Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Campaign 2016 links - 8/26/15

For GOVT 2306 students thinking about their 1000 word essay.

- Perry Loses Iowa Campaign Chairman.
Sam Clovis, a well-known conservative radio personality in Iowa, told The Associated Press he had stepped down as Perry's state chairman. "I feel bad for the campaign and I feel bad for Governor Perry because I think he’s a marvelous human being, he’s a great man and it was my honor to be a part of this, but it was just time to move on," Clovis told The Washington Post on Monday.
- Perry Campaign Details Path Forward Despite Money Woes.
Super PACs are picking up the slack: "The Perry campaign reported raising $1.14 million in the second quarter of this year and on July 15 reported having $883,913 on hand. Meanwhile, Perry's well-funded allied super PACs are expanding their operations to compensate for the campaign's shortcomings. The Opportunity and Freedom PACs, which has raised nearly $17 million and initially planned to focus on paid television advertisements, also are building a ground game in Iowa, where they recently hired a state director and deputy state director."
- A Biden-Warren ticket could transform the 2016 election.

The idea of a Biden-Warren alliance – or perhaps even a Biden-Warren ticket -- would almost certainly shock and energize the party and provide an interesting mixture of political experience and progressive ideas. It would also force party leaders and rank and file Democrats to make a brutally tough reassessment of the state of the campaign, especially among those who worry about the mushrooming scandal surrounding Clinton’s handling of State Department emails and those who doubt Sanders could win a general election if nominated. Biden, should he run, likely would appeal to traditional, older Democrats, civil rights groups and union households. Warren, 66, while hardly a millennial, nonetheless would draw strong support from younger Americans and college students who are fascinated with her ideas to change the country and bolster economic and educational programs for the middle class.
- Donald Trump Is Running A Perpetual Attention Machine.
I don’t know whether this was a deliberate strategy on Trump’s behalf. But if so, it’s pretty brilliant. Trump is perhaps the world’s greatest troll, someone who is amazingly skilled at disrupting the conversation by any means necessary, including by drawing negative, tsk-tsking attention to himself. In the current, “free-for-all” phase of the campaign — when there are 17 candidates and you need only 20 percent or so of the vote to have the plurality in GOP polls — this may be a smart approach. If your goal is to stay at the center of attention rather than necessarily to win the nomination, it’s worth making one friend for every three enemies, provided that those friends tell some pollster that they’d hypothetically vote for you.