McCain Campaign Offers Rewards For Turn-Key Comments 375
According to a story at the Washington Post, John McCain's presidential campaign is offering more than moral suasion to fire people up for a McCain presidency; they're also offering ready-made snippets of rhetoric for interested supporters to supply under their own names in public comments to online news sources and forums. Such pre-written commentary by itself is neither new nor necessarily nefarious, but it seems a bit off-kilter that prolific commenters are eligible for rewards — not just campaign swag like hats and stickers, but higher-ticket items like a ride with McCain on his campaign bus. Probably a script could be whipped up to compare the canned suggestions on the site with "grassroots" comments on political news sites around the web.
This is going to end badly (Score:5, Insightful)
As per the subject line, this is going to end badly.
I do, however, find it interesting that this astroturfing is being done so publicly. Before the sources were always hidden, as if the originators seemed ashamed of it.
Now they're acting as if it seems to be business as usual.
Are party supporters allowed to have their own opinion these days? Anecodatal evidence suggests that there is a hive mind forming.
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:3, Insightful)
My God, this country is completely screwed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah.. well worth it. (Score:4, Insightful)
No one ever went broke underestimating american taste, and no one ever got modded down for overstating american stupidity.
People are far more interested in this campaign than america's got talent. I mean, some age groups yes, are more interested in that, but not MOST of the voting age and above.
On a completely unrelated note, there needs to be a mod option of "-1 trite cynicism." If you like that type of thing you could change it to score +1 instead.
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:2, Insightful)
Republican supporters vs. Democrat Supporters (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for them doing this is because Democratic supporters tend to be a lot more vocal about their support compared to Republican supporters. This may be anecdotal, but for the sites I view, I see way more Obama supporters spouting out campaign rhetoric compared to McCain supporters. At the same time, all the national polls I see have the two in a virtual dead heat. Why are we seeing more people screaming their support for Obama? The RNC has noticed this, and is trying to light a fire under the Republican supporters in order to get them screaming just as loudly for McCain.
It's probably about the demographic. Republicans tend to be older, quiet, "don't rock the boat" types who don't give a shit about anything that doesn't concern them. Democrats tend to be young, vocal, "Change NOW!" types who feel that society as a whole needs to better function. It makes sense.
Neither of Them Deserve to Be President (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact of the matter is that Some Americans will no longer be able to afford to own and operate an automobile. That process has already started. People are on the news saying "I can't afford to put gas in my car to commute to work." It's only going to get worse as gasoline gets more expensive. We might see the price of a gallon of gas bump down a little over the coming years, but the general trend is going to be up. If you're having trouble paying for gas now, you should start planning to not own an automobile in the future. America needs better public transit options and tighter knit communities, because a lot more of us are not going to be driving in the future.
Of course Obama and McCain won't say that. It'd be political suicide. Unfortunately we don't need political grandstanding right now. We need sensible planning for a future where Americans are less affluent and have lower expectations than they did in the past.
Re:Republican supporters vs. Democrat Supporters (Score:2, Insightful)
I suspect that while many Republicans will be voting for McCain, they are not particularly enthusiastic about him.
You are mostly right about the demographics: Republicans do tend to just want to be left alone, which is not something which needs lots of verbiage, whereas Democrats' control freakery needs lots of screaming.
ooh! I know! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Are you better off now than you were 8 years ago?"
JOHN MCCAIN
(picture of him embracing George Bush) http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/mccain%20bush%20hug%20twn.jpg [thewashingtonnote.com]
"Four more years!"
I have one (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh man, too easy... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am so sick of "talking points." It just reeks of brand advertising.
Modern politics is all about brand advertising. Nobody really wants a serious discussion of the issues, least of all the candidates. You tell your base what they want to hear, you demonize your opponent in hopes of demoralizing his base, and you get your people to drive your supporters to the polls while trying to disenfranchise your opponent's supporters. If all else fails, you throw some ballot boxes into a river.
The whole idea is doing whatever is necessary to get more people to vote for you than for the other guy. Glitzy advertising that paints you as a hero of the working man and your opponent as a clown (or demon) who will single-handedly destroy the country is a key part of the package. Serious discourse has no place in such an environment.
On top of that, now you have the Internet to deal with. In this case, the more parrots you have mindlessly regurgitating your talking points on blogs and various forums, the better. It's like the hot chicks at the bar that invite you to hang out with them and offer you some expensive name brand liquor. It's viral advertising, and if it can be used to sell booze, why can't it be used to sell candidates?
Sure, the whole thing is sleazy, but that's politics for you.
Not Offtopic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Issue: Jobs for America (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My God, this country is completely screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
I take it you aren't familiar with the history of our Presidential elections. If you were, you'd realize that while it's sad we are still stuck in the same muck raking environment that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson slandered each other under, it's obviously nothing new.
Re:So, he's basically doing... (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I wish that was true, I have never managed to get my hands on a widely distributed talking points memo for the Democrat party. If you know of an organization that distributes such talking points, please post it, I'd be interested in finding out what political mantra they would have people saying these days.
