|
Hey folks, I am Mooseontheloose and I have been working in American politics and policy for 8 years now. I had done these threads for a few years and I took last year off but I figured what's been going on nationally, maybe I should revive this thread. Some background: I have been on Senate, House, city council, and state house campaigns in various roles for Democrats. Currently, I am getting my policy degree and have been on the official side of a politician's office. I am by no means an expert or David Axelrod but I have some knowledge on this whole sector. I am not the end all or be all of this subject and my word should be taken with grains of salt. Some questions off the bat: 1. Is politics/policy worth it? Given the election of President Trump it is easy to be disheartened about the American system and politics and policy. But I am a true believer in one sense, I truly believe that small movements can grow into bigger ones and create positive change. It's not easy, it's not always fun, but it's worth it when you are able to achieve in a small amount of success. Policy is especially worth it to study and learn. Learning how to work/change the system is CRITICAL in passing any policy and understanding WHY policy is put in place gives amazing context for why certain thing are the way they are. 2. Seriously though....look at 2017 Yaaaah. I know. There is hope to be had though. I think the election of President Trump awoke a lot of millennials that you actually have to show up and there are some signs that Gen X and Millennials are way more liberal than boomers. And again, the system only works if we get more people to participate. Inaction only benefits those in power and especially conservative movements. They bank on your apathy. 3. Should I join a BIG SENATE RACE vs. tiny state house/city council race? So big races you get to meet a lot of people quickly and if you work hard you meet a lot of good staff people who know other people. The issue is that you most likely have to volunteer to even have a shot of being noticed or to meet enough people to make it worth it. Additionally, jobs are tough to come by unless you are in the ground floor. Smaller races allow you to have more control and make a name for yourself quickly but limits the amount of people who notice your work. You are more likely to get a job because the pool of people is smaller and should this person go some place, you are on the ground floor. Also, you have a good idea of operations. 4. I want to be the next Josh Lyman/Olivia Pope/fictional operative right away... Ok. Full stop unless you are Bush Clinton Kennedy the VII, these jobs are rare and hard to get to and even those who have connections are thrown into the minor leagues to make sure they are ready. You either have to eat/breathe/sleep politics AND participate on national level (meaning nationally recognized not Presidential) fairly young. It's super hard to skip steps in politics and while there are stories here and there about some 25 year old wunderkin, look at the last few Presidents and their inner circles. Fairly older people, who have been around for awhile. Don't expect quick success, be surprised when you achieve it. 5. Where can I find campaign jobs? Jobsthatareleft, Mantos List, HillZoo are your best bets. Find local activists groups or consultants, send in your resume. Also, both parties (Democrats/Republicans) congressional and senate election committees have resume banks. 6. Where can I find policy jobs? I wish I knew, if you can show me let me know! 7. I am a Republican/in the business can I contribute to this thread? Please do! 8. Can you help me get a job? It's hard to recommend randos on the internet. I am happy to talk about opportunities and I think it's best to talk over PM. 9. I AM GONNA FIND YOU AND RUIN YOUR CAREER uh...Please don't doxx anyone in this thread. Politics is a EXTREMELY fickle business and exposing people on an internet forum because you disagree with them or hate politics could be really harmful to people's livelihoods. I know I take that risk posting here but I really believe in demystifying politics. 10. Lawn sings joke goes here. Alternative titles for this thread: How I learned to hate lawn signs and their waste of resources.
