With the 2006 election behind us, I thought I’d take a stroll through some nuggets of “conventional wisdom” regarding how campaigns should be run, and see how they fared this year.
- When you do something stupid, acknowledge your error and apologize immediately if appropriate. I’d say this one was proven TRUE — several times. John Kerry is the foremost example, since the furor over his “botched joke” was instantly quelled, after a day and a half of breathless media coverage, by his issuance of the explanation and apology that he should have issued right away. Fortunately, he issued it in time that it appears to have had no effect on the election, though the impact on his own career remains to be seen.
Another excellent example was Kerry Healey’s non-response over the “Inmates for Deval” visit to John Walsh’s home. That was as clear an example of over-zealous volunteers going way over the line as has been seen around here lately, and her failure to acknowledge immediately who they were and to express regret over their actions solidified an already-gelling image of her as someone who was not willing to own up to much of anything. For someone who liked to talk about accountability, it didn’t look very good.
Deval Patrick, too, had his gaffes in this election. His missteps on what letters he actually sent when regarding Ben LaGuer cost him — yet he did acknowledge the error fairly quickly once it was pointed out. Similarly, his failure to answer a straightforward question about the 2003 fiscal crisis was an error, and after initially resisting, he fairly quickly agreed that the question was reasonable, and he answered it. At which point the issue went away.
- You should introduce yourself to voters in a positive light before going negative on your opponent. This one was also proven TRUE. IMHO, Kerry Healey hurt herself terribly by failing to introduce a positive vision of what she wanted to do with her governorship — other than launch yet another quixotic bid for an immediate tax rollback. The frame that she came up with about a week and a half ago — that this election should be about who can make MA more affordable — would have been a terrific way for her to run (I still think Patrick wins, but it’s a much better race). But I don’t buy for a second the silly line that Tim O’Brien is now peddling that they “had only one option” which was to “go negative” immediately. Of course they had options. They made their choice, and they lost by 21 points. How much worse could the other choice have been?
- Tough primaries are bad and should be avoided at all costs. This one’s FALSE. True, the Democratic primary wasn’t as bloody as it could have been, but it was hard-fought and got nasty at times. And it had the immensely positive effects of (a) keeping the Democratic candidates on the front pages throughout the primary season, while Kerry Healey struggled to make news; and (b) toughening the eventual winner and helping prepare him for the attacks that were to come.
Even the Healey crowd is now blaming “the absence of a GOP primary campaign” as part of what led to Healey’s loss. That, of course, is laughable, since Kerry Healey herself made it very clear that Charlie Baker was not welcome in the GOP primary (she wanted Christy Mihos, but that’s only because she thought she could beat him).
Sean Healey already has cashed in more than enough of his AMG stock options to fuel a political campaign. He cashed in $13 million of options last summer, widely seen as a warning shot aimed in [Charlie] Baker’s direction….
I guess you could say she was for not having a primary opponent before she was against it.
- You’ve got to go negative yourself to combat a negative opponent. Proving this one FALSE is one of the big stories of this campaign. Frank Phillips wrote it up well, as I’ve already mentioned.
you should let surrogates run really negative ads instead of doing it yourself
general election campaigns are about money and tv ads; primaries are about grassroots and ground game
voters fib to pollsters about voting for black candidates
Dem can’t win without supporting “no new taxes” or the rollback to 5.0%
internal polls are totally unreliable
politics is a bloodsport
blogosphere is irrelevant because it’s full of moonbats who are only talking to each other
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