We all know that robocalls win elections. In particular, robocalls that don’t promote the candidate you want to win, but attack his or her opponent with SCARY VOICE TONES.
OK, all sarcasm aside, has anyone else gotten a robocall from American Unity PAC? I just did, and of course, listened to the whole thing (unlike most voters who will tune out as soon as they hear the robovoice start talking politics…or maybe just when they first realize it’s a robocall of any kind).
The simple message they wanted to tell me about Ed Markey was that he voted to cut Medicare to Massachusetts by…oh, I don’t even remember the amount. Even though that was repeated like two or three times. These calls are like car commercials – you can’t remember the damn car they were advertising once the thing is done. Anyway, presumably this is in reference to the Medicare savings in the Affordable Care Act (you know, by cutting waste, fraud and abuse like doing away with the Medicare Advantage program that subsidized expensive private coverage). That they were talking about this particular vote is an assumption on my part, but a good bet.
At least American Unity PAC has the guts to say right on its home page, “Promoting and Protecting Inclusive Republicans.” Of course, there’s no donor list and very little other information on the page.
Hey, at least someone’s coming to Gomez’s rescue, right? Though obviously they didn’t study the history of the 2010 special election…when robocalls probably did a lot to lose Democrats the race.
On second thought, I hope they dump a whole lot of cash into these things.
oceandreams says
Might be marginally positive. Say, if the night before the election Democratic voters got robocalled by Bill Clinton asking them to please go to the polls tomorrow and support Ed Markey because of his strong record fighting for the middle class.
I agree strongly, though, that random PAC negative automated annoyance calls are unlikely to help the candidate being supported. In fact, a wise Republican would have not only signed the People’s Pledge but expanded it to keep out robocalls.
Trickle up says
Robocalls are wicked cheap.
lynne says
but the more of them they do for Gomez, the better for Markey. I doubt the voters would be really excited to be bombarded in the next couple weeks…
Trickle up says
but you don’t need to carpet-bomb everyone to this to become A Story that dominates a few news cycles. Pretty cheap way to do this.
(Does not seem to have worked out that way though in this case.)
lynne says
Identical call.
Um, yeah, great strategy there. I’d almost think they were pulling for Ed.
lynne says
trying to depress the vote by turning voters off. “Joe, we got another robocall again!” “Well, screw voting, I’m annoyed!”