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2018 17:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 15:22 |
|
|
N. Senada posted:what's your day-to-day like? Do you have a 9-5 arrangement or is it always crazy hours all the time? Right now, it's mostly 9 to 5 with the occasional local night time meeting to go to. The day is spent on the phone talking to people or writing letters. Obviously this depends on the district and what part of the district you work at and what type of community you work in. Your day to day is answering phones and doing constituent casework and meetings with local groups, local governments, activists, ect. Locally, you are unsticking bureaucratic issues for your constituents usually. While this sounds kinda boring, remember these local meetings are pretty invaluable to reelection because local groups give you an idea of what your constituents are concerned about and where you get your specialty areas. Still, local TENDS to be quieter than DC. DC grind can be anywhere from 6 am to 9 pm or later depending on votes and committee hearings. August and the work weeks tend to be a reprieve from this schedule but still, it can grind you down. For campaigns, you tend to start of as a 10 to 6 or 10 to 8 (with occasional late night meetings) but you could be doing 12 to 14 hour days 7 days the week closer to election day. These jobs are basically you in an office all day making phone calls. Mooseontheloose fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jan 5, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2018 21:53
|
|
|
Bumping in case people missed this the first time.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2018 18:33
|
|
|
quote:How is a political campaign typically organized? Candidate is obviously at the top of the chart but taking that aside. Managers and Consultants Campaign Manager - runs the day to the day of the campaign, staffs campaign, decides how to spend campaign funds, executes the strategy. Develops the strategy with... Consultants - they help with polling, strategy, creating mailers, creating ads, opposition research. directors Finance Director - Responsible for creating and executing fundraisers and keeping up relations with high level donors. Creates the fundraising schedule. Press/Communications Director - Responsible for press strategy, communication strategy, prepping the candidate for debates, creating talking points for you and against the other person. Field Director - Responsible for executing voter contact plans, creating a voter contact plan, creating phone banks/door knock activities. Assistants and Organizers Finance Assistant - Support staff for finance director. In the room to make sure the candidate is making their finance calls, chasing down finance leads. Press/Comm Assistant - Support for press director, drafts press releases, finds clips on the other candidate Field Organizer - Runs the campaigns offices, makes volunteer calls, runs phone banks, canvasses, and visibility. This is probably the most basic structure and all positions fit into these boxes, mostly. Lingo E-Day: Election Day GOTV: Get out the vote Whacktivists: Far out activists who don't want to do anything to help Tick-Tock: A 24 hour plan for a candidate on particular packed days. Oppo Research: Opposition Research Baronash posted:Maybe this is too broad of a question, but what does the 2 year timeline of a campaign worker look like? What exactly is happening from Election Day 2016 to Election Day 2018? Is there a campaign wind-down period? Are people relocating for special elections? That sort of thing. Campaigns are rarely fully staffed for 2 to 6 years with one exception, fundraising which is typically done all year. Your consultants and key staff are keeping track of things in district and keeping tabs on the feel of the voters/district. Maybe if you are concerned about what you are seeing, you would do a poll in the fall or early 2018 to get an idea of where you are. Typically, I would say campaigns are starting to form now. So, what type of campaign do you want to do, what opponents do you have, what do you have to do to get on the ballot, where to look to hire. This is mostly done with the consultants and the candidate and maybe some high level staff. Campaign managers for national targeted and close campaigns are hired mid to late winter 2018 maybe late 2017. Fundraising staff is already in place if you are established, winter 2017. Press and field are probably hired around the some time. Spring of 2018 will be used to build volunteer capacity and work with activists and local party establishment to generate enthusiasm. Everything is essentially building to fall of 2018 where you make ID calls and then go into E-Day 2018. Mooseontheloose fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Feb 8, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2018 15:47
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:What do you think of this stinking turd of an op-ed? Is this the majority opinion among your colleagues as a whole? It seems a bit all over the place and I would say that it's complicated. I think people should run, especially if there are open seats and we should encourage people to get involved. Primaries however, are frustrating for established candidates and while it is easy to say there is nothing to worry about if you have been good to your activists, it can waste your resources for a tougher campaign coming up. Plus, divides between primaried candidate can discourage people from working. Also, while new people bring new ideas, there is a certain type of new activist who wants everything now and won't look at broader context of a situation. The only real kinda kernel truth here, for me personally, is that Hillary Clinton was ostensibly punished for doing her job correctly from people who were nascent into the national level politics. If you don't like her or her policies, fine but to come in and tell her that all her hard work made her unqualified for the job is a tough pill to swallow. She worked hard to have relationships with people in the party, she played the game, and then people decided that the rules are dumb and she was awful by playing by the rules . Does this answer the question at all?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2018 16:05
|
|
|
Kellsterik posted:About lawn signs: there were anecdotes going around during the 2016 postmortem about interested volunteers going to Clinton campaign offices asking for signs, and being turned away because they didn't bother to prepare any, and this is portrayed as a cautionary tale about data-driven campaigns. I think the professional consensus is that things like signs are a waste of resources, but do you think that not providing them can deflate interest? The problem with lawn signs is that the suck so much time from staff to gain so very little. Having a dedicated staffer to lawn signs means that they are not contacting voters. Lawn signs are only good for people who will do ABSOLUTELY not do anything else and having staff time or even volunteer time dedicated to getting signs out is usually a waste of resources. Also, at some point signs are getting stolen or its a week or two out and the time and money it will take too much time to produce them, find a person to drop them off, and then have their time used to put them in the ground or drive around a district. I think at some point, people just need to be realistic about time and money. I don't think lawn signs can deflate interest because usually the people complaining have come in last second. I did a campaign where we had the least amount of lawn signs and came in 1st by a lot.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2018 00:03
