My Campaign Against John McCain and Sarah Palin

Sep 11th, 2008 by ian

After a rough week of screaming at the teevee, or allyson, or on this blog, about how ridiculous every aspect of this ‘08 Presidential Race is - from the cable news coverage, to McCain’s dishonorable campaign, to Obama’s closed campaign - I decided run my own campaign against McCain…

This wasn’t my idea, it was actually Chris Bowser’s of OpenLeft.com.  Many in the progressive blog-o-sphere have recently become more and more frustrated with how the ‘08 Race is going.  One of the major reasons is that Obama’s campaign has made them feel helpless.  Obama decided after they clinched the Democratic nomination that his General Election campaign was going to be run by his team alone.  They told the independent 527 groups, who normally run the hard-hitting ads, to close up shop.  They don’t communicate very much with the progressive blogs.  And you’ve seen their ineptness in the recent weeks to combat the day-to-day lying and manipulation of the Republican Noies Machine.  

But…that’s just a critique…   I’ve never ran a Presidential Campaign.  I have no idea where to even start.  It’s Obama’s prerogative to try to win however his team decides is best.  So there’s no reason to keep freaking out that he’s not “hitting back hard enough”.  They’ve said, “we know what were doing, let us run our campaign”.  Fine.  And this is where my campaign against John McCain and Sarah Palin come in, spurred exclusively by a post from Chris Bowser last night:

Taking the solid advice of Open Left commenter Will, rather than just complaining about this state of affairs, I decided to start running my own ads. Instead of feeling disempowered by narratives I can’t do much to change and messaging that doesn’t speak for me, now I have my own anti-McCain ads. The two ads will appear across the entire state of Pennsylvania, on about three-dozen different Google keyword searches for John McCain and Sarah Palin. It feels really good, too. Here are the ads: 

It’s my money, my message, my targeting. Based on the keywords and cost-per-click rate that I chose, Google estimated that my ads will result in 25 click-thrus a day, costing me a little under $10 a day. However, the ads will be viewed by exponentially more people and, because of the keywords I chose, only by people looking for information on the campaign. Further, as I learn what messages work and which ones don’t, if I want to fit daily talking points or the latest scandal, I can easily change the ad. Also, I can change the locations where I am targeting on a moment’s notice.

Great, isn’t it?  I was actually about to donate $25 bucks to Obama’s campaign two nights ago, but I’ve instead put that money into my own efforts.  Here is what I quickly came up with last night, pretty much biting off of Bower’s ad: 

As you can see, I decided to target Colorado b/c it’s close and will be a swing state this year.  Right now, I’m linking to FactCheck.org. So far in 12 hours over night, my ad has been displayed over 700 times and been clicked on 8 times in the Colorado region.  It has cost me $3.  Not bad for 30 minutes of my time.

You can buy in prepaid amounts so you don’t break your bank.  My first installment I put down $10 to see how far it will go.  I’ll be keeping a running update here on the progress of the campaign.

And if this is something other’s are interested in, maybe we can setup a thinktank here at Trans to create some even better ads.  Besides better text, we can also create videos and then put out a google ad that link to our video.  Creativity will be key.

Posted in Election 08, politics | 9 Comments

9 Responses to “My Campaign Against John McCain and Sarah Palin”

  1. Jwbillings Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Sarah Palins best friend shows us how to cook

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RlK0Xd4c2c&eurl=http://boingboing.net/

  2. jacob Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

    funny video, i thought it was a parody at the start… wrong.

    ——————————-

    poor allyson.

    neat little meta-campaign though ian. oh the democracies of the internets, and nice on targeting colorado. looks pretty easy to set up, i’ll have to give it a go. just need a catchy/smart headline…

    “McCain: Not Elitist, Just Senile”

  3. dr robert Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 6:24 pm

    Ian..I’m with you..
    more on that later.

    as far as a slogan..
    lets cut to the chase..

    “Vote Obama..
    not insane..”.

  4. ian Says:
    September 12th, 2008 at 5:21 am

    To go along with this, George Lakoff has a new article up titled: Don’t Think of a Maverick! Could the Obama Campaign Be Improved?
    http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1743

    Four years ago I wrote a book called, Don’t Think of an Elephant! The title made a basic point: Negating a frame activates that frame. If you activate the other side’s frame, you just help the other side, as Nixon found out when he said, “I am not a crook,” which made people think of him as a crook.

    The Obama campaign just put out an ad called “No Maverick.” The basic idea was right. The Maverick Frame is central to the McCain campaign, and as the ad points out, it’s a lie. But negating the Maverick Frame just activates that frame and helps McCain. You have to substitute a different frame that characterizes McCain as he really is. There are various possibilities. Let’s consider one of them. Ninety percent of the time, McCain has been a Yes-Man for Bush. Think in terms of questions at a debate. If the question is, is McCain a maverick?, you are thinking about him as a maverick, even when you are trying to find ways in which he isn’t. McCain wins. If the question is whether McCain is a Yes-Man for Bush, you put McCain on the defensive. People think of him as a Yes-man 90 percent of the time, and try to think of cases when he might not have been. This is not rocket science. It’s the first principle of framing.

    I think I blew my latest ad…

    [updated]

  5. ian Says:
    September 12th, 2008 at 5:27 am

    FYI…Jacob, or anybody else that wants to get into this, if/when you sign up, use the “Starter Edition” first. I “Graduated” to the “Standard Edition” last night and it’s pretty complicated.

  6. helmethead Says:
    September 12th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    Thank you for your great work. My family of 4 is planning to vote Obama. I am so gratefull for your fine work I will try not to mention stuff about lipstick except that Mr. David Bowie has worn it well in the past.

  7. ian Says:
    September 12th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    my results so far after 2 days:

    I have setup a daily budget of 3 dollars a day, so when I hit that limit, the ads stop running. For tomorrow, I decided to go a little different path:

    I’m interested to see how the results differ.

  8. Oriana Says:
    September 13th, 2008 at 6:31 am

    Ok So I guess my “Unity and Division in Contemporary US” sociology class at Columbia last year was not a waste. The professor may have been bad, but the material was great. Ian, we actually read the book “Don’t Think of an Elephant” and I ended up writing my final paper on it. The book and my paper were fascinating because I was able to combine both psychology and sociology. There is so much psychology behind political framing and the way politicians linguistically manipulate their speech.

    I just read over my paper I wrote on Lakoff and it reminded me a lot of what the book was about. Yes, he discusses the techniques of framing, but one of his biggest points he makes is that the conservative side is much more successful at using framing techniques to mobilize people than the progressive side is. They have think tanks that work long and hard at this, and in the end, their language resonates with more people. Or… in other words, conservatives are better at disguising what they really mean. One example Lakoff uses is that Bush was able to present himself as more politically central than he actually was. (Clinton was also good at that). The No Child Left Behind Act is a demonstration of this. The conservatives first presented it as a positive policy that was going to help lower achieving students. But this was only a frame they used to disguise the real intentions they had, which was to “kill public education,” as Lakoff puts it.

    I could definitely go on, but I won’t. Having reread my paper it brought up a lot of issues. It was definitely a good book and worth the read. I’m glad you brought this up Ian.

  9. dr robert Says:
    September 19th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    apart from any strategy issues..about

    how to win campaigns..

    let’s go for what Utah Phillips called the,
    most dangerous thing in the world..
    to the Powers that Be..

    it’s called..”the Long Memory”.

    so, this one I direct to Mc Cain.

    and you all, please look it up.

    “Keating 5″.

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