Political Science Discussion post comment/response to a classmates’s post (Ayinda)

CHAPTER 10 ESSAY

A campaign is an effort by political candidates (and their supporters) to win the backing of donors, political activists, and voters in their quest for elected office. Presidential campaigns require tens of thousands of volunteers nationwide. Professional Campaign consultants are then hired to help craft appealing campaign messages and conduct accurate opinion polls while leveraging valuable information about their constituents. According to We The People, campaign managers, media consultants, pollsters, and financial advisers, are also hired to coordinate the activities of volunteers and paid workers (pp. 383). Fundraising is also an important element of the presidential campaign.

Presidential campaigns require a massive amount of funding. Fundraising usually begins long before a presidential candidate enlists into an election. Politicians spend more time soliciting for donations than engaging in any other campaign activity. Presidential campaigns have at least six different sources of funding (We The People, pp. 393).

Special interest (lobbyists/PACs) money goes towards raising and spending money to elect and defeat candidates. Most PACs represent business, labor or ideological interests. Presidential candidates then begin the activity of polling.

Presidential candidates utilize opinion polling in order to gain the necessary information to craft campaign messages and strategies. Polling is also used to assess the candidate strengths and weaknesses and those of the opposition, and to measure voter responses to the campaign (We The People, pp. 386). The nomination process has changed over the past few decades, from the primaries to national political party conventions

Nominations of presidential candidates were first made in caucuses of a party’s members of Congress. This system was replaced in the 1830s by nominating conventions, which were designed to be a more democratic, deliberative method of nominating candidates.

Contemporary conventions merely ratify a party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominations, although conventions still draft the party platform and adopt rules governing the party and its future conventions.

To conclude, there were several lessons learned from the 2012 presidential elections as well as 2016 presidential contest. In the 2012, election, more working class white and younger voters leaned toward the democratic party. Also, Obama combined both grassroots and a mass media campaign. In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump won the presidential election without winning the majority vote; however, Trump received an extensive amount of free media coverage through-out his campaign even if the picture painted of him was negative. Clinton on the other hand, was admired for her ambition, but voters found her to be dishonest.Clinton attacked Trump for using explicit language and sexually demeaning comments towards women, but when her husband Bill Clinton was in office she attempted to discredit women that accused him of the same immoral practice. In my opinion, gender issues also derailed her campaign.

My suggestions for both Republican and Democratic candidates for president in 2020, would be this: run your campaign and don’t get involved in personal insults, character attacks, and arguments displayed by the media. This sort of campaign distorts the message that you are attempting to get across to your constituents. Due to Trump and his party shenanigans, the dynamics of the 2018 congressional elections scheduled for November, currently favors the Democrats.

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