-existant, this sums it up well:quote:What, besides raising the minimum wage, do the Democrats propose to do about the shift in income from wages to profits, from labor to capital, from the 99 percent to the 1 percent? How do they deliver for an embattled middle class in a globalized, de-unionized, far-from-full-employment economy, where workers have lost the power they once wielded to ensure a more equitable distribution of income and wealth? What Democrat, besides Elizabeth Warren, campaigned this year to diminish the sway of the banks? Who proposed policies that would give workers the power to win more stable employment and higher incomes, not just at the level of the minimum wage but across the economic spectrum? If you need to frame it that populist is debatable, but the basic issue is that in the face of economic anxiety and wage stagnation the Democratic messaging in 2014 was small time, at best. The Republican message is wrong, but they have a broad one about cutting taxes, cutting government spending, big government, etc. Raising the minimum wage is popular (as seen by the ballot initatives), but it isn't a message, its a piece of a broader economic message that for the most part didn't exist.
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# ? Nov 13, 2014 17:33 |
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What do you guys think of this analysis: http://georgelakoff.com/2014/11/13/democratic-strategies-lost-big-heres-why-and-how-to-fix-it/ quote:
I've seen some of the strategies in the first half personally and watched them fail like crazy. Specifically: "Attack your opponents as being “extremists” when they hold views typical of the far right. If voters happen to share any of those views, you will be attacking those voters as extremists, even if that are partly progressive. Your opponents will be seen as courageous, standing up for what they believe. You will be helping your opponents." I was canvassing for the first time with an experienced volunteer and while speaking with a veteran, she started going on about how the opposing candidate was a Tea Party gun nut. Probably scored a vote for the other team with that visit.
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# ? Nov 14, 2014 02:10 |
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I've seen some of the strategies in the first half personally and watched them fail like crazy. Specifically: "Attack your opponents as being “extremists” when they hold views typical of the far right. If voters happen to share any of those views, you will be attacking those voters as extremists, even if that are partly progressive. Your opponents will be seen as courageous, standing up for what they believe. You will be helping your opponents." Yeah, sometimes it's hard when the campaign wants you to push a "our opponent is an extremist on immigration" line and then puts you on persuasion calls with voters who think the problem with immigration is that we don't shoot em when we catch em at the border.
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# ? Nov 14, 2014 17:28 |
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Jackson Taus posted:Yeah, sometimes it's hard when the campaign wants you to push a "our opponent is an extremist on immigration" line and then puts you on persuasion calls with voters who think the problem with immigration is that we don't shoot em when we catch em at the border. This is really a problem with how persuasion is done on phones/doors. A lot of strategists think of phones/doors as the same as a TV ad - a one directional message. On TV, if you put out an ad, it will gain you votes and lose you votes. Hopefully it gains more than it loses. On the phone, you only have a limited number of quality contacts. It's not worthwhile to employ the same messaging you use on TV/radio/mail as you do on the phone. Live persuasion is a back-and-forth affair and involves actual conversation with a voter. If you attempt to use the same strategy you use on TV/radio with voters on the phone, you'll find that you will gain very few votes. Certainly, much fewer than you'd gain through actual persuasion.
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# ? Nov 15, 2014 14:29 |
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Concerned Citizen posted:This is really a problem with how persuasion is done on phones/doors. A lot of strategists think of phones/doors as the same as a TV ad - a one directional message. On TV, if you put out an ad, it will gain you votes and lose you votes. Hopefully it gains more than it loses. On the phone, you only have a limited number of quality contacts. It's not worthwhile to employ the same messaging you use on TV/radio/mail as you do on the phone. Live persuasion is a back-and-forth affair and involves actual conversation with a voter. If you attempt to use the same strategy you use on TV/radio with voters on the phone, you'll find that you will gain very few votes. Certainly, much fewer than you'd gain through actual persuasion. The problem is that the average actual volunteer has an IQ of 100 who (at best) watches MSNBC/CNN regularly. They signed up for a two-hour shift and may or may not come back. In that context, you can't really afford to take too long training then or you won't get any actual voter-contacting done. I agree with you that the current system sucks though.
