So Where’s Murphy?

That is to say, why has former McCain strategist Mike Murphy not yet joined John McCain’s presidential campaign? Because Kristol is talking about it, it seems like everyone else is talking about it, but nobody is talking about where Murphy has been recently.

Or where he may very well have been. That would be the Weekly Standard’s blog, where a pseudonymous contributor named Richelieu is thought to be Murphy by several writers in a position to know (or at least fairly suspect) that this is so.

This makes it all the weirder for Dean Barnett, also of the Weekly Standard, to write today at the very same blog:

In the New York Times today, Bill Kristol speculates that Mike Murphy may be about to ride in on his white steed to save the McCain campaign from itself. Maybe he’s right.

Looking through the archives, it turns out that Richelieu has not contributed a post since late June. After several months (since October 2007) of frequent posting, Richelieu’s output slowed to a crawl in mid-May and had nearly ceased altogether by early June.

Mid-May was also about the time where Obama’s nomination finally appeared to be inevitable, and early June was when Sen. Clinton finally dropped out. So did Murphy hang up his pen name just in time to be available to offer his services to McCain? It looks like we just may find out.

Update: Apparently not? Mike Murphy has signed a deal with NBC.

Online fundraising startups are a longstanding interest of Blog P.I. In our year and a half, we’ve devoted more than a few posts to the subject, including the progressive, Democrat-supporting ActBlue, the conservative, Republican-aligned newcomer ABC PAC/Rightroots, attendant security issues and flawed coverage often (but not exclusively) in the Washington Post. The last time I wrote about it, Rightroots had relaunched, and two similar Republican fundraising startups — Big Red Tent and Slatecard — were announced and on the way shortly.

Now, all three have been up for more than a month, which I think is enough time to make an early comparative assessment.

For those playing at home: Rightroots is a reboot of the ABC PAC/Rightroots slate that saw a trial run fairly late in the 2006 cycle, controlled by McCain adviser Becki Donatelli, former Giuliani Patrick Ruffini and Mike Turk, an outside adviser to the Thompson campaign. Big Red Tent is an outside-the-beltway venture by a pair of Austin, Texas web consultants Ryan Gravatt and Brad Jackson. Slatecard is the brainchild primarily of ubiquitous DC Internet guy David All and web developer Sendhil Panchadsaram (who strangely has no website that I can find).

Last weekend, I signed up for each one and made some nominal contributions. Since then, I’ve continued poking and prodding. I thought about putting together an elaborate chart comparing their features side-by-side. Perhaps in a future post I will, but for now, but I don’t think that gives as clear a picture of what I thought about them. Instead, this post collects my observations, with screen captures. It’s a long one, so I’ve tucked the rest of this post below the fold. Follow me…

I should preface all of this with a caveat: These observations are simply what I found when I visited over the past week. It’s possible there are oversights in my summary, and if there are I will update this post. In true Mystery Shopper style, I didn’t discuss my testing process with any of those involved, so this should not be taken as a fully reported piece. There are probably good explanations for many of the problems I encountered, and if they are given, I will gladly link to them in an update.

Choosing a candidate to receive my small donations was not difficult: I am not only providing outside counsel to the Fred Thompson campaign through my employer, New Media Strategies, but I am also a FDT supporter. Thompson’s consistent federalist philosophy being a large component of my enthusiasm about his candidacy, where I could, I termed my group or slate “The Frederalist Society.”

With that out of the way, here are my thoughts on each in turn, followed by a conclusion. As always, YMMV.

RIGHTROOTS

Because Rightroots is the oldest, arguably best-known and first to go live (again) this summer, that’s where I started:

• The website is very simple, and not difficult to navigate. From the main page, one can click through to “Candidates & Races” or perform a search, enter the amount of money you want to donate and proceed to its Amazon.com-style checkout.
• Rightroots includes a link to the candidates’ homepage, which is nice, but that’s about it for any information about the candidates. One pretty much has to know who they are supporting before they get there.
• Using Rightroots, I donated $5 to Friends of Fred Thompson. This went fairly smoothly, up to the point where I had to enter a credit card. The confirmation number on the back of my card has just three digits, while the form demanded exactly four. So I put a zero in front of the digits, and that did the trick. It would have been nice if it would recognize the different security systems for each of the major cards.
• The front page of Rightroots also lists “hot slates” (groupings of candidates) but it doesn’t list figures for how much each have raised. These slates were evidently compiled by Rightroots itself, and so does not answer one of my main criticisms from last year — that it does not allow for users to compile and promote their own slates. I was told this feature would be included next time, but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen. Consequently, this was also the one site where I was unable to set up my “Frederalist Society” slate.
• Now, the selections for some of these slates make good sense — “100% No Earmarks” is described on that page as:
  

  Honoring House Republicans with a perfect 100% voting record against pork barrel earmarks in the 110th Congress, as recently scored by the Club for Growth.

