Why have deadlocked polls tilted towards Elizabeth Warren?
Hard to know. Many moving parts. But a defining aspect has been:
a. Heavy ad buy seems to coincide with down-tick in Brown numbers.
b. Without Superpac money to buy negative ads, Brown’s “I approved this ad” runs several times a day. No distance. No nice guy. Erosion in likability. Likability was top asset. I wonder if there’s a causal link.
c. Her success raising $ from many donors nationally can’t be counterbalanced by a few single large donors in a Superpac.
Do you think Brown regrets People’s Pledge?
Please share widely!
wondering if outside money would have made a difference. It wasn’t too long ago that I was reading here that the Pledge was hurting Warren.
That aside, it is plausible that Brown’s going too negative has harmed Brown’s likability and thus his favorabilities, since his main asset was his image as a nice bipartisan guy.
Would it have been better for the Brown campaign to have outsiders doing that for him? I am not sure that a flood of hard-right money would necessarily help sway voters in Massachusetts any more than a flood of progressive money bashing a conservative would necessarily help a candidate in South Carolina. There’s a high risk of energizing the much larger base for the opponent. Seems like it might be more effective someplace like Ohio — and even there, Sherrod Brown appears to be withstanding the assault.
Plus in this case, being tied to conservative Republican groups even tangentially would drive home the point that Brown is being backed by the conservative Republican establishment, not just Bill Weld.
that the People’s Pledge would ultimately benefit Warren by forcing Brown into the difficult dilemma of not attacking Warren at all, or attacking and sacrificing his biggest asset. Frankly, I’m amazed that he has gone all-in on the latter strategy. I guess we’ll see if he knows better than the rest of us, who are watching with awe as his favorables plummet.
People aren’t familiar with the technicalities of the People’s Pledge and getting upset over the phone calls they are receiving which are nonetheless legitimate. It seems like these calls are mostly coming from pro-Brown organizations.
You don’t hire the guys he’s hired and not go all-in on spiteful trash.
…that the People’s Pledge DID include mailings and calls. I’ve been called multiple times by Crossroads and America360 has a series of mailings on the Warren is hiding something about her legal work theme.
People are unaware that it didn’t include that. The fact anyone is getting these calls is backfiring because of the appearance that People’s Pledge is being broken (by Brown).
Will the People’s Pledge last? Assume that it is hurting Brown. Could it then be in his interest to use something as a pretext to back out of the Pledge?
http://www.redmassgroup.com/diary/15847/barack-obama-campaign-violates-peoples-pledge
“Obama/Warren have violated the People’s Pledge, thus I no longer feel obligated to it…”
If that violation was indeed a violation, it was a pretty small one (Facebook ads don’t cost much), and I hope and assume that the Warren campaign will duly pay up. That’s surely not an excuse for Brown to open the door to Karl Rove. Brown made a big deal out of this pledge being his idea in the first place (that’s arguable, but he certainly tried to take credit). If he backs out, he’ll look even more desperate than he does right now.
Does it mean that the Democratic and Republican parties can’t run ads either, or just third-party outside groups?
…but it seems like a stretch to make much of it. The point and spirit of the pledge was to keep those shady independent superPACs from carpetbombing us with nastiness. IMO, an endorsement from the President or other party leader should not count. Maybe that was the letter of the agreement, but I’m much more upset by the calls and mailings I mentioned above. To be clear, the distinction for me is not partisan, but rather the nature of the message and source.
My understanding is the parties are in fact covered, but I have disagreed all along that they should have been included. It is after all the job of the NRSC and DSCC to elect their parties’ candidates to the Senate.
I guess it depends whether the point was, as you said, to keep third-party independent organizations out who don’t have to take responsibility for what’s said. If so, I wouldn’t put a political party in that category. However, if the point was to make sure that the candidates had to take personal responsibility for everything that was aired, then I guess it makes more sense to only have the campaigns themselves running ads.
I think that second interpretation hurts Warren more than Brown. Democratic ads will help her in Massachusetts and Republican ads will just help make the point that yes, Scott Brown is in fact a Republican.
In any case, it’s a shame it doesn’t cover robocalls and mailings; but given the robocalls and mailings we’re receiving, I’m grateful for the Pledge at all for keeping that stuff off the airwaves.
And they should be. 🙂 Their money is far better spent on GOTV.
Just got a robocall for Warren (someone here is a registered independent) from what appeared to be the Women’s Vote superpac. The background on the PAC is here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/women-vote-super-pac-female-mega-donors_n_1920518.html
I guess the fact the peoples pledge does not include robocalls explains why we still got this call.
I have to say that the content of the call was a bit too flip and derisive of Brown to appeal to someone who is on the fence. The PAC that is doing this should revise the call because it might turn people to vote for Brown. The call was framed as “Let’s play jeopardy.” Anyone else hear of this yet?
I got a couple of similar robocalls from the same group. I agree that they don’t seem especially effective – in my case at least, even the audio wasn’t very good.
I received an automated call showing caller ID ‘Senator Brown’ with what appeared to be the same voter ID survey they already called me about twice. But this time during the 4th quarter of the Patriots game. Not the cleverest of timing IMO.
Just like Martha Coakley, Scott Brown’s crappy campaign is going to win this for his opponent.
Scott Brown panicked and started throwing things against the wall… including his credibility.
Warren started doing well before he went full-nasty. Could he have realistically reacted to falling in the polls without sacrificing his credibility? Or has going nasty nailed the coffin on him when if he had tried to stay above board he could have had a better chance?
he ran a bad campaign. He didn’t actually say anything, neither about his record from the past 2 years, nor what he intended to do with another 6.
As a result, people listened to the candidate who actually did, presenting a clear vision for the middle class and working people.
You’re right that — by then — Scott Brown had little choice but to go negative, but the point is he only got to that point because he refused to try to articulate any kind of a vision or play up anything of relevance from his past.
If those things from the past didn’t exist, that’s only more evidence of his poor candidacy.
If Scott Brown allows the campaign to be about his record from the past two years or what he intends to do with another six, he’s toast. He knows, as does everyone else who bothers to find out, that Elizabeth Warren’s position on the issues is far more in line with Massachusetts voters than his own. He knows that any discussion about the substance of those issues will clearly reveal him as the lightweight he is, in comparison to Elizabeth Warren. He has run the only campaign he had even a prayer of winning — a campaign of vile slime borne of desperation.
I encourage all of us to keep working HARD to make Elizabeth Warren our next junior Senator. When we do so, it will be because Elizabeth Warren is far and away the best candidate — in my view, the people’s pledge is a minor factor.
Are you sure they are MEANT to benefit Warren? Anyway, the voice of the call is arrogant, condescending, and flip and the content is really obnoxious; if truly for Warren they are very very badly done. We do have one unenrolled voter here.