If you receive political fundraising emails, you know the end is near. Pessimism brings in the donations, the Wall Street Journal reports: "Donors and would-be donors are more likely to click on a fundraising email and contribute if the candidate highlights a recent poll that shows him or her trailing by a narrow margin."
For me, this creates a parallel world to the one where clouds of happy talk billow from campaigns' headquarters. I have been on the phone with a campaign staffer hearing how every sign points to his candidate's success while simultaneously receiving an email from the same campaign claiming that the hordes are cresting over the parapet.
Perhaps it's effective, but there's a larger point to be made about political fundraising emails: They are a bouillon cube of all that is awful about American politics - the grasping for money, the neediness, the phony plays on your emotion, the baiting, and reduction of anything complex into its most incendiary form. What makes these emails bad is not the breadth of their insult - you can opt out of receiving them, which makes them easier to avoid than a television commercial - but what it says about the people who send them. Here's the short version: They think you're stupid.
"Unless everyone from Michelle to you - and your neighbor - does his or her part, DEMOCRATS COULD LOSE," reads one from Tuesday from the Democratic Governors Association, referring to the first lady. Yesterday I got seven appeals from the DGA. Today, it's been three already. The subject line of one: "ARRG!"
"No matter what happens next (and we KNOW there'll be a next), you can do ONE thing right now to stop New Hampshire from falling into Brown's hands," reads one from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. "Give $5 or more now - before midnight - to stop Brown's bandwagon from stealing New Hampshire."
Here's one that addresses me as "Dear Patriot," and informs me that "left-wing groups are going all-out to defeat Joni Ernst in Iowa. And I'm sad to say that their efforts are paying off." Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, writing for MoveOn.org, is worried, too: "We're all in deep trouble." The ones from social conservative activist Gary Bauer are fun: "Click here now to stop Barack Obama's destruction of America!"
There are hundreds more like this beseeching and screaming in my inbox. Many of them look like ransom letters, with highlighted passages, bold lettering and scattershot capitalization. At the current trajectory of mushrooming calamity, I expect to receive a subject line soon that reads: "This email is coming from inside the house." Or maybe, "Donate to this campaign or the dog gets it."
Let's catalog the deceit. The campaigns are purposefully distorting the current state of things in order to take your money. That presumably is good training for getting into office when that becomes a politician's full-time job, but that isn't something we should take lying down. The poll questions candidates ask you in these emails are not intended to glean public opinion for the purposes of shaping policy. They're measuring how much you engaged with their emails and using your answers to figure out what issue will make you likely to donate when they send you the next frantic email about that specific issue.
