'More texts! More emails!' Satire used to bash Dem outreach strategy
Much finger-pointing and theorizing has exploded among both pundits and within the Democratic Party following Vice President Kamala Harris' failure to win the 2024 presidential election — but there's one aspect that's hardly been mentioned, and yet everyone has at the back of their mind, wrote Alexandra Petri for The Washington Post.
In a blistering, satirical column, she outlined an issue that has become a real problem for Democrats: the constant, inescapable string of text messages and emails from the Harris campaign and associated PACs begging for money but saying nothing worthwhile. It's something even running mate Tim Walz joked about in his campaign farewell speech on Friday.
Or perhaps, Petri stated with some snark, the problem was there just weren't enough.
"Every time I got one of those on my phone or in my inbox, I felt fired up. And I’m sure that’s how everyone else receiving them also felt. So why were we only receiving (and this is a rough estimate; I think I am lowballing it) 346 of them per hour? That wasn’t enough. We needed more," she wrote. "Do not say to me: 'Your assumptions are wrong. Obviously, we tried the strategy of sending more texts than any human being could possibly want to receive from a candidate in the course of a lifetime, and that strategy failed.'"
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Perhaps they could have found a way to send even more, she wrote.
"Emails from the candidate. Emails from the candidate’s running mate. Emails from the candidate’s spouse. Emails from Barack Obama," Petri continued. "Where were emails from people with even more tangential relationships to the candidate? Their neighbors? Their dog walkers? People who had once visited an Airbnb right after they’d visited it and felt that it had been left in excellent condition? People who sat behind them at a screening of 'Top Gun: Maverick' and thought that their verbal responses were appropriate? If we had had my way, everyone in the country would have been required not only to receive these texts but also to send them."
Meanwhile, she fretted, the subject lines "weren't dire enough."
The Harris campaign's fundraising strategy proved prodigiously effective at its immediate goal of getting money, with record-shattering hauls of over $1 billion overall, with the night after the presidential debate alone getting nearly $50 million. Trump, notably, adopted a very similar strategy of oversaturating his followers, and struggled far more to raise money — but he ultimately managed to persuade more voters on Tuesday night.
Ultimately, Petri wrote, there is "only one way to find out, and that’s to try it! More texts! More emails! Midterms are right around the corner! We’d better start right now!"