|
|
|
buglord posted:Do phone banks/door knocks work? Whats the goal of them? Is it to plant a seed for an upcoming election or are doorknockers/ callers generally striving to get a "political sale"? I imagine its a numbers game? I don't know anyone who likes being solicited with political actions such as these. But if its been going forever, it has to work? They do and there are various studies on the effect on ground campaigns. The most basic analysis of field is this: You are reminding people who are likely to vote for you to come out and vote and you are trying to target people who you think will vote for you and convince them to come out. I am not sure if this is true but we are told someone is 10x more likely to vote for you if they get a door knock, 4x if they get a phone call. On top of that you have mailers and other methods of out reach (dear friend cards, ads, ect) so that people are so flooded with your stuff they have no choice but to remember to vote for you. Your walks packets should rarely have militant supporters for the opposition. I know targeting is a dirty word because its a connotation of triangulation. However, time is a factor in elections and wasting time with people who can't be convinced is inefficient. So normally, depending on how you do targeting might include democrats who are spotty voters, unaffiliated voters who have certain markers to vote for your candidate and who vote, and spotty voters who maybe interested in voting this year. When you are targeting that many people eventually someone will hate you. Your best strategy in this instance is to be nice, let them rant and move on and not engage and any good field organizer or director will train people to do just that. As for lessons learned the one that came to mind is that politicians are people too. Far too often people think of politicians as these inaccessible people who are disconnected from their humanity and I have rarely found that to be the case.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2018 19:03
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Going by this answer I'm guessing you've probably spent some time thinking about this next one. First, Republican candidates tend to be people who have played the game at least somewhat. Last election seems to be a complete flip on expectation and I think we can admit there is some latent sexism in the United States that manifest itself during the election. And yes, there are issues with the Democratic party and especially around bringing in new members. However, I don't think people realized how hard it is to get to a high level in politics without some game playing. To your final point, yes trump was completely new and outside of politics and look at it what it got us. Someone who has no clue as to what he is doing. He doesn't know about the politics, he doesn't care about the policy, and is essentially trying to grift his way out. I am not sure if campaign workers see it that way. But what I will say is that in 2010 it was harder to get people to work for Democrats because Obama wasn't at the top of the ticket and people didn't want to work. The ACA, while not perfect, essentially cost 60 Democrats their jobs because volunteers were hard to come by and it felt like the left abandoned some candidates for purity tests. My hope is that the demographic shift that is coming that people stay more engaged than they have in the past. I do think there will be more of an idea to keep engaging more but we'll see.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2018 22:16
|
|
|
buglord posted:How does the morale of the campaign workers fluctuate with news? I imagine there were some very strong emotions at the close of November 2016. Did anything come of it long term? Maybe an explosion of new volunteers, or more donations that pour in with each monthly fiasco the Trump admin creates? I see D&D and C-SPAM go from elated to severely morose depending on the latest political developments. I imagine people in your group are a bit more centered, having rode political waves for quite some time? I assume the public is more receptive of campaigning efforts when dems are out of power? Every minor victory is the greatest victory and every minor negative thing gets blown way out of proportion. A good campaign manager knows how to temper morale and can use these fluctuations to motivate more or creatively use it to get more money. Communication to staff is important in this case because if you see a poll that takes a 10 point swing, lower level staff might freak out without having been given context.When I ran a city council campaign all the numbers were on our side but some minor city council vote came in at the last second and created some negative buzz. I was worried that it may hurt the calculus but at some point the voters are going to make a decision and there isn't much you can do about it. So, yah we ride the wave like everyone else but you also see things that other people don't see or know that the media is trying to make things look close when that's not the case. Also, NEVER ASSUME ITS EASY MODE. YOU ARE ALWAYS LOSING BY 5-10 POINTS! -All campaign staff ever
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2018 18:13
|
|
|
Stringent posted:I know I don't understand the difficulties of getting to a high level in politics, could you explain some of the nuts and bolts of what goes on there? I don't know all the exact nuts and bolts but a lot of it relationship building of all sorts. You have to work with the party leaders and the rank and file, you have to build relationships with activist and other national level organizations. You have to at least try to advance legislation or policy for some of the base or national level. And you have to have connection to some sort of fundraisers. At least, that's my interpretation.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2018 00:54
|
|
|
