Presidential Emails

Listen up, maggots! They call them presidential campaigns. As we all know, “campaign” is a military term. War is hell. Thus, voluntarily enlisting to receive emails from political campaigns means you are in The Shit.

Wisely I signed up for both campaigns over a year ago. It seems longer. One year in campaign chronology feels more like seven. There. Now we can introduce the word “dog” into the discussion. Like “dog years” and “dogs of war.”

Yes, I said both campaigns. Obama’s and Romney’s. I didn’t bother with the minor players, the lieutenants with feelings of grandeur who thought they were generals. The bit part players with egos bigger than the entire theater. (Another fitting military term that is also descriptive of the activity.)

I never bothered to sign up for emails from Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Thaddeus McCotter, Jon Hunstman and the remaining cast of characters, so I can’t speak to any bullshit they might have pulled in their campaign emails.

Check it, I’m about to say something positive about Sarah Palin. This will come to be a red-letter date in history. You’ll note Sarah Palin isn’t mentioned in that list of dropouts. Even though she has the ego, too, she never bothered to start, and that seems to indicate an awareness of the world around her that the others lacked. She knew she couldn’t win. And if you know you can’t win, why even bother to try? Thus she wisely ignored the stigma of losing. In politics, you don’t want too many of those. The end up being a lot like those floatation barrels that Quint liked to shoot into Jaws. You can probably handle one or two, but get a couple more poking from the side of your belly and you’ll end up floating on the surface like a listless carp. Trust me. No one wants to see that in politics.

So kudos to Sarah Palin for that. Even though it did free her up for more Defend Freedom bus tours where she sells lots of books. Oh shit. Never mind.

Viola! That’s my intro. Click the jump link for even more… 🙂

And so it was that I came to be an unwitting part of a science experiment. Bombarded far too often simultaneously from the left and the right. Poor little Tommy caught in the middle.

The emails were remarkably the same. Typically they would start with a short message saying something along the lines of, “Look what they just did!”

Then they’d ask for money. There was always some sort of FEC “deadline” they had to meet. Correct me if I’m wrong, but those FEC deadlines are when campaigns have to report how much money they’ve raised. The FEC doesn’t say, for example, thinks like, “You have to raise $1 million by Friday.” But that’s how the emails read. What a load of shit.

“We’re really sorry for having to ask for money, but Friday is a deadline.” OMG! “Click here to send $3 and a message to the other guys of what we can do!”

The newest angle is the “lottery” aspect, where your donation to the cause buys you a virtual ticket to win the prize of all prizes: Spending a few minutes with your candidate. Have dinner with Obama and Michelle. Spend a day with Mitt. Yawn.

Nertz.

By the way, the message, “He is bad” doesn’t resonate that much with me. That message is essentially meaningless without a few additional details:

• Facts regarding what happened
• Facts about how the other guy caused it
• Facts how you are different or will be different

Nothing pisses me off quicker than accusing someone of doing something like it is the worst thing in the world when the person saying it does the exact same thing. Critical thinkers have to work hard to recognize this and identify it for what it is.

Unfortunately, I feel, a lot of “dittoheads” on both sides eat up their respective emails like candy and nod along saying, “Uh huh. Uh huh. That’s exactly what that other bastard does.”

The people who write these emails know they have an extremely small window to penetrate filter bubbles. So they keep their messages as short as possible, stick to a formula, and try to incite feelings that will generally work in their favor but aren’t otherwise helpful to our nation as a whole.

Example:

The other day Mitt Romney (or one of his minions) sent me this:

Women account for 92.3% of the jobs lost under Obama.

What president has the worst record on female labor force participation? Barack Obama. Turning the clock back 20 years on American women.

The campaign sourced the information from the U.S. government. FOX News jumped on the bandwagon and began harping on it ala FOX News style. (We believe that you’ll only understand things drilled into your head with a hammer the size of a small moon.)

Let’s critically analyze the message from Mitt. We’ll assume that the data is factually correct. So, what’s missing:

• What factors before Obama took office may have had an effect?
• What actions on the part of Obama exacerbated the situation?
• How is Mitt Romney different?
• What, exactly, is Mitt Romney’s plan to create a different outcome and how, specifically, will it work?

I personally find it very telling what they leave out. And I don’t mean to pick on Romney, either. Obama campaign emails employ a very similar tactic, I think.

So, those of you who subscribe to candidate emails, what have you noticed from them and what examples of tomfoolery can you share? Use the comments section below. If you don’t, I’ll sign you for all of them! You have been warned.

That’s an order. Now drop and give me twenty.