-Rick
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most Americans are better off than they were 50 years ago. Just most Americans have forgotten how to be frugal and now impulse buy all kinds of crap on credit cards then wonder why they're screwed when the credit card bills roll in.
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:4, Insightful)
Link to this Democratic voter survey, so we can think for ourselves?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:1, Insightful)
No, this is no Borg collective. The problem the candidates have (both sides, this year) is that the arguments we (the people) have for supporting a candidate are not necessarily arguments that are useful for that candidate's strategy. This is an effort on the part of McCain's camp to limit what they consider the "noise" - if we spend time broadcasting their signal, how much time can we spend causing well-intentioned distractions?
Controlling supporters is a bigger issue this year than I've ever seen (admittedly, I've only been paying attention for a decade or so).
Obama is smart enough to not tell the truth.. (Score:5, Insightful)
As you point out, to tell the truth would virtually guarantee the truth teller a loss in the election. The American people don't want to be told that things will get worse. They want to be lied to about how they can have cheap gas, low taxes, universal (but not zomg socialized!) health care, and a socially secured retirement at no cost. Whenever anything goes wrong, tell everyone they can blame it on "Washington Insiders", "Evil Corporations", or "Foreigners".
Obama knows that none of this is possible. He's a successful politician, and successful politicians get where they are by lying to people. Obama is smart enough to know when to avoid telling the truth and/or lie.
McCain is a liar too, as he is also a successful politician. They are more alike than you think. Obama is much smarter than McCain, however. So if you have to pick one of these two to be President, Obama is the better choice as he will screw up less once he is elected. Hint: Morons don't make good presidents.
Re:Not Offtopic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Republican supporters vs. Democrat Supporters (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans do tend to just want to be left alone
Explain "social conservatives" then (aka the Republican base). Or is it that they want to be left alone, but they still want to control everyone else?
I think most of the people that truly just want to be left alone call themselves Libertarians these days.
Re:Oh man, too easy... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's quite so simple.
People aren't sheep or parrots, but they do have possess cognitive biases and flaws -- bugs in the epistemological software if you will. One of which is that if you hear the same thing from multiple, apparently independent sources, you will tend to believe it provided you have no prior opinion or more credible source of information to the contrary.
But even though that is a timeworn strategy, it isn't sure fire.
Look at the McCain's forays into attack ads. In part, they've been poorly conceived and timed. The Paris Hilton thing might have worked as the final smack down in a long patient campaign to cut him down to size. But it was over the top. People know campaigns say bad things about the other guy, so you've got to start smaller.
Another factor is who you have to work against. People don't pay much attention to politics until it gets close to the time to vote. Nature abhors a vacuum, and you fill that vacuum with beliefs about the other guy. It worked with Gore and Kerry, but not with Clinton because of Clinton's charismatic personality. As a liberal Democrat, I'm lukewarm on Bill Clinton, in theory at least. Still I remember seeing him interviewed on TV a few years after he was out of office, and being amazed at his almost mesmeric powers of communication.
Reagan was like that too; maybe even more so. You had to really detest the man to be immune to his charm.
Time will tell, but I have an inkling Obama might be another politician of this sort. The McCain campaign is trying to define him, and the pundits are trying to turn him into a cipher, but if you watch him, what comes across is that he is completely comfortable with and utterly sure of who he is. Which doesn't preclude him being a cipher, of course, but that's not the same as being vacuum.
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:5, Insightful)
Are the bulk of McCain supporters intelligent and informed enough to make an actual contribution to a political discussion without help? Apparently, John McCain doesn't think so. This is tantamount to telling his supporters "You are too stupid to discuss my campaign without help."
Re:Oh man, too easy... (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the day, the thing that is broken about contemporary America is precisely this "do whatever is necessary" meme. Why is winning better than sportsmanship? Why should conservatives vote Republican even if the Republicans plan to destroy the economy? Shouldn't civilised people prefer to be able to sleep at night? Ultimately, isn't that what civilisation is?
It makes no sense, but nobody wants to admit it.
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Issue: Jobs for America (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:4, Insightful)
This is tantamount to telling his supporters "You are too stupid to discuss my campaign without help."
Not at all. It's simply an acknowledgment that a full-time, professional staff which spends countless hours honing a message is probably going to be more effective at it than anyone else. That's true for Obama and McCain supporters alike - it doesn't seem like such a bad idea to encourage your supporters to make use of that professional work.
Choice of phrasing/argument has less to do with raw intellect than with communications skills. I've known plenty of bright people who couldn't communicate clearly to save their life.
And to be honest, political fervor is usually an emotional rather than a purely intellectual phenomenon. Just check out 90% of the comments on political website forums. If the "Spread the Word" program has no other effect than to get a supporter to calm down long enough to think before they speak, it's probably worthwhile. A well-considered argument or phrase - even if the considering was done by someone else ;-) - is usually better than a knee-jerk response.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the hell should working class Americans be able to afford an automobile?
That's why. We have to eat, and get to work, too, and to do that, it must be affordable. Damn near everyone who says that either doesn't need a car to get where they need to go or can afford their cars (relatively) easier than others. Try seeing all the aspects next time.
