Enough of the radio/TV ads and Facebook games, SD Dems need to focus on direct mail

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While all of us want to believe Direct Mail in political campaigns is a thing of the past, you couldn’t be further from the truth. When targeted at specific voters, especially likely voters, it is quite effective, and believe it or not, very affordable.

This is what the United States Post Office says about it;

Why use it?

Direct Mail is one of the most powerful tools to get your message to voters. Your mailings will be:

  • Cost–effective by mailing to specific areas or addresses, and the format can be as inexpensive as a postcard.
  • Personalized with messages and graphics to tell the story of your candidate or message.

As a person who has worked in Graphic Design and specifically direct mail for over 22 years, I have seen the positive effects of strategic direct mail campaigns.

The Wellstone organization, who is the leader in grassroots campaigns has said this about direct mail;

TIP #2: BEGIN WITH A GOOD PLAN

  • Strategic universe: Make sure you define who your targeted voters are using the voter file. If you have a mail consultant, he or she can help you figure out your universe.
  • Repetition matters: Your mail plan must include multiple contacts with targeted voters over a span of time building toward Election Day.
  • Complements other media: To support the campaign message your direct mail must complement all other communications – not just paid media, but what the candidate is saying on the stump, what volunteers are saying at the doors, etc.
  • Thoughtful timelines: Your plan must balance resources with repetition and timeliness of your mail.  Most voters aren’t paying attention to a campaign until the last 90 days. The challenge in waiting until voters are tuned in is that you will be competing against the clutter of everyone else’s mail; you’ll want to make sure you have a big enough program with enough repetition and creative design to break through the clutter.  If you start too early, without a large enough program to sustain consistent contact throughout you risk being forgotten or will not have the repetition during voters’ key decision time.

So what I can’t figure out is why the South Dakota Democratic party steers away from those campaigns, or has weak ones? The SD Republicans always use them, and quite effectively. Guess what? They also win.

The SD Democratic Party needs to wakeup and embrace the power of direct mail.

Michael Moore offers advice

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Morning After To-Do List:

1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.
2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn’t let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must “heal the divide” and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.
3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn’t wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that’s about to begin.
4. Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked”. What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You’re fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: “HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!” The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don’t. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he’s president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we’ll continue to have presidents we didn’t elect and didn’t want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there’s climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don’t want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the “liberal” position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).

Let’s try to get this all done by noon today.
— Michael Moore

Sanders was slighted. Shocker!

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I told people 2 years ago that Hillary Clinton would be our next president. I still think that. Though I am not a religious person, I do believe in a creator, and I don’t believe that our creator would allow a Trump presidency.

But enough of the gospel according to Detroit Lewis.

I voted for Bernie Sanders. I like him. I like his ideas. But as I told his supporters, he is unelectable. There has been proof over the past year that the DNC was working against him. It is no surprise.

I learned a long time ago what the established parties do to the best candidates. I watched them destroy the rising star of the party, Howard Dean. I still think if Dean would have become the nominee, he would have been president. He was transformative, progressive, passionate, smart and powerful. I sat thru the ‘meet-ups’ with state organizer, Ben Hanten. We were proud of him, and the glimmer of hope he showed to supporters. But the right-wing media and the corporate influenced Democratic party wasn’t going to have it. They crushed him.

But they didn’t just screw him once, after his successful 50 state strategy, they threw him away again.

I was actually surprised that he spoke tonight at the DNC. He looked good, and it still hurts as a ‘Deaniac’ that we wasted such a great opportunity. But I learned the hard way about the national machine, and how the ‘great ones’ get away. That is why I am so passionate about local government, here we can make changes, even when credit card company money may get in the way, our voices have influence and our actions are noticed. Not so much on the national stage, or even in the houses of congress or our state house. Just look at what the state Democratic party did to Joe Lowe. Another wasted opportunity.

I still think Hillary will make a ‘good’ president and I am happy a woman will be in charge for once. But she is no Dean or Sanders, and that is unfortunate. But she is strong and smart, something very absent in the GW Bush years.

Keep speaking out on the streets of Sioux Falls, where you can make a difference. Sanders and Dean will be fine and Trump will go back to being the ass munch he has always been.

Frank Denholm – Cameraman Bruce Remembers

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[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNkORwZ-dV8[/youtube]

Published on Apr 8, 2016

The Democratic Forum let Bruce Danielson remember his friend former U.S. Representative Frank Denholm who died in Brookings SD on April 7, 2016.