How Things Work for Dummies

Some dumb dumb in my timeline on BlueSky had the ultimate “checkmate” burn against Kat Abughazaleh, at least in their own minds. When Abughazaleh announced, she said that she wouldn’t use consultants (obviously meaning old school DC consultants), spend all her money on TV ads, etc. Basically, she named all of the issues that we complain about on this blog. Then someone looked on her FEC filing and noticed that - gasp! - she paid a consultant and spent a bunch of money on online advertising. Here’s the post:

Some other clueless doofus in the replies to this post lamented that Abughazaleh’s campaign, like other progressives, were “allergic to TV ads.”

This is the kind of thing that really pisses me off.

First, Abughazaleh is running in a fucking primary. She’s carving out a spot, and the theory of her campaign is that she can energize young people to vote for her and win. So, of fucking course she doesn’t spend a penny on TV ads. Young people don’t watch TV ads. Shit, I’m 62 god damned years old and I don’t watch TV ads. So, digital advertising makes a lot of sense for her campaign.

Second, consultants. Since I am on Abughazaleh’s mailing list, I am here to tell you that she might be employing consultants, but not the ones who advise Democrats to turn their campaign messaging into lumpy mashed potatoes topped with runny gravy. Her consultants are almost certainly digital advertising consultants because digital advertising is really, really hard. It’s easy to waste immense amounts of money on it with zero results. So the consultants use their experience to advise on where to advertise, what the ad should look like, and how attribution for the ad should be set up so the campaign can figure out which ads are working. Again, hard. Every client I have who does digital advertising uses consultants. The real shame here would be if Abughazaleh were managing her own ads.

This is how “politically engaged” Democrats obliterate their young. “You’re not doing it right” where “right” is how we’ve been doing it for umpteen fucking years of failure.

Related to this, I had a shocking moment today when, while waiting for the cable people at my dad’s house, he retrieved his mail. He had a 6 inch stack of at least a dozen direct mail Democratic political appeals. Mary Peltola, Tammy Duckworth, Adam Schiff and many other big names were sending thick envelopes of appeals. I’m guessing each one of those mailings represented at least $1 of expenditure. Plus, if he did happen to donate to someone, the direct mail company would skim off god knows how much of the donation. Dad mentioned that when I was looking through the mail pile, aghast. He knows the score.

Is this what we want? To snipe and complain at a candidate who’s trying a new way to get attention, and just fucking ignore the wasteful fundraising done by “good” Democrats?

This gets to what Kay says in the comments frequently: the inability of a certain kind of Democrat to have a real out-in-the-open fight. If you don’t like Kat Abughazaleh, or AOC, or Ilhan Omar or Bernie Sanders, there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you have a real reason. Tell us what you don’t like about their positions. Explain their corruption. But it’s never that — it’s a fear that the precious status quo will be disrupted.

It’s like criticizing Neko Case for writing crazy good love songs with crazy lyrics. Can’t everyone just sing standards? Is she really doing anything that Gershwin, Rogers and Hart or Irving Berlin didn’t do? Aren’t their songs good enough? Why must we have all of this newness? It’s the eternal bleat of status quo conservative, and it’s a fucking weight around the party’s neck.