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, it's almost as if the Republican mods take pride in being ignorant.
(Note to mods: I've been saying that Republican's are blissfully ignorant for years, so I'm not mindlessly parroting talking points)
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:5, Insightful)
My problem with it is that sound-bites (or the text equivalent) are not political discussion, they are advertising. By adding more advertising noise into the forums where discussion should be taking place, this approach is dumbing down the voter's actual political awareness even more. By instructing and encouraging such a focused forum spam campaign, this distorts any possible consensus coming out a discussion on those selected forums. By contrast, here on Slashdot it frequently happens that someone makes a point that is embraced by the community, but is quite different from the stance of big media or the press release.
If the "Spread the Word" program has no other effect than to get a supporter to calm down long enough to think before they speak, it's probably worthwhile. A well-considered argument or phrase - even if the considering was done by someone else
That is what I mean about McCain insinuating that his supporters are stupid, this "talking points" thing is most effective when the best the supporter can come up with on their own is "a knee-jerk response".
Re:It seems to me (Score:1, Insightful)
I can also introduce you to some of Obama's former colleagues at the Univ of Chicago Law School who, I guarantee, can convince you that Obama's grasp of and love for the Constitution is so strong, so deep, and that his administrative skills are so tight, that his Justice Department will be one of the best.
Voting yes on defacto telecom immunity for warrantless wiretapping shows us something, but I don't think "love for the Constitution" is what we saw.
You can forgive all you like, but don't forget.
Now that that's out of the way, why don't you go fuck yourself?
After that vote, Obama can do the same.
Dubya supporter whines about Obama qualifications (Score:1, Insightful)
A Dubya supporter dares to whine about the qualifications of Obama?!?
Compared to when you voted for Dubya in 2000, Obama's a crusty veteran.
Re:The Issue: Jobs for America (Score:5, Insightful)
I am dismayed at the overwhelming liberalism present on this site. I had hoped that fellow geeks would have more sense than this. Conservatism, capitalism...that is what our country was founded on. McCain is not the poster child for the conservative movement by any means, but he is far superior to the socialist ideas put forth by Obama and fellow liberals, such as Nancy Pelosi. Please, PLEASE, take some time to understand the issues prior to repeating the nonsense so abundant in our media.
The reason this site is 'overwhelmingly liberal' is that /. has a global audience. Not just Alabama. It's easy to be a liberal when you're compared with, say, FOX, or the Republican Party. Hell, even the Democrats are pretty damned conservative on some things, particularly the red-state ones. This is roughly the same line of reasoning involved in creating Conservapedia - this thing is more liberal than me, therefore it must be horribly biased, and I must create my own with a correct view!
When you hear people talk about the 'far left' attacking Obama for being too conservative, consider that a large number of people (many not in America) consider your politics to be less about 'liberal vs. conservative' and more 'conservative vs. extremist'. You have mainstream politicians who haven't the slightest concern for the rights of women or gays, and in America a smear campaign involves calling the other guy a Muslim. That should be right up there with saying he's a Jew or a Catholic, but in America it's still just fine.
Everybody's a centrist in their own mind (or alternatively, thinks that there's a 'right' and a 'wrong' side of the center.) If 90% of the people you see are more liberal than you, then congratulations, you're atypically conservative.
Re:It seems to me (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people have been visiting it because the ads recently have been so ridiculously bad. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and fucking Moses? Please. It's like a car crash, I just had to visit a few times but that doesn't mean it's doing anything to win my vote.
Re:Dubya supporter whines about Obama qualificatio (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless they are Grover Norquist followers who wanted a failure to show how bad government is. In that case Bush had an impressive series of failures on his resume.
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, do you have a hard time parsing pronouns in general, or only in the context of threaded discussions? He was responding to a claim that "the Democratic one is just as bad," which itself was a reply to a criticism of the Republican voter survey. How is asking for a link to the allegedly just-as-bad Democratic survey a "strawman argument"?
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is going to end badly (Score:5, Insightful)
For the record I am not a Democrat or a Republican because both parties have precious few differences and have fucked the ever living hell out of this country and do a bang up job of dividing people into Red Dumbasses and Blue Dumbasses with their typical rhetoric.
Also, I saw a physical copy of said survey, I have no idea where it would be online if it even is. I imagine the Democratic survey is about the same. The most mindboggling thing here is that you couldn't be bothered to go look them up yourself and assumed we had links to them. Then you turned it into some kind of anti Republican rant when you weren't provided a link so you could avoid looking for something to "think for yourself". Congratulations you have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt why the modern Democrats are even more worthless than the modern Republican. Like voting in telcom immunity with a Democratic majority. So they support bad Republican ideas and then cry and blame the Republicans for it. Pathetic. I half expect Cheney to walk into the room and shout "Boo" and watch all of the Democrats hide under their desks. I loathe saying this since I hate most of what the Republicans have been up to, but I respect people who take action on their beliefs regardless of how wrong I think they are WAY more than people who just cower, talk a big game, and then cave at the first sign of opposition.