I’d like to take this moment to write a little something about Tim Russert. As many of you know, Tim passed away yesterday afternoon at the age of 58, after collapsing at the NBC offices from a heart attack. Russert was the D.C. Bureau Chief for NBC, as well as the host and moderator of Meet the Press, television’s longest-running show, and he himself was its longest-serving host. Many of us really got to see him at his peak during this recent primary election cycle. After working in politics with Daniel Moynihan and Mario Cuomo for some years, Tim joined NBC and became its best political correspondent. His experiences, as well as his natural talent and innate intelligence led to sharp, accurate predictions and analyses, making the complicated world of politics accessible and understandable.


In this day where infotainment is the norm, where the news is often fraught with useless drivel about celebrity arrests and water-skiing squirrels, Tim was a voice of clear, objective journalism. He was never there to elicit a gaffe from politicians or pundits, but to make those people accountable for their words and what they meant. We sometimes forget that this is the purpose of the media; to uncover the truth and story behind an event, not to make the event itself. Tim Russert was the epitome of what political reporting could be, and should be.


To replace him is impossible; I do not believe that we will see a reporter of Russert’s ability, drive, intellect, or personality, or one who loves what they do so much, within the majority of my lifetime. However, we would do a great disservice to his memory if we did not carry on his lessons. It is now up to us to ask the tough questions and hold people accountable for their words, our Republican opponents and our Democratic allies both. If this country is to be the best it can be, we must always ask the difficult questions, we must always get the facts. Tim Russert would expect no less.



On behalf of the College Democrats of Wisconsin, I express my deepest sympathies to the Russert family, and his friends and associates at NBC and in the general media.

Labels: Media, Politics, Tim Russert

So, I'm perusing DailyKos today (yeah, I know, call me out on that), when a post catches my eye. Entitled "The Clinton 527". It cites this ABC blog entry for its source: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/02/new-pro-clinton.html

Essentially, the American Leadership Project (ALP) is established to attack Senator Obama, with a concentration of ads in Ohio. While not attacking the senator by name, the ads mention "if speeches could solve problems", which is a constant line of thought seen in many of Hillary's stumpings, especially recently.

ALP has a goal to raise $10 million by the end of next week, which is pretty much a $10 million donation of sorts to the Clinton campaign.

Barack and John Edwards had 527s formed in their favor earlier in this primary race, and both asked that those 527s disband, remembering the "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" that helped sink Kerry's campaign run. The question to be asked is if Hillary will do the same. Will Hillary Clinton ask ALP to disband?

Now, most people who read this blog are pretty sure of who I support for Democratic candidate. I don't see Senator Clinton asking to disband this 527. She needs a March 4th victory to keep her campaign afloat, and I sense that she may be just desperate enough to use whatever resource she can get, even if that resource is one as disdainful and suspicious as a 527.

My questions to you, the reader, are these:

Will Hillary ask ALP to disband, and why or why not?
What are the ramifications for the Democratic Party if this 527 is allowed to exist?

Labels: Caffertyeque, Media, primaries

Erik Opsal recently commented, jokingly, on his blog (The Hippie Perspective) that Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain don't care about black people (an allusion to Kanye West) because they skipped the debate at the HBCU (historically black college/university) Morgan State University. Although this was meant as somewhat of a joke, there is quite a bit of truth in it.

James Q replied to Erik's comment, saying
"It could just be the message they aren't going to waste their time doing 10293984884849202 debates before the race has really heated up...Taking this as meaning they don't care about black people seems just a bit off base...something I would expect Drudge to say (concerning the Democrats, though)."

I disagree with James Q. Candidates do debates in specific locations or of varying flavors when they want to target a particular demographic. For instance, YouTube debates target that elusive 18-24 crowd...you know, the one who somehow survives without a land line or reading a daily newspaper.

Sen. Edwards proved the importance of reaching out to particular crowds by appearing on an MTV.com/MySpace forum. He catered to the young/hip who care about more than boxers or briefs (read: Clinton's MTV experience back in 1992).

An interesting new development for this election cycle has been Spanish-language debates. All but one major Democratic candidate participated in a debate that translated all of their responses to Spanish, airing on Univisión. The channel planned to also have a Republican debate in Spanish airing a week later, but that was canceled due to a lack of interest: only John McCain agreed to the debate. With Latinos as the largest minority group in the US, you'd think that the Presidential candidates would want these voters to hear them out.

