Time Magazine and Campaigning

Chapters 9, 10 and 11 of Bardes, et al., speak to campaigning. Time Magazine has two recent stories that a student of politics might find helpful in writing a paper:

From the March 20 coverstory:

An Eye On The White House And An Eye On You
Forget television ads. In 2008, candidates will watch your Web searches and cozy up to your friends
By JOSH TYRANGIEL

one example in the article:

Keeping supporters passionate is important, but to win elections you have to sway the undecideds. If they won't watch ads, at least one possible candidate thinks they might watch the campaign. "We've discussed the possibility of doing a reality show," says a Senate aide whose boss is contemplating a long-shot White House bid in '08. "The obvious danger is that it would have to be warts and all to be credible, and you'd have to give up some control. The upside is people get emotionally invested in the candidate." The aide emphasizes that no offers exist yet. "But," he adds, "it's inevitable that somebody's going to do it, so why not us?"

For more risk-averse candidates, the two parties are creating elaborate lists of voting-age adults and cross-referencing them with consumer and demographic information, all with an eye toward sending out the most tailored communications possible. "No one under 35 wants to hear the same message about Social Security as someone over 65," says Crawford, "and there's no reason why they have to. On one issue, you can make four or five ads targeting entirely different groups. It's cheap because you don't have to pay for airtime, and because I don't need to book a studio"-

From the April 3 edition of time Magazine, (posted March 26):

Republicans On The Run
As midterm campaigns gear up, Bush's party fears a backlash that could end its 12-year hold on the House
By KAREN TUMULTY, MIKE ALLEN

As we have talked about, disarray in one party merely makes opportunity for the other party -- the