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# ? Nov 16, 2014 16:37 |
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Jackson Taus posted:The problem is that the average actual volunteer has an IQ of 100 who (at best) watches MSNBC/CNN regularly. They signed up for a two-hour shift and may or may not come back. In that context, you can't really afford to take too long training then or you won't get any actual voter-contacting done. I agree with you that the current system sucks though. If that's really true, then I'd probably stand out pretty quickly for volunteering and hopefully get to do cooler stuff.
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# ? Nov 18, 2014 09:33 |
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Love Stole the Day posted:If that's really true, then I'd probably stand out pretty quickly for volunteering and hopefully get to do cooler stuff. That's how it worked for me. It'll take a cycle or two, but (at least in my purple area) there's definitely a shortage of smart hardworking people who don't cause drama. When opportunities arise, grab them. I started just making phone calls and knocking doors, but then I took over doing training for data entry and I cut a lot of the lists for OFA2012 before they staffed up. Wound up managing dozens of volunteers per shift during GOTV. This year I spent a fair bit of time in the metaphorical smoke-filled rooms (the CD chair's GF makes him smoke on the porch or else it'd be literal) and doing things like helping define messaging or writing strategic plans and guidance to help local level party chairs. I still knock doors and make calls, but I do the cool stuff too. Hard work, sincerity, and intelligence worked for me, but I guess YMMV. Also identifying and making friends with the power players (or folks who think they're power players) helps - I ended up on the State Central Committee because I worked with a few of them on the 2012 campaign and I got myself invited to lunch with them after one of the caucuses to decide who got to go to the National Convention. I impressed a few of them by working with them and got them to like me (or at least remember me) by going to lunch with them and then when they needed a male from my county to fill a vacancy they were happy to vote me on when the local party chair (a friend I play D&D with sometimes) nominated me. But my point was less "go me I'm so awesome because I'm smart" and more about the blind spot that a lot of us high-information activists have. We don't always realize that the average activist on our side isn't necessarily well informed or politically adept, just concerned and motivated. A lot of field stuff involves using scripts and paper lists and handing out literature because the median volunteer (especially in off-years) isn't a 20-something techie who posts on high-quality political discussion boards. The key thing that gets someone to volunteer isn't intelligence or being well-informed, it's caring about their community. If we want to respect and honor their concern and their willingness to offer us their time, we need to make sure we design field programs that they can participate in easily and we welcome them without being patronizing so that we can lure them back. If a program takes 45 minutes to train for out of a two hour shift, folks will feel like they wasted their time and not come back. If a program is too complex or requires too much political knowledge to do effectively, folks might not come back because they don't like feeling stupid or struggling. I agree that the current system is kinda impersonal and that we need to improve it, but "actual persuasion" is hard - most of the time on a persuasion call you're pulling teeth to get the guy to say what issues he finds important, and it's difficult for the average volunteer to add much personal knowledge to that beyond the talking points. Like I can have a conversation with a voter about Israel/Palestine or Ebola (not on the talking points handout) which somewhat placates them without saying anything that could hurt the campaign, but I know the candidate personally and follow issues closely. Or I can explain to a voter how the latest "gaffe" was taken ridiculously out of context and how our candidate actually agrees with her, but most can't do that off the top of their heads (and shouldn't be expected to). Personally, I think the thing we need to go back to isn't the issue-based persuasion but the personal story/connecting on values sort of stuff they tried in 2012. Jackson Taus fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Nov 18, 2014 |
# ? Nov 18, 2014 16:20 |
It's finally been called. We lost by less than 1%.
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# ? Nov 20, 2014 01:10 |
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Illegal Carrot posted:It's finally been called. We lost by less than 1%. RECOUNT THAT BITCH!
