by A. Shaw
Rebecca Nelson’s piece, posted below, titled “This is How Bernie Sanders Will Run For President,” is perhaps the best piece published anywhere, so far, on the mechanics of the Sanders’ campaign.
Among other things, mechanics often include:
(1) Planning and budgeting ………… (6) Paid media
(2) Fundraising………………………….. (7) Candidate activity
(3) Targeting …………………………….. (8) Opposition research
(4)Â Voter contact ………………………. (9) Volunteers
(5)Â Free media ………………………….(10) GOTV
Let’s look at the Sanders’ campaign, as it is presented in Nelson’s piece, from the point of view of each of these subjects.
As for planning and budgeting, Tad Devine, the top political consultant for the campaign, didn’t say, during the interview with Nelson, anything about budgeting. As for planning, Devine shows that the campaign has come a long way in working out a plan for victory. Practice will show whether the plan is any good.
As for fundraising, Devine was completely silent. At this time, the Sanders’ campaign is widely believed to have something like $4.5 million in its bank accounts. The campaign does not accept contributions from big corporations or from super-rich individuals like the Koch brothers.
As for targeting, again, Devine was silent. But of course the campaign is during a lot of work on targeting.
As for voter contact, Devine says it is one of three “key elements” — “extensive research, sustained voter contact, and technology for mobilization.” Devine emphasizes “sustained” voter contact rather than just contact. Devine didn’t say how the campaign will “sustain” contact, but he hints that the
“the technology for mobilization” is also a technology for contact. This technology enables the campaign to initiate communication with targeted voters by accessing their cell phones, laptops, tablets, etc.
As for free media, Devine seems to think that free media will be obtained chiefly by the candidate’s style and by the campaign through the use of leaks to the press. The Clinton campaign already leaks profusely.
Nelson writes “Devine got a kick out of Sanders’s direct, unequivocating style.” Devine believes the mass of the electorate will get a kick out of “Sanders’s direct, unequivocating style” after the electorate contrasts his style with the indirect and equivocating style of Hillary Clinton.
Devine doesn’t seem to think much of spontaneous grassroots efforts to generate free media coverage or support for the candidate whether the efforts are by volunteers working with the campaign or by independent supporters. On the Left, such efforts are rare, but on the Right, they’re common.
As for paid media, this is Devine’s expertise.
He threw this out there as something he may or may not push in paid media.
“My view of campaigns is, you get in them to win,” he said. Extensive research, sustained voter contact, and technology for mobilization are key elements of that. “You bring all those things together, not to make a statement, but to make a difference in people’s lives. And the way you do that is not “Â just seeking political office, but winning political office.”
In other words, it is not about “just seeking political office, but winning political office. It’s not to make a statement, but to win.
On the Left, some people believe the aim is to lose and to flaunt the candidate’s political independence from bourgeois parties, especially the DP. So, to them, a statement is more important than a win.
As for candidate activity, Devine is specific about Bernie’s role.
“Devine also repeatedly stressed the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire, the two key early-primary states,” Rebecca Nelson writes.
“The way you get over that skepticism and not be considered a fringe candidate,” Devine said, “is by putting together the resources that you need to communicate a message, putting together a campaign mechanism that people can look at and can see that there is the capacity to run a serious campaign on the ground in the early states, through mass media, and through the new tools of politics which President Obama has succeeded so well with in two presidential campaigns,” Devine says.
Again, these “new tools” are the technologies of voter contact and mobilization.
“Though unofficial 2016 campaigning has already started for many contenders—including Sanders, who has paid visits to early-primary states—voters across the country won’t have years to personally get to know the senator. That’s why Devine would hammer the early primary states—Iowa and New Hampshire, in particular—with ‘hundreds of town-hall meetings, a format that he will be extremely comfortable in,’ ” Nelson writes.
,
As for opposition research, Devine didn’t say one word, suggesting a clean campaign.
As for volunteers, Devine talks about “technology” for mobilization, but volunteers aren’t exactly unmobilized technology.
Devine didn’t have much to say about volunteers, because the campaign must first attract and train volunteers before it decides how to use them. Devine teaches campaign management at Harvard University as well as at other schools. He has explored the potentiality of trained and untrained volunteers in line with the tenets of the Chicago school of politics — i.e., Harold Washington, Luis Gutierrez, Rudy Lozano, Jesse Jackson, David Axelrod, Barack Obama, etc.
Devine doesn’t seem keen on the idea of a key role for volunteers, trained by the campaign, in this race.
This is too bad because the Tea Bags, like the Chicago school, are real good at attracting volunteers, training them to do key work, and deploying them in key positions.
Devine should consider hiring one of his best and brightest at Harvard or some other school where Devine teaches, to handle volunteers.
Somebody with a lot of go.
As for GOTV, Devine didn’t say anything.
                                                                 CONCLUSION
Devine is on the right track.