  Nice. On the other hand, one slate merely collects all of the Republican presidential contenders — well, except for Alan Keyes; I doubt that bothers you. But I also doubt very many people want to donate to all of the White House candidates.

• There is a “Donate All” button for each slate, but it’s hidden at the bottom, underneath the last candidate’s picture — it is not flush with the other, similarly-designed donation buttons.
• More nitpicks — Rightroots’ poll, promoted on the front page, is out of service. Try voting, and you get this:
  

  An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

  The good news is, the error message goes on to detail instructions for fixing the error. I don’t do code, but if I could get terminal access, even I could probably take care of that. Also, there is no button to view the results without voting.

• Along the same lines, I also got this certificate warning at one point:


• But I really dig the link to the FEC query for Rightroots’ own reports. The others should follow this example.
• I gotta give Rightroots this: It is back. The website languished after the November ‘06 midterms, which I complained about in January, drawing strong objections from some of those involved. I wasn’t sure that it would actually return, but it certainly has done that.
• Unfortunately, the follow-through seems to be half-hearted. Nothing has been added to the News section since August, and it’s been just over a month since anything was added to the blog (there are 5 posts total). It’s not clear to me why there are separate sections for “News” and “Blog.” This reminds me of typical campaign websites, which have had a press release section since the dawn of online politicking, then added blogs separately when they became the norm. Why not put everything in one place?
• RightRoots is simple, but it’s too simple. The site lacks any compelling reason to use it. (Really, not even a widget?) There is nothing that makes the site sticky, or compels you to come back.

BIG RED TENT

Next, the one I know the least about:

• My relative ignorance about Big Red Tent probably has something to do with the fact that its creators are based in Austin while the others are inside the Beltway. On the Internet, physical location is of much less of a consideration, but it still hasn’t received much coverage. It does have the official backing of RedState. But I haven’t seen them write about it since it first went up.
• This site is quite a bit different than the other two, starting with the sea of white compared to the others’ dark backgrounds. I like that. I like the logo, too — it’s the best of the three, I think. Moreover, it also has the best name, communicating its intent to build one large, happy GOP family.
• Otherwise the site is a chore to navigate. Why does Big Red Tent not have a “Sign up here” button on the front page? Why can’t I click on the logo to return to the homepage? Rightroots and Slatecard offer both.
• When you go to sign up and give money, the form asks for your blog URL (sure, why not) as well as my IM screen name (hmm) and cell phone number (really?). There are not required, but it would be nice to know why they were asking. This reminds me of the website Radiohead built to sell their latest album, “In Rainbows.” Am I opting into future text messages? I know people who just elected to grab it off BitTorrent instead. I don’t think that quite works for Big Red Tent.
• The reliance on Drupal means I was assigned a convoluted password, rather than being able to choose my own. Maybe I should write down every single password for every single site where I’ve created accounts, but I don’t. So this bugs me.
• Big Red Tent is not free of bugs, either: I kept getting this when I was logged in:
  

  “The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.”

  Hitting “reload” did take care of the issue, but it happened a couple more times thereafter.

• Alone among the three, Big Red Tent has a Twitter account. Great! Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated in approaching two months:
  
  

  In that case, it’s fortunate that it isn’t featured on the main page (where it probably should be), where it would signal to all that there isn’t much activity here.