Josef bugman posted:I have been reading a lot of very "left" issues about the Democrats at the moment and one of the key ones being that the DNC is constantly broke because of a variety of factors (the ones like constantly having to go cap in hand to wealthy people, being under the leadership of someone who didn't actually get on with anyone and continually shoveling money to consultants instead of doing any actual work.) Would you say that is accurate or fair in your experience? Alongside that would you argue that it is possible to change a set up like the DNC or the democratic party more generally into something that is not continually focusing on being just "the lesser evil" as it were? I think its super complicated which I realize is a cop out on one hand. I think the rich people who fund the Democratic party are PROBABLY more to the left than people realize, even on economic issues. From what I have been reading Tom Perez is trying to get the party to focus MORE on funding field programs, which is good but the reason the party is constantly broke is because you do want to spend down your money cycle to cycle as it can come across as irresponsible not to make sure you are spending all your resources on getting people elected. Also remember, there is the DSCC and the DCCC which serve election functions and are distinct from the DNC itself. I don't want to turn this into (another) Hillary vs. the world thread. To call her a lesser evil is really problematic for me. Lesser evilism (to me anyways) is akin to both parties are the same and they A) clearly aren't and B) does not really look at the candidate. Sec. Clinton was a flawed candidate (as all are) but had a track record that I would say was on the whole positive for the United States and she advocated for positions that were unpopular at the time and represented something real for a lot of women. Think about what the party was able to do with 4 years of legislative control, pass a health care bill that brought 20 million people health care and a road map for reform. Financial reform and stimulus were also passed and tax increases on the rich. Anyways, people have to willing both ways I guess is my point to end lesser evil type of candidates. quote:As someone who is getting more involved in my own countries politics I feel that the systemic problems that have cropped up are not talked about but can be used as an effective way of getting round the problem of insulting people by instead making the system itself a target instead of insisting it is peoples moral failure to confront themselves that leads to their opinions. Which rules are we talking about? The party rules? I mean if I had it my way, there wouldn't be caucuses anymore and switch every state to a primary election system where Democrats and independent voters can vote. I would limit super delegates to elected members of the party on the state and federal level and elected members from the past 5 to 10 years. is that what you are driving at?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2018 21:06
|
|
|
Josef bugman posted:I do realise it is more complex than what I am laying out, this is after all a dead forum and not a policy document, however whilst I do not doubt that people donating to the democrats may be more "left-wing" I do doubt that they would ever willingly give up their own property because it represents theft from a vast number of people all over the planet. Even things that are trying to help often seem to undermine and limit what can be done by local governments. I think a secondary problem can be that it is hard to raise money for an organisation that has to be truly national in character, especially when things like the whole kerfuffle some months back with Osoff. Sometimes you lose an election. The other national election with Doug Jones in Alabama and their targeting could tell a different story. quote:She may well have had a program that was helpful to the USA, I am not going to disagree and if I had been in the USA I would have voted for her, but I think along side that presentation matters. She also was, from a foreigners perspective, kind of shite on foreign policy. Not the Russia thing, it should be noted, but a lot of her positions were very, well, bad? The Honduran Coup being the most obvious thing in that. I would not say that both parties are the same, but I would say that the democrats in particular have the problem of acting solely as antithesis. All they do, again I am foreign so do forgive my low level reading, is seemingly point at the Republicans and say "I am not that". And whilst that can be good when the "that" is defined and obvious (say after a long time with the "that") it becomes a lot lot harder to justify when you are in power because then people go "well if you aren't that then maybe the that will help!" Well, I would agree there. At the end of the day Sec. Clinton did not have a coherent message. quote:No as in the overarching and more subtle rules of how "politics is done". Is the way we understand "politics" in terms of two distinct parties and so on, are those ideas perhaps need not just of tinkering, but changing in every way? I am not someone who believes in the politics of EVERYTHING IS AWFUL WHY BOTHER? Which is where I feel that article is coming from. That type of thinking leads to inaction and only benefits those in power and especially conservative points of view. They want you to believe that nothing will change because it makes you vote less or engage less. There are DEEP problems in history but generally, I think given time and policy you can create a more equitable society.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2018 22:30
|
|
|
Bumping if people have more questions.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2018 18:51
|
|
|
Relevant article!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2018 17:05
|
|
|
Positive Optimyst posted:Hi, Moose Everything seems like you are least getting a 2010 type blue wave, maybe even bigger. Also, if you saw the VA midterms, it was the first time in 30 years baby boomers didn't get a majority of the vote share which is going to be real tough for the Republican party if that trend holds true. quote:2. How nuts have DC rents gone? Do I every have a chance of renting a studio anywhere in the District again? Don't work in DC but from what I have heard from when I was there in 2005 is...good luck.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2018 17:29
|
|
|
Positive Optimyst posted:Cheers, Moose Another way to put this is Democrats are out performing EVERY election they are in right now and by a lot.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2018 16:03
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:
This is also why targeting is so important. Knocking the right people gets you those points, knocking the wrong people gets you nothing.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2018 12:47
|
|
|
Stringent posted:You shitlords are loving awful. Could you be more specific?
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2018 13:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 15:22 |
|
|
DTaeKim posted:Hey, I've started to get involved in local politics by getting to know the candidate for state house in Indiana. We've offered to volunteer for his campaign even though he has an uphill battle in what I would consider deep red territory. Any words of advice? The more voters you contact the better. Make sure you doing lots of field and for the love god, talk to people who actually vote in local elections.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 00:24
|
|