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# ? Nov 20, 2014 01:23 |
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The tag team of first blaming apathetic voters for not volunteering, and then reaming volunteers for not working harder than paid staff was really funny to read, and a great microcosm of why no one wants to vote Dem
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# ? Nov 21, 2014 17:58 |
Arnold of Soissons posted:The tag team of first blaming apathetic voters for not volunteering, and then reaming volunteers for not working harder than paid staff was really funny to read, and a great microcosm of why no one wants to vote Dem Eh, this is a lounge thread, so it's inherently prone to people venting and complaining after they get home from a long day at work. Still, no one is complaining about volunteers not working as hard as paid staff, so I don't know what you're on about. Anyways, post-mortem on the Ose / Bera race coming soon.
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# ? Nov 21, 2014 19:08 |
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Arnold of Soissons posted:The tag team of first blaming apathetic voters for not volunteering, and then reaming volunteers for not working harder than paid staff was really funny to read, and a great microcosm of why no one wants to vote Dem Can you be more specific about who is reaming volunteers for not working harder than paid staff? If that was how I came across, I apologize for being unclear. I'm grateful for everyone who volunteers to do stuff like voter contact or LTEs or whatever, I was just trying to explain that a lot of the way those programs are currently set up is so that anyone who volunteers can do them, as opposed to a hypothetical persuasion program that requires you to basically be as smart as the DCM (as some have unknowingly suggested). I'm grateful for every volunteer we get to do voter contact or to host fundraisers or to help spread the word in similar groups. I'm annoyed at folks who think that putting up a yard sign makes them the MVP of the campaign, and I'm frustrated by folks who think that "spend 20 minutes talking the field staff's ears off about something he read on DailyKos" or giving the Staging Location Director some uninsightful "how to run a campaign" advice when he's trying to enter data is a productive use of anyone's time, but I'm still generally polite to them. I also don't really think it's possible for a volunteer to work harder than paid staff - field staff put in 12+ hours a day, everyday for months. Maybe the finance person sleeps in every once in a while or something, but I know firsthand that the political and media and CM folks put in ridiculous hours as well. Like you couldn't put in as many hours as they do and hold down another paying job.
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# ? Nov 24, 2014 01:41 |
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Jackson Taus posted:The problem is that the average actual volunteer has an IQ of 100 who (at best) watches MSNBC/CNN regularly. They signed up for a two-hour shift and may or may not come back. In that context, you can't really afford to take too long training then or you won't get any actual voter-contacting done. I agree with you that the current system sucks though. I think we do need to review the idea that, in a world where we're spending hundreds of millions on field, we still need volunteer labor. That said, certain kinds of persuasion - centering on values, rather than specific issues - can be very effective. It also doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge of the issues.
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# ? Nov 30, 2014 08:25 |
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Concerned Citizen posted:I think we do need to review the idea that, in a world where we're spending hundreds of millions on field, we still need volunteer labor. That said, certain kinds of persuasion - centering on values, rather than specific issues - can be very effective. It also doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge of the issues. Maybe you can work the math on that from a numbers perspective but I think that as you add more and more staffers, you're going to wind up with staffers who are more and more foreign to the area and less and less dedicated to the cause. Right now there's an oversupply of folks who are politically passionate enough to work lovely hours for crap pay in the field. But if you're talking about doubling or tripling the number of FOs, you'll have a hard time doing that and still getting folks who'll be eager to pull 80 hour weeks and passionate enough about the cause to really sell it well. FOs who are from the same region and whose passion shines through in what they do are great, but there's not enough of them and down that slope lies $10/hour paid door-knockers who don't give a poo poo. If you want to talk about connecting on values and showing their passion, you're going to find a lot more of that in volunteers than in many paid canvassers. Also, while it might be the case that statewides have the budget to move extra hundreds of thousands or millions into field, 95% of the races in this country don't. A state legislative race can't do that, and many Congressional races probably can't do that very easily. Not that we necessarily need to have the same campaign structure for US Senator and Board of Supervisors, but I don't think you can easily write off volunteer labor.