• Big Red Tent offers a widget that I didn’t test, but looks attractive enough to place in my sidebar. However, it seems to be fairly wide, and I doubt it would fit in everyone’s sidebar. (But I certainly approve of the fact that the example widget shows Thompson at the top.)
• Is Big Red Tent trying to do too much? Take for example BRT TV — a promised series of video interviews, hosted by Gravatt and Jackson’s Patriot Group colleague Jill Warren, that has no third video (really second, as the first is an introduction). Again, the lack of follow-through isn’t promising.
• More questions: Why does signup page still ask if I want to be notified when they launch? Seems to me like they’ve already launched. Why can I click into Groups at the top of the page, but not individual Slates? Isn’t “Group” just another word for category from the blog? Where is the blog? The Field Report is helpful, but I could use more of it. I also can’t find the Stump Speeches feature now, so I can’t link to it.
• Stump Speeches, Slates, Groups, Files, Contact lists, Guestbooks, Inboxes... help! I’m utterly lost. The confusing array of features reminds me of the late, unmourned HotSoup and its “issue loops.”
• At least you can create your own slate. As Gravatt explained to Matt Lewis in a Town Hall interview this summer:
  

  We were faced with a decision: Who will the PAC support? We only liked two options. Option 1 is for Brad and I to decide, and Option 2 is to let others decide. We decided Option 2 would be best for a PAC with an online community.

  That’s right on, although it doesn’t seem that there is much of a community so far. That said, at least it offers the possibility, which Rightroots does not.

• I concluded my experiment with Big Red Tent feeling both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. It’s great that there are several functions, but it seems there are several too many. Ultimately, I felt like maybe there was something going on that I just didn’t get.

SLATECARD

And the newest kid on the block:

• Slatecard had both the longest incubation period and was the last to launch. This owes something to principal David All’s penchant for self-promotion, which may bug others (including some at Rightroots) but probably serves Slatecard well.
• At Slatecard, the minimum donation is $10, unlike the others, where I was able to give just $5. Credit card processing fees do take a big bite out of proceeds, so I understand this, and there are probably very few who can afford to give no more than $9.99. On the upside, Slatecard alone lets you check a box to make your donation recurring monthly, if you’d like.
• On the downside, unlike the other websites, my phone number was required. I would kind of like to know why.
• Otherwise I had no problems signing up or making a donation. If there are bugs in the site, I didn’t encounter them. It was the smoothest experience I had at any of the three.
• On the other hand, why isn’t there a search function on the website? The other two do offer this capability.
• The front page of Slatecard shows you who’s “hot” — individual candidates and user-created slates — and includes dollar figures. That’s cool. The non-disclosure from the other sites I believe is a holdover from traditional campaigns, where if you’re not sucking up the dollars (and therefore sucking), you don’t want that public. All puts his cards on the table, and I respect that.
• Speaking of which, All has led an e-mail drive to raise $75,000 overall in the first month since going live. He didn’t quite make it, but it was very close — and within days, the $75,000 goal was met.
• Slatecard offers widgets, of course, and they are the best-designed of the bunch. In fact, if you’re on a Leopardized Mac, All has even explained how you can put one in your Dashboard. (Note: This is a Leopard feature; one could do this with Big Red Tent’s widget as well.)
• True to All’s love of all things social networking, candidate pages link to each candidate’s official pages on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the like. Each is represented by the socnet’s logo, but you have to mouseover to know that they go anywhere. Slatecard links to candidate official sites as well, but it’s just a clip art image of a house — I got it the second time, but it would make a lot more sense if I could just see the URL as on Rightroots.
• Because Slatecard has the best pages for individual candidates, it paradoxically left me wanting even more. For one thing, the biographical summaries are clearly copied from older versions of each candidate’s Wikipedia page. I can tell because I know Wikipedia style, but it doesn’t identify the source.
• And these pages would be improved if you could add comments. Slatecard gives the impression of offering greater interactivity than the others, when in fact Big Red Tent so far allows for the most feedback.
• Perhaps the most unique aspect of the site is the ability to add “issue badges” to candidates you support. As much as I’d like to sneer, “we don’t need no stinkin’ badges,” I dig this:
  
  

  Naturally, I added the “Federalism” badge to Thompson’s page. It makes sense that you can only add a badge if you have donated to a particular candidate. However, I was only able to add one badge, and the site doesn’t say how many added the same badge as I did. It would also be nice if you could organize by badges and call up a list of all the candidates whom users think they describe. And would it be too difficult to let users create and upload their own?

• This feature also includes idiosyncracies that are all All — one of the issue badges is for “Supports Net Neutrality,” a pet issue of All’s, and something only Mike Huckabee does. As Ruffini has noted separately, it’s essentially a lefty issue. Sure, you can add the “Opposes Net Neutrality” badge… but why is “Support” represented by Pac Man and “Oppose” is represented by Blinky (the red ghost villain)? An annoying editorial tic.



