Yeah, that’s right. I got retweeted by Tapper. What’s up now?
I’ve had to wear pants waaaaaay too much this week, but it’s only because it’s the grand finale of the Brodigan “Surreal American Hero 2013″ Tour. I’ll be appearing in Neuburgh, NY on 9/12-9/13, and Cincinnati, OH from 9/14-9/15. Highway run into the midnight sun, yo!
Last week, the Democrats had their convention where they booed God, threw Jerusalem under the bus, had a former president upstage the current president, tried to hide the current vice president from the prime time audience, and moved from BANK OF AMERICA STADIUM (not “Panthers Stadium” or “the big football stadium” like serious journalists who would never just repeat a Democrat talking point called it) into a small stadium because of the lack of an audience. Oh, and this the day before a jobs report where the workforce has shrunk to the smallest it’s been in over thirty years, and where over 300,000 people just stopped looking for work altogether.
So of course, this means that serious, not at all biased news outlets needed to work harder to distract people from anything that might be bad for President Obama. One of the ways they tried to do this was the “news” that the Romney campaign was pulling out of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
To sum up, a Detroit news paper posted an article with the headline “Romney Pulls Out of MI, PA, and WI,” even though the article said nothing of the sort (it just said they haven’t gone up on TV yet.) Hyper-partisan Leftist blog Talking Points Memo pushed this out on Twitter (knowing most people would go by just the headline), which of course was picked up by all of the afore-mentioned serious, not at all biased news outlets.
The Romney camp responded with these statistics:
Michigan
21 offices across the state
More than 1 million voter contacts
Sixth most voter contacts in the country
Knocked on more than 100,000 doorsPennsylvania
23 offices across Pennsylvania
More voter contacts last week than any other week this cycleore than 1.5 million voter contacts
Fourth most voter contacts in the country
Knocked on more than 200,000 doorsWisconsin (as of July 1)
Consistently in the top five states for number of voter contacts
500,000th volunteer phone call made this week
Will knock on the 150,000th door this week
20 “victory centers,” or campaign offices
More than 4 million voter contacts during the recall
All stats that a serious news outlet (that isn’t biased like those lying liars who lie at Fox News) would have FACT-CHECKED before implying a political campaign is pulling out of a state, no? That’s a rhetorical question.
As much as we all love social media, it is just as valuable to turn off the computer, get outside your bubble, and hit the street actually talk to voters. I was think about it this past weekend as I traveled to the O.C. to walk with New York Assembly candidate (and my boy) Brian Maher, and took a peek at their voter outreach efforts. Making the phone calls, handing out the lit, actually getting the people to the polls . . . that’s more often than not where races are won. At the very least, it should be where you focus while saving your money for more expensive media outlets . . . like Florida.
The trick is finding a way to replicate effective boots-on-the-ground, retail politic campaigning on social media. People who get paid a lot more than I do have it figured out on national races. I’m trying to figure it out on more local races. Hopefully by Election Day I’ll have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.
All that being said, I wish the GOP would stop with Pennyslvania. Just . . . stop it.
Here’s your song of the week…