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# ? Dec 1, 2014 22:48 |
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Jackson Taus posted:Right now there's an oversupply of folks who are politically passionate enough to work lovely hours for crap pay in the field. quote:But if you're talking about doubling or tripling the number of FOs, you'll have a hard time doing that and still getting folks who'll be eager to pull 80 hour weeks and passionate enough about the cause to really sell it well. FOs who are from the same region and whose passion shines through in what they do are great, but there's not enough of them and down that slope lies $10/hour paid door-knockers who don't give a poo poo. If you want to talk about connecting on values and showing their passion, you're going to find a lot more of that in volunteers than in many paid canvassers. Volunteers may be more passionate than a typical paid canvasser, but that doesn't mean their values or the volunteer themselves neccessarily are the right ones to connect to the voters they're talking to. Democratic campaign volunteers tend to be a lot whiter, and a lot richer, than the average Democratic voter that you're trying to GOTV, or the swing voter you're trying to persuade. It is a simple matter of who can afford to volunteer their time. There is no reason why someone can't care about the candidate or cause and also be paid. quote:Also, while it might be the case that statewides have the budget to move extra hundreds of thousands or millions into field, 95% of the races in this country don't. A state legislative race can't do that, and many Congressional races probably can't do that very easily. Not that we necessarily need to have the same campaign structure for US Senator and Board of Supervisors, but I don't think you can easily write off volunteer labor. The main issue is there needs to be much more adaptation regarding the type of field models used. There is no reason to think the fairly standarized 80~ hour 7 day a week field organizer model that is built around FOs creating and building a volunteer base is the most effective form of field on all races. I don't think you "write off" volunteer labor so to speak, most races probably need a hybrid, but the degree to which people within field prize volunteer voter contact over paid voter contact may be preventing more effective field programs. G-Hawk fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Dec 2, 2014 |
# ? Dec 1, 2014 23:54 |
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I'm wondering why cold calling and door to door are so effective in campaigns, compared to marketing other things? Toyota doesn't knock on my door to try and sell me a car, Walmart doesn't call people to let them know about Black Friday sales, they use other ways of reaching people. What makes political campaigns different?
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# ? Dec 2, 2014 00:06 |
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Jackson Taus posted:FOs who are from the same region and whose passion shines through in what they do are great, but there's not enough of them and down that slope lies $10/hour paid door-knockers who don't give a poo poo. If you want to talk about connecting on values and showing their passion, you're going to find a lot more of that in volunteers than in many paid canvassers. Paid canvass is sort of my jam, and this statement above is only true if you hire a field director who is lazy and sucks. If you do it right, you can absolutely get your canvassers to be as bought-in and passionate as volunteers are. The problem is that so many paid canvass programs hire fifty people at 10 bucks an hour, give them a map and a stack of lit and say "have at it." But if you're willing to take the time to train your people properly (and it's not easy, it takes a lot of in-the-field training, which most programs ignore completely), you'll end up with a door knocking army who are passionate, motivated, reliable, and can answer questions from voters better than a volunteer can. And it's much easier to control, since your canvassers are accountable for their hours, their knocks, their pledge cards, vote by mail requests or whatever, whereas volunteer programs are pretty much a crap shoot, especially when it comes to message discipline. I love and respect people who volunteer, I think they're goddamn incredible. But you get what you pay for.
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# ? Dec 2, 2014 17:12 |
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Concerned Citizen posted:I think we do need to review the idea that, in a world where we're spending hundreds of millions on field, we still need volunteer labor. That said, certain kinds of persuasion - centering on values, rather than specific issues - can be very effective. It also doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge of the issues. No reason to pay people willing to work for free unless you need more people than there are volunteers or if paying them produces a better result than using the money towards other goals. Usually for the low skill stuff at the bottom it doesn't.