• Perhaps a more serious issue — the badge for “Defeat Radical Islam” puts the Universal No symbol over the Star and Crescent. The war against radical Islam is not, the last time I checked, a war against all Muslims. But that’s what the badge implies.
• Most promisingly, the frequently updated blog announces milestones and upgrades, and has done so consistently since Slatecard launched.

All of these sites are good enough — that is, they do what they advertise. It’s just a baseline, though these websites are still in their infancies (maybe some are toddlers). After tinkering around with each, Slatecard emerges the winner in my book so far. It’s by no means perfect, but it seems more thought-out than its rivals. It offers some unique features that are still fairly intuitive, and it appears to be the most active. While there hasn’t been much activity on either Rightroots or Big Red Tent since their respective launches, I presume both parties imagined the sites would be self-perpetuating and requiring minimal upkeep. At least Rightroots doesn’t promise much more than it delivers; Big Red Tent was more ambitious but almost feels abandoned.

Most of my judgments above are fairly subjective, so I did try to include one objective (if imperfect) metric — how often each site is linked to by third-party websites. Since BlogPulse advertises this capability (unlike IceRocket) I fed the URLs for each into their Trend Tool, selected feedback for the last three months, controlled for possible alternatives (ABCPAC.com and BigRedTent.com both redirect to their respective main sites), and here’s what I found:

Rightroots has had the highest highs, Slatecard is buzzier now, but thanks to an apparent spike in attention last month, Rightroots is hanging in there. I presume that All’s frequent promotion for his project is propping up his numbers a bit. Big Red Tent was in the mix when it launched, but never received as much attention and has since dropped off significantly. (Note: I also fed the names of each site into BlogPulse; the Trend Tool returned more spikes for each, but the pattern was the same.)

Although there are many differences between the sites, they are not so far apart that, given an update or two, Rightroots or Big Red Tent couldn’t usurp Slatecard as the go-to site. But perhaps the most important thing about Slatecard is that, like ActBlue but unlike its Republican counterparts, it has already made the transition to being the primary fundraising mechanism of a political candidate. That’s VA-01 hopeful Kevin O’Neill. So far he’s raised nearly $65,000 — so All should definitely be thanking him for helping reach that $75,000 goal. Of course, candidate support is just what a site like this needs to gain credibility in Republican campaigns, and it’s no secret that brick-and-mortar GOP consultants are warier of using the web than their Democratic counterparts.

I salute each one of these websites, and their creators, for doing what they are doing. I hope they all continue to upgrade, borrow features from each other and compete for online GOP fundraising supremacy. And there’s no reason why there needs to be just one; perhaps they can all find a niche. I hope they do.

Disclosure: As previously noted, I’m with Fred, but that merely influenced the direction of my extraordinarily modest contributions. Otherwise, I do know some of those involved. I consider David All a friend, Patrick Ruffini a friendly acquaintance, and while I have not met Mike Turk in person, we do sometimes work together behind the scenes in the Thompson camp. None of them knew I was writing this post, and I doubt that any of them will be entirely happy with it.

I’ll leave the reviews to others, but 24 hours after both stories hit the web, how are they doing in terms of measurable attention? Newsweek provides two metrics that we must assume are the most accurate, simply because they are based on internal numbers, even though Newsweek does not provide actual numbers. I understand why they don’t release them, but if the Digg-ification of the Internet continues apace, they will eventually. So which of the two was e-mailed more than the other?

As we see, this was a clear win for Rove. As of about 10 p.m. on Monday night, Rove’s piece has been e-mailed more often — but we still don’t know by how much. Second, Newsweek’s list of the top 10 most viewed stories:

Even without precise figures, this one paints a clearer picture: Rove is at number one, and Kos is nowhere to be found. Short of a Chris Bowers Google bomb, Rove is the greatest and most powerful.

How can this be? Kos is arguably at the zenith of his fame, with appearances on The Colbert Report and Meet the Press earlier in the year, still reigning as one of the RNC’s favorite bogeymen. Rove on the other hand is out of the White House and for all anyone knows, out of national politics. It may say something about Time readers just not knowing who Kos is, but I’m operating under the assumption that the online version of Newsweek reaches what IPDI has termed the “Poli-fluentials.” To be sure, time will tell. One possibility is that Kos, with his eminently Internet-based platform, stands to do better over the long run. But I also ran the Newsweek column’s permalinks through Technorati to find out how many times each had been linked by another blog. It wasn’t close. At all:

Rove – 108
Kos  -  23

Ouch. Then again, if you look at the top blogs linking to both articles (results above are sorted by authority) a clear majority hail from the left. Maybe the left still remains more interested in Rove than the right is in Kos.

