The Email McCain Could Have Sent
by Patrick Ruffini :: July 11th, 2007 1:35 amThis evening, I got an email from John McCain filled with typical political happy talk like “Though we have a long, hard road ahead of all of us, I know that with your help, we will prevail,” and “Together, I have every confidence that we will be successful.”
I certainly don’t feel any outsized affection for Senator McCain, but I sincerely believe he missed an opportunity to make history tonight. To really engage his supporters in a valiant comeback attempt, to give them ownership of the campaign, and to maybe — just maybe — set in motion some momentum that could have gotten him back in this. It’s a strategy that will take guts — a willingness to publicly put the very survival of the campaign on the line (as though it isn’t already).
If I believed there was any hope of this strategy being tried, I wouldn’t post it, because Lord knows this doesn’t reflect my personal preferences in this race. But it’s clear that after today’s rearranging of the deck chairs that it won’t be. So here goes.
Here’s the email McCain could have sent:
Subject: Your Decision
From: John McCainDear _______,
You may have seen the news.
In recent days, we have had to make some tough choices so that our campaign could continue. There is no shading the truth that the past few weeks and months have been difficult ones for our campaign.Campaigns are a long road with many peaks and valleys, victories and defeats. If I have let you down along the way, the responsibility is mine, and mine alone.
Here’s what this news doesn’t change. I’m here, continuing this fight,because victory in this struggle against fanatical jihadism matters more than victory in any campaign. I ran for President because America needed to hear straight talk — and not comforting platitudes — about Iraq. I’m running because wasteful pork barrel spending has gotten so out of control it’s made me ashamed to be a member of the United States Congress, and I want to do something about it.
If this is what you believe, will you stand with me?
In a few days, our campaign will confront another tough choice: whether to take Federal matching funds for the primary campaign. Doing so would allow us to continue as a campaign through Iowa and New Hampshire. It would certainly relieve some of the need to fundraise, so I could spend more time in VFW halls and coffee shops, sharing my vision for America.But it would come at a steep cost. Should we succeed, we would face a Democrat nominee able to raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars — with almost no money in the bank. Our campaign would not be directly able to respond to the inevitable attacks or build the organization needed to win a general election.
The moment of decision is now, and the choice is stark. To ensure thatour campaign is able to compete with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama free of Federal limits, we need to raise $1 million online by midnight on Saturday.
http://www.JohnMcCain.com/Decision
The future of this campaign is in your hands. Should we not have enough support from our online community to continue without matching funds, I will abide by that decision, and any amount you contribute towards this effort will be refunded. But if we do meet the goal… we will have shown the country that our campaign is strong enough to meet this key test of strength. And we will have taken that first step on the road back to victory.
http://www.JohnMcCain.com/Decision
I eagerly await your verdict. Please visit JohnMcCain.com/Decision in the coming days to track our progress towards the $1 million goal… and the decision about the future of our campaign.
Sincerely,
John McCain
I think I know what the internal objections would be. What if we fail? (Like the campaign hasn’t failed spectacularly already.) What if we’re stuck taking matching funds? (That seems to be what they’re steeling the press for, and frankly, they don’t seem to have a choice.) There’s NO WAY 1, 2 or 4 emails before the deadline can generate that amount of cash. (Doesn’t matter. Earned media would do it for them. This is newsworthy and would get repeated on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. Every McCain supporter — not just the ones online — would come out of the woodwork for a chance to make this decision, and the serious ones would be glued to the page to track the cash that came in.)
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I would frankly question the Senator’s leadership if he wrote the lines suggested:
“The future of this campaign is in your hands. Should we not have enough support from our online community to continue without matching funds, I will abide by that decision, and any amount you contribute towards this effort will be refunded.”
Conviction goes a long way past politics - my friend Patrick - sometimes it even wins! It’s July everyone. It’s July 07!
With all the Respect,
Ali A. Akbar
aliakbar.net
Oh yeah, and Patrick - would you mind coming out with a statement:
“I was wrong about my assessment regarding the online advertising of Senator McCain’s President Campaign. There are in fact ads all over the internet still, including my website.
Like him or not - the Senator is creating new headway for New Media.”
;)
I think the letter might be a bit better received if there were spaces after the periods and commas.
But that’s just me.
[…] You can’t get away with that online. Every reporter is on your list. But that liberates you in a way, because email becomes a primary and public communications medium, and you get to use it as a strategic instrument of the campaign. That’s why I wrote that email that could’ve been from the McCain campaign. Most emails use proven marketing techniques to juice response to a boilerplate message. What I’m talking about is different: using the Internet as the steering wheel for the overall campaign. Online, people don’t care about tools, tactics, or techniques. At the end of the day, even bloggers don’t care if you’re on Twitter or MySpace. That’s why posts about the trade like this one get very little coment traffic. What they do care about is your message, your strategy, and your candidate. Give them an opportunity to directly access that and shape it, and you leave behind the world of direct mail incrementalism and enter an entirely new orbit of effectiveness. That’s why Fred (and not a staffer) is his own blogger outreach guy. […]