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# ? Dec 2, 2014 18:32 |
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tsa posted:No reason to pay people willing to work for free unless you need more people than there are volunteers or if paying them produces a better result than using the money towards other goals. Usually for the low skill stuff at the bottom it doesn't. Most campaigns need more people than there are volunteers, and paying them can certainly produce a better result. Calling persuasion low level skill dismisses recent research suggesting that the degree to which quality of the contact matters is much more than previously thought. The amount of training you need to invest in someone to get them to be really good at it is very difficult to do in the typical low time commitment volunteer while also producing enough actual time spent on contacts. Modern voter contact has been studied enough that higher quality voter contact is worth the money.
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# ? Dec 2, 2014 20:16 |
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Well of course you find the people good at it and pay them, I never said anything about good persuasion being a low level skill. It's basically not that much different from charities. tsa fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Dec 2, 2014 |
# ? Dec 2, 2014 21:00 |
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G-Hawk posted:On what planet is this true? During off years, yeah, but in even years every campaign I know of is practically begging people to FO and will basically take warm bodies Maybe Virginia has a surplus of staffers living here because we've got elections every year and we're right next to DC. But an oversupply of recent college grads willing to work long hours is one of the explanations for why campaigns get away with paying jack-poo poo to staffers. G-Hawk posted:I'd question the model that we currently have where people are expected to work such long hours for such low pay. Most of the hours are unneccessary at best, every fo spends a bunch of the morning and afternoon not doing much. And the money exists to pay more. Yeah, if it was prioritized we could definitely reduce the stress on FOs without seriously impacting campaign quality. Cutting out those hour-long nightly circlejerk-calls would probably be a good start. G-Hawk posted:Volunteers may be more passionate than a typical paid canvasser, but that doesn't mean their values or the volunteer themselves neccessarily are the right ones to connect to the voters they're talking to. Democratic campaign volunteers tend to be a lot whiter, and a lot richer, than the average Democratic voter that you're trying to GOTV, or the swing voter you're trying to persuade. It is a simple matter of who can afford to volunteer their time. This is a good point I hadn't considered, but to a large degree paid staff has a similar problem - they're disproportionately recent college grads. G-Hawk posted:There is no reason why someone can't care about the candidate or cause and also be paid. That's not what I'm saying, but I'm suggesting there aren't enough folks out there who are passionate and looking for a field job to fill 2-4x as many field slots. If right now we're "basically tak[ing] warm bodies" where are these additional passionate paid-folks gonna come from? Unless you're suggesting just mostly paid-time folks who work evenings mostly or something, that could work.
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# ? Dec 2, 2014 22:29 |
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Jackson Taus posted:Maybe Virginia has a surplus of staffers living here because we've got elections every year and we're right next to DC. But an oversupply of recent college grads willing to work long hours is one of the explanations for why campaigns get away with paying jack-poo poo to staffers. quote:Yeah, if it was prioritized we could definitely reduce the stress on FOs without seriously impacting campaign quality. Cutting out those hour-long nightly circlejerk-calls would probably be a good start. quote:This is a good point I hadn't considered, but to a large degree paid staff has a similar problem - they're disproportionately recent college grads. I speak from experience here, I've managed a good amount of FOs(and organized myself) and they probably work 20+ hours a week less than average FOs and get more done. That isn't to say there is a one size fits all model, there isn't, but the current way the democratic party collectively does field is incredibly short sighted, impractical, and inefficient. Its a campaign culture issue too, where many people did that FO model and see it as being more dedicated or harder working to be in an office until midnight when it really isn't helpful 99% of the time.
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# ? Dec 2, 2014 22:45 |
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# ? May 11, 2024 12:34 |
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G-Hawk posted:the current way the democratic party collectively does literally anything is incredibly short sighted, impractical, and inefficient. Just got back from a State Party meeting. Fixed that for you.
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# ? Dec 7, 2014 00:19 |