Another possibilty is more subjective, but I’ll offer it anyway: Maybe Kos just isn’t that interesting a writer. Like more than a few in my line of work, I’ve been perusing Matt Bai’s “The Argument” lately, and Bai does little to conceal his skepticism of Moulitsas’ political knowledge. Now, I have read both articles, and I did find Rove’s much more interesting. But don’t take my word for it — the blogosphere seems to agree. I have also seen both speak in a public setting, and perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, but the seasoned campaign veteran was certainly more compelling than his younger upstart opponent. And there was the time when Kos got a tryout with ideo-journalistic Washington, but didn’t quite make the cut.

An aside: Last week I went with my colleagues and associates Jon Henke, Leslie Bradshaw and Jesse Thomas to see Rove co-keynote Yahoo’s Citizen 2.0 midday bash with Max Cleland (!) at the Willard Intercontinental. They’ve already written about it in detail, but I can’t help noting that their study merely put a slightly different gloss on the IPDI report linked above, i.e. “Citizen 2.0″ has replaced “Poli-fluential.”

Just about Rove, however, I must say: His arguments and observations were as well-honed as any “Internet expert” I’ve seen address a political crowd. And Rove knew what he was talking about: He recalled early computer hard drives he owned, admitted to his membership in the Apple cult, delivered a paean to Moore’s Law, and mused about the long-term effects of TiVo and time-shifting. He spoke of the Allen/Webb race (though he didn’t use the word “Macaca”) and cited studies of the blogosphere like any contributor to TechPresident. That’s why I was a little surprised and disappointed to see Michael Bassik dismiss him as “Not Citzen 2.0″ when in fact the definition given by Yahoo! makes Rove almost the perfect example. I was less surprised to see Think Progress willfully misinterpret the goings-on, but Henke has that one covered. Say what you will about Karl Rove, but don’t say he’s not a geek.

On the other hand, he did mispronounce “Kos.”

P.S. This is as good a time as any to share this photo, taken with my iPhone, of Karl Rove taking a picture of me with his iPhone:

The man on the right is former Senator Cleland. Believe it or not, they got along like old chums. My guess, and it’s just a hunch, is that Cleland is better at hiding his thoughts and feelings than his boisterous persona suggests. The man on the left appears to be from an Aphex Twin video.

P.P.S. What if Rove turned to blogging? Tom DeLay’s occasionally updated blog is in relaunch limbo at the moment, which provides not the best precedent (despite my own pleasantly surprised initial reaction) but then DeLay was never known as a thinker, either, and left official Washington under considerably less triumphant circumstances. So I think Rove could do well, and I bet he would even write it. If he consented to participate in rightosphere activities like appearing on Heading Right Radio (warning: automatic audio), he could quickly become one of the most influential voices on the Internet. But even then, I’m not sure he’d be the most influential voice on the right.

P.P.P.S. Then again, we haven’t even begun to address the matter of which fledgling columnist Google thinks is the greater and more powerful.

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to learn a little more about that Drinking Liberally group.
– Ex-White House adviser Karl Rove

The only phrase I identified with on the screen was Drinking Liberally.
– Ex-Senator Max Cleland (D-Georgia)

This afternoon I hit up an invite-only conference sponsored by Yahoo (okay, Yahoo!), “Citizen 2.0: Radically Rethinking Democracy in the Political Age.”

The two keynotes, Karl Rove and Max Cleland, didn’t have much in common besides their receding hairlines — though they did get along swimmingly, considering everything and all. And they did both take the opportunity to riff on the lefty drinking club with chapters nationwide, featured in a video segment prepared by Yahoo!, Drinking Liberally.

Their utterances were separated by about 30 minutes, so one could say it was a recurring theme. All the more so, the Drinking Liberally badinage continued on as Cleland self-deprecatingly compared his own medicore Internet skills to common blood alcohol levels, coining a term no less silly than Yahoo’s!: Citizen 0.1.

Afterward there was a cocktail reception, and then I took some colleagues to another happy hour. Rest assured, however, I was only drinking moderately.

