Thursday, November 16, 2006

Stop Talking Out Your Asses

Excuse me for dusting off the remains of my inner social scientist for a moment, but with all the posturing by the bigwhigs about what worked and what didn't, blah blah blah, how about some actual, you know, data. Or at least information. I don't really know what Howard Dean's "50 state strategy" translated into in practical terms for the election. I don't know how many hired field organizers there were. Or volunteers. I don't know if campaigns which had a greater ground presence did well, or if knocking on doors and dragging people to the polls is a waste of time. Maybe throwing an extra million into TV ads in Duckworth's race, as Rahmbo wanted, would have worked. Or not.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that most of the talk about all this campaign stuff hasn't actually taken a hard look at what actually happened.

I know I prefer a world were TV advertising becomes less effective, where resources are channeled into hiring people and building local infrastructure and networks, where the ground war replaces the air war. That appeals to me. But I don't actually know if that's what works. Some people should figure it out.