And now, with the major GOP candidates skipping the Morgan State debate, they've marginalized the second-largest minority group in the US. Hosted by PBS, the All-American Presidential Forums are the first in prime-time with a panel exclusively of color, and they both took place at HBCUs (the Democratic forum was at Howard University). Again, the message the absent candidates are sending is one that doesn't prioritize the minority communities and specifically the minority voters.

If the defense is that candidates have so many other debates they're doing, then why choose Reagan's Presidential Library, FOXNews (in Columbia, SC), and FOXNews (in Durham, NH)? Apparently Romney, McCain, Thompson and Giuliani would rather talk to the same people twice than talk to folks at Morgan State or on Univisión.

In contrast, the Democratic candidates continue to prove that they are the ones who can "Build the House." Howard University, South Carolina State University (another HBCU), the NAACP convention, the YouTube/Google debate simulcast on CNN en Español (yes, another Spanish-language debate), the YearlyKos convention (They get it. Bloggers matter.), the AFL-CIO Working Families Vote forum, Logo/HRC (on LGBT issues), Univisión, and so on.

If the variety of debates weren't an issue - if every debate were created equal - do you think the Democratic candidates would be spending so much time diversifying their debate schedule? When Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, and McCain did not appear at the Morgan State University debate, it wasn't a question of time or a question of how many is too many. It was a question of priorities.

Labels: 2008, debate, Media, primaries

Well Suchita beat me to the exciting conclusion of the Convention in the post immediately following this one. But I'd like to post some of the things I learned at the workshop on media outreach, because I think the DNC press person threw out a lot of good ideas that could improve our College Democrats chapter. I realize we would probably need volunteers to help with lot of the stuff on here (I'm definitely willing to take on some of it) and a lot of it may not be immediately feasible, but these are truly excellent ideas that may have the potential to help us turn our people power (from having one of the largest College Dems chapters) into greater political influence.

First thing, we should develop a media list. Who are the big important names in the Wisconsin media? Outlets like Wisconsin Public Radio, The Wisconsin State Journal, and The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel immediately come to mind. It's important to build relationships with journalists so that when we have a story we want to get attention, they already know who we are. This means compiling a list and regularly emailing them, not chain mail and solicitations, but really significant story ideas that we think they should be aware of. We already have relationships with the student newspapers (The Badger Herald and Daily Cardinal) but we need to maintain those. I remember many College Democrats acting as official spokespeople writing many an op-ed and letters to the editor in the run-up to the midterms last year and we should keep that up.

In addition to the mainstream media, it may be a good idea to reach out to the larger blogosphere. That means posting on community blogs such as Daily Kos and MyDD that are well-read and allow diaries. We should also compile the contact information of bloggers for many large progressive blogs for when we stumble upon stories of potentially national significance. But instead of merely happening upon stories, we should regularly compile news clippings. This doesn't mean literally clipping out newspaper articles but compiling links from regular Lexis-Nexis searches and posting them on our website so we have a sort of database of news stories significant to us. From this, it will be possible to send out regular "talking points" emails to keep College Democrats informed who may not have time to keep up with the news.

I know 2007 is an off-year, but something we should start to do (and will probably grow in importance as 2008 approaches) is to develop something called a strategic events calender. This means we anticipate news events like the anniversary of 9/11, veterans day, the state of the state address, important elections, and be ready in advance to issue press releases. This will help develop an official UW-Madison College Democrats message and gain media attention. In terms of elections, as part of news clipping projects we should be looking for negative pieces on opponents and incorporating them into press releases to media outlets. This will help establish a narrative, allowing us to define our opponents. This narrative needs to be reinforced and repeated over and over again. This is how John Kerry was branded a flip-flopper in 2004, through relentless Republican reinforcement which turned into a media narrative.

Most of everything I've mentioned could be achieved for free or at a very limited cost if we could find people willing to do some of the grunt work. We should clearly concentrate the most on gaining free media since there isn't a whole lot of money to work with. However, there are some forms of media outreach that cost money but for which the cost may not be prohibitive. Many College Dems chapters now produce regular podcasts that can be freely distributed via iTunes. All we would need is an iPod and some cheap recording and mp3 converting equipment. Fore more information, download the Powerpoint presentation on podcast production here. These podcasts would be helpful for regular updates to members as well as for sharing interviews we could do with important people (that we can get access to) and guests at College Democrats meetings. That brings me to the last 2 things we could spend money on. Attracting speakers to events and advertising in paper, on the radio, and on TV. Obviously those aren't very likely options unless we have a specific goal in mind and can obtain some kind of revenue stream.

So that's it, just throwing ideas out there. Leave a comment if you have your own ideas on how to improve our media outreach or if you want to help make any of the projects I mentioned a reality.

Labels: Media, Meta