There are lines one could plausibly draw between those who serve on a campaign’s staff exclusively and those outsiders who consult with that campaign and others simultaneously, or between speech and actions which are germane to one’s campaign responsibilities and those which are not. But if these lines do exist, they don’t seem to be obeyed these days — everything that anyone connected with a campaign (in any way) does, says or writes is being attributed back to the campaign, and campaigns will continue to be be called upon to disavow, and there may be calls for more people’s heads, etc.

This, my dear bloggers, is why you don’t see more of us pros blogging. We eventually get our bosses into trouble.

Mentioned in the article is Obama General Counsel Bob Bauer’s thoughts on pardoning Libby. I have to say, I was mad when I saw the title, but I like Bob’s logic. I’m all for laying this at Bush’s feet. You game?

The casual reader might wonder why strategists put their names on documents that, if made public, could eventually hurt them or their client’s standing. Reasons vary, but ultimately internal memos should have something to do with the candidate winning.

Speculation abounds John Mercurio at Hotline is a leading proponent) that Henry’s memo was leaked on purpose to lower expectations, but let’s assume that it was in fact a legitimate memorandum. Henry might have been tasked with the responsibility in the campaign or he might have long been the main proponent and was the victim of an internal fight over strategy.

But McKinnon’s memo is something all together different. He basically gave notice that he won’t help his client win if he faces a certain opponent.

McKinnon wrote that while he opposed Obama’s policies, especially on Iraq, he felt that the Illinois senator–as an African-American politician–has a unique potential to change the country. Therefore, McKinnon argued, he wanted no part in any efforts to tear down Obama’s candidacy.

Say what you will about Henry’s memo damaging Clinton, at least it advocated for a way to win the Iowa Caucus. McKinnon is laying down a marker that says “I won’t help if you run against him.” That essentially tells donors that one of McCain’s top advisers isn’t 100% on board with his campaign. It also signals to independents (and reporters) that Obama is a guy who crosses party lines.

True or not, that’s not a strategist’s job. It’s to help your client win. Henry’s name to paper makes sense; McKinnon’s does not.

The firm of MacWilliams Kirchner Sanders has a three-part series at MyDD this week (here, here and here, in reverse order) on media buying.

My summation: Buying broadcast is bad and nasty political consultants do it to rip your ass off because they charge commissions. Hire us, because we’re smarter, and it’s for a good cause, because our clients are progressives — not corporations!

Forgive my snark, but everytime I hear this “broadcast sucks, buy cable, and media consultants are all whores sucking away your money” it makes me laugh. These guys make great points about efficiency and targeting but they don’t tell the full story.

First, you can make assumptions that men watch certain channels and women others, but you’ll need to get real data from the individual markets through your own polling — not exactly cheap to do. Registered, likely and unregistered voters do not neatly fit into demographic profiles that cable companies have on hand.

Second, frequency and points matter. MKS at least recognizes that fact in this graf:

It is important to point out that campaigns can’t always spot buy. Some cable systems limit spot buying for political campaigns or don’t allow them at all. (When that happens, the buyers have to push back and negotiate hard for whatever they can get. Most of the time it works.)

Yeah, no shit guys. Campaigns can almost never spot buy on cable because cable operators sell hundreds upon hundreds of spots over a boatload of channels. They like predictability, something campaigns are not. Plus, you don’t really get to bully them like you can with broadcast. Your $100K over two months doesn’t mean squat to them.

Broadcast has many more people buying for a fewer number of spots. And, they also happen to have the local news stations, something voters tend to watch.

The real problem with cable is that you cannot build GRP’s (Gross Ratings Points) quickly like you can on broadcast. You can buy as much cable as possible over months and not build points as quickly as you can on broadcast. This creates a problem: time. Because you need to build frequency, cable requires you to buy long term, sometimes a full month to reach appropriate saturation. This means you can’t pivot your commercials to answer new charges, you limit your spot options because of the length of the campaign and you cannot air new charges/mistakes that happen late in the campaign.

Broadcast allows these options because you can buy up the things that people watch and get your GRPs up in as little as 5 days. Of course, that’s more expensive.

It annoys the piss out of me that the netroots frequently assigns we political consultants the “dumbass” label because we don’t do things the way they see fit. As if we don’t want to win, save money or be effective.

It’s even more interesting to now see political consultants start playing the same game. Why? Guess they’re trying out a new marketing strategy to get more clients.

