This thread is inspired by the banner advertisement that I just saw above this very forum. It’s an ad for Ron Paul, but rather than the old-fashioned tactics of urging us to vote for him or to donate to his campaign at the time of our choosing, it instead urges us to take part in a “money bomb” on Sept. 17.
In case anyone doesn’t know, the idea of a “money bomb” is that everyone donates money to the candidate on a particular day. Thus the candidates gets big total earning for that day, which creates a news event. Both Paul and several other candidates did this repeatedly in the 2008 campaign. The most successful one earned about six million dollars. Afterwards, Paul supporters crawled around the internet, insisting that this massive success proved their candidate was on the path to victory.
Needless to say, he was not. Ron Paul raised a lot of money, but he didn’t get many votes. In fact, few candidates in history have spent so much money and gotten so little in return.
(As a side note, I’ll mention a change in rhetoric that’s occurred in my lifetime. When I was younger, it was generally assumed that there was something shady about a candidate who raised a lot of money. Of course candidates had to raise money, but they tried to do it as quietly as possible. Nowadays that’s been inverted and everyone publicizes how much money they’ve raised.)
In any case, do the money bombs serve any purpose, or should they go the way of Hamster Dance, MySpace, and other short-lived internet phenomena?
It’s probably related to the comparable rise in publicity over the money amounts involved in pro-sports contracts and film production. How many stories about Alex Rodriguez, for example, fail to mention his $275 million salary, or stories about Avatar that gloss over its production costs?
Maybe not for a big national candidate like Ron Paul, but for something smaller, like a run for a House seat, or a ballot issue campaign, an influx of cash along with publicity probably helps quite a bit.
If anything, it at least exposes the candidate or issue to potential donors outside the state. Maybe Joe Candidate has mostly tapped out whatever donations he could solicit from people in his state, but if the readers of a blog with a national audience all kick in a couple of bucks, it can really help.
The evidence that money leads to victory in general elections is very poor. The causation likely runs in the other direction. In primaries it can make a difference because if a candidate does not have enough money to pay staff they will have to drop out. Ron Paul is a candidate because he wants to raise issues, not because he can actually become president. The longer he is in the race the more time he gets to raise his issues, so he can be helped by more money. The great thing about money bombs is they are very cheap to run relative to the amount they raise, thus they are likely to be around in some form forever.
This is all a moneybomb is supposed to accomplish. Is the candidate more likely to get elected if he can send out a press release that says “Candidate A raises $1 million in a day?” I doubt it.
Maybe, because if he sends out a press release that says “Candidate A raises a million in a day”, it might get reported on, and then people who haven’t heard about him or are on the fence will say, "Wow, a million in a day. Guy’s popular. Better jump on that bandwagon, and he’ll gain support.
I think it is also a fund-raising technique. You could give your $20 now or you could give on Sep 19 and be part of Something Big. If it makes the news, then your part of that too. The buzz it creates isn’t just from it hitting the news; it is from all the lead up as well. It is a gimick that inspires a few extra donors.
By creating an event, some people will give money to a candidate who would not have otherwise just to participate. This is much like any other campaign fundraising event, except it can reach a wider audience, and you don’t need catering. Many people who contribute may be doing so sooner than they would have by setting a fixed date, and once people give one politican money, they probably won’t give it to his opponent during that election.
So this sounds like an effective means of raising money, if done right. Charasmatic candidates should do very well. It may not work as well with the Wall St. crowd as with true believers. Ron Paul could do much better with this than some other candidates. Miit Romney would be better off giving his campaign a lot of his own money on one particular day.
Libertarians and ultra-progressives have a credibility problem: they appear fringy in the primaries and unelectable in the general. But there’s nothing that says, “Establishment” like cold hard cash. Or so Ron Paul’s supporters may believe.
I think he has a wildly enthusiastic base, as well as a natural ceiling of support. But there’s always 2016.