I’m not sure if I understand the OP question. Worried about what? That the Harris campaign not funneling millions into charities reflects poorly on her? That not doing so reduces her chances of being elected? Neither strikes me as particularly likely.
No, not at all. I think it’s a giant waste of money. For what. Are there any stats or proof 5000 text messages caused one person to change their mind?
Or 2 ads an hour, on TV change a vote?
Or 1000s of billboards?
I’m not sure about the on the ground campaign places are all the necessary. Organizing can be done electronically now.
Fine, but I don’t see how that’s worrisome, unless you think wasting money inherently negatively impacts the Harris campaign (in which case, you should look at her opponent’s books) or you’re the type to find it tragic when someone accidentally spills some champagne. Or maybe it’s a “what about the starving kids in Africa” thing?
None of that.
I just think it’s not necessary.
I don’t make the rules, tho’.
It’s apparent that candidates with far more campaign money than their opponents can use it effectively with advertising and ground campaigns. It’s not a sure fire means of winning but it works often enough.
How much more money is needed? What difference does it make in close races? Those matters are difficult to quantify but it doesn’t change the need to keep up with the opponent in available funds because it makes a difference when the other side has significantly more money than you do.
I never said the amount was the problem, if it means one campaign has $10 the other has $5, ok the the $10 guy can buy more poster board.
I’m saying the sum total is a crying shame.
In a hotly contested race if neither spends a dime both will be covered by the press, probably equally.
I just don’t get how the amount got so expensive.
If money in politics didn’t matter, then there would have been no reason for the Supreme Court to rule in Citizens United and McCutcheon as they did. They wanted it to matter, so now it matters. And until those abominable rulings are undone, then everyone must play by the rules that money in politics matters.
It sucks, but we didn’t do anything about it when we could have, and now we must live with that consequence.
If they did not spend those millions on ads, how would the low information voter know anything about the election? Instagram? TikTok?
Okay, then I’d say you have nothing to worry about, because the thing you’re thinking about is vanishingly unlikely to lead to substantial negative consequences.
“They gave away other people’s money to their own causes without asking, instead of using it to win the election!!”
It is just that simple.
It got so expensive because TV ads work and are expensive. The amount is the result of that race to keep from falling behind. Nobody is voluntarily going abstain from spending on TV ads so the press treating all sides equally if one side has a spending advantage.
And it is the TV advertising. It’s way more expensive than billboards and newspaper ads. Without television they’d be spending 10% of what they do now.
The best use of the money (and I think Harris is using it that way) is for voter registration drives and get out the vote activities. I agree that wall-to-wall TV ads are useless and so are direct mailings. Another thing will be the army of lawyers and other people around to fight the inevitable court challenges and to fight voter intimidation. The Repugs know that if everyone votes they don’t stand a chance.
I note that Texas is trying to prevent voter registration drives.
While we have a lot of conventional political science wisdom about the effectiveness of TV ads (they’re pretty marginal), I will point out that this comes with a massive asterisk that we’re in a completely unprecedented election where the candidate was replaced extremely late with a relative unknown where a large swathe of the country is unfamiliar with the character and direction of the candidate. In this context, TV ads could actually be orders of magnitudes more impactful.
It might for an interesting last minute play though. Think about it, on the eve of the election Kamala steps forward and acknowledges how so much money, yada, yada, yada,…’ We’ll be donating today x percent of our war chest we set aside, to…numerous veterans, the poor, disadvantaged children, etc, because we share the taxpayers opinion, ‘It SHOULDN’T be all about the money, so we’re making the change we’d like to see starting today! Right now!’
I can’t say for sure, but if I was appalled by both to some extent, unhappy with the choice or just undecided, it would go a long way to swaying me.
She’s got a good lead, and a big war chest. And those undecided few MIGHT just swing things.
I like that!
Would it be legal, though?
The money was donated for a specific purpose. I believe there are rules for what can be done with any of it that’s left after a specific campaign.
– there are indeed rules on spending it, anyway: here:
I don’t know whether your proposed donations might come under “supporting tax-exempt organizations”. That site gives a pretty short version; I’m sure a lot of this has been argued in greater detail by now but don’t know whether any campaign has actually tried to give significant amounts of campaign funds to non-campaign issues.
…if ads don’t affect voters much, that would mean that campaigns are wasting billions of dollars on every election cycle. But political teams clearly believe that these commercials are worthwhile. So if some academic studies suggest that TV ads aren’t influential, “are we wrong or are they wrong?” Gordon asks.
To find out, Gordon collaborated with James Reeder at Purdue University and Mitchell J. Lovett and Bowen Luo at Northeastern University. The researchers obtained data from Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG) on presidential campaign TV ads in 75 designated market areas from September to November of 2000 and 2004.
…They found that ads affected overall turnout in different ways. If a candidate increased their positive advertising by 1 percent, voter turnout rose by 0.03 percent. If they increased negative ads by the same amount, voter turnout dropped, but only by 0.007 percent.
“Positive ads have a much larger and significant turnout stimulation effect,” Gordon says.
Conversely, negative commercials had a bigger effect on vote share. Increasing such ads by 1 percent boosted the percentage of people voting for the sponsoring candidate by 0.025 percent. Positive commercials were linked to a more modest bump of 0.016 percent.
So positive ads get out more people to vote, but negative ads affect who they vote for. Do we want more voters to turn out if it means they’ll vote for Trump?