Update: This proves my point exactly. They give you an example of their work. This was an interest group campaign that used targeted cable to increase turnout among infrequent, pro-choice women voters in Oregon. To be fair, they don’t claim cable was the answer, but the example falls right into my main complaint about cable. This was a long-term, sustained campaign that relied on 1 message and 1 group of voters. It was likely prudent to layer in cable with mail, phones and all else to get the message out to women who cared about choice. But, if they had to switch up their message in the last 2 weeks, they would never have been able to build enough repetition behind it to get out their new message. Convenient for interest groups, not so convenient for tight campaigns where a sliver of the electorate that decides in the final weeks of the campaign determines your winner.

Plus, by citing “nearly 70% — 24,523 — of the 35,000 women targeted by PPAF in those three cable clusters turned out to vote in 2004″ is very disingenuous. There just so happened to be a presidential election that cycle where the incumbent was widely despised by the left (pro-choice voters tend to be more liberal) and you had 2 women at the top of the ticket, Christine Gregoire and Patty Murray. Both, I’ll bet, targeted the hell out of pro-choice women because their Republican opponents (especially George Nethercutt) were bad on choice.

Again, there’s no doubt that cable had an effect, but the netroots wholesale advocacy for cable just doesn’t jive with how real campaigns are run.

Previous Editions Margie Omero (D) Jordan Gehrke (R) Ezra Reese (D)

Leif Larson is a senior vice president at Jamestown Associates, a national political consulting firm, where he advises clients on strategy and oversees print, television and radio production as well as media placement. Past and present clients include Reps. Patrick McHenry, John McHugh, Mary Bono, John Campbell, John Shimkus, College Republicans and the NRCC. His work has been recognized by his peers, earning him a national Pollie award from the American Association of Political Consultants. He graduated from The George Washington University with a BA in Political Science and resides in Alexandria with his wife Janine and their 1 year old son, Angus. He’s also the subject of our latest Benchmark Poll:

How do your parents’ politics compare to your own?

My Dad is very economically conservative and my Mom is very much a social conservative. My Grandmother was very much like P.J. O’Rourke’s in that she was so conservative she wouldn’t even say the word “Democrat” — she just refereed to them as “those bastards.”

Did you run for class office in high school or college? Did you win?

No, I never ran for office while in school. I did support a candidate in college who ran on the platform that if elected student body president he would abolish the student government.

When you first moved to the District, what food did you miss most from home?

In-and-Out Burger! Best burgers in the world. A Double-Double “Animal Style” with fresh fries and a large lemonade….ahhhhhh.

Once you were here, did you work any non-political jobs did you work to get by?

I came out with some money saved up from working some campaigns so I didn’t have to but I had some applications for bartending. Some days I wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier bartending. The guys at Sequoia make a killing!

What’s your favorite bar in DC? Favorite outside the Beltway?

Well this is a little “Old Skool” not sure how many people will remember the “Crow Bar”. What a great place. Depends how far outside the Beltway. I enjoy the Clarendon Ballroom scene but the BEST bar ever was in Santa Barbara, California Jimmy’s Oriental Garden.

Whether in a campaign or in government, you’ve surely had to work with someone who drove you crazy. What were they like?

A former boss of mine. Smart, knowledgeable and good at what he does but he used to have a temper. You never knew if he was going to laugh or freak out on you. I remember him telling a campaign worker, “I’ll see you working in a Tijuana whorehouse before you work in politics again.”

If you had your own blog, what would you call it and what would you write about?

If It Ain’t Scottish It’s CRAP! All things Scottish and Republican Politics.

So, who do you know? That is — who is most responsible for you being where you are in politics now?

Two college professors, Dr. Peter Haslund and Dr. Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar.

If you could be or any politician, past or present, for one day and one event, who and what event?

This is a tough one. Winston Churchill was such a statesman and warrior but I would have to go with our own T.R., Teddy Roosevelt the 26th President.

To be him making the decisions to build the Panama Canal and position the United States as one of the worlds super powers would be great.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Doing what I am doing now but on a beach in California… if my wife will let me!

They don’t work hard, they meddle too much, they say dumb things on camera or they’re just insane. The real fun is the shadow groups — the 527s and 501(c)3s.

Here’s why:

Why is Americans United for Change is running TV ads against the Senate Minority leader in Kentucky? There’s no way in hell Mitch loses; he’s one of the smartest elected GOP political minds and he can easily raise money. But, that ’s not the point. Campaigning has grown into something completely different than winning and losing single elections: It’s now almost sport.

Back in 2002 a group of rich Democrats and consultants got together and said to themselves, “we want influence.” They created this 527, originally, to protect Social Security from the Republicans’ “privatization.” Now, they still have this 527 and still continue to have influence with their money and with their consultants. Somebody just stood up one day and said, “Let’s rip Mitch’s face off!” for probably no reason except that they can.

And that’s the beauty of this for people like me. No candidate, no pressure to win the race, no worry about the candidate’s wife or best friend telling me how to do my job, no grueling travel days and no limiting contact with pesky reporters. Just a bunch of paid professionals sitting around a table making a couple of rich dudes happy.

Sign me up!

Not entirely unlike a benchmark poll in a political campaign, The Benchmark Poll seeks to learn a little about these people before they become “Meet the Press” famous. But don’t make too much of the name; it only beat out “Operative Questions” by a last-minute shrug.

If you’re familiar with the Hotline’s Friday Feature — or the Blogometer Spotlights I started and Conn Carroll continues today — then the concept should be familiar. If this is all news to you, well, I think you’ll manage.

Thanks are indeed due to the Hotline for making me familiar with this beautifully simple and beautifully un-trademarkable concept. And props to Mayor of Guytown for proposing that Blog P.I. take up this series.

Margie Omero is president of Democratic public opinion research firm Momentum Analysis. Her clients have included the DNC, DCCC, Emily’s List and numerous campaigns for federal office. She appears regularly on cable news and in 2000 led focus groups for ABC News. Prior to founding Momentum Analysis she was a VP at The Mellman Group where she conducted research for the DSCC and for Democratic officials, including Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt. Originally from New Jersey, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Texas at Austin. She’s the subject of our first Benchmark Poll:

How do your parents’ politics compare to your own?

They are both pretty liberal-leaning. I remember my mom explaining early on why it was important to be pro-choice. And my dad once explained the difference between the political parties this way: “Democrats want to help people, while Republicans believe people should help themselves.” My response was, “then why would anyone be a Republican?”

Did you run for class office in high school or college? Did you win?

I haven’t talked about this in decades! I ran in junior high and lost. An exploratory poll would’ve been helpful.

When you first moved to the District, what food did you miss most from home?

I used to miss great bagels and smoked fish. And unlike New York and New Jersey, it’s hard to just stumble upon great Italian food. But you can find anything in DC if you know where to go.

Once you were here, did you work any non-political jobs did you work to get by?

Nope. My first paying job was as a pollster, and I had two great internships, one on the Hill, and one at Roll Call. I’ve been lucky.

What’s your favorite bar in DC? Favorite outside the Beltway?

My list is always changing. I just moved around the corner from Rumberos on 14th Street, so that’s a new favorite. Sonoma. Wonderland. Outside of DC, either of the Standards in LA, or at any Ian Schrager hotel.

Whether in a campaign or in government, you’ve surely had to work with someone who drove you crazy. What were they like?

There was once a campaign manager who wouldn’t call anyone back for days… neither consultants nor the candidate. When somebody got him on the phone they’d patch in the rest of the team since we never knew when we could talk to him again.

If you had your own blog, what would you call it and what would you write about?

ScooterGirl.com. I’d write about the fun food, shopping, and adventures I can have on my red Stella scooter. It would be like Daily Candy meets travelogue, with recipes, and more snark.

So, who do you know? That is — who is most responsible for you being where you are in politics now?

I would say the late Ann Richards really motivated me to go into politics. I grew up in New Jersey, but in high school I wrote a paper about her campaign against Clayton Williams, and ended up going to the University of Texas when she was Governor. I loved seeing a woman with such a unique, vibrant personality live a public life. So she was a big influence. As far as the trajectory of my career, there have been so many influential people. Eve Lubalin, who was Senator Lautenberg’s Chief of Staff, was one of the first people in Washington to be helpful to me. Mark Mellman, my former boss, was a good teacher. There are lots of others; I consider many people both friends and mentors. Folks in this industry have been very helpful to me, and I try to pass that help along to others.

If you could be or any politician, past or present, for one day and one event, who and what event?

I don’t want to be a politician. An election night when your candidate wins is pretty fantastic, no matter what the race.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

I see myself doing the same thing I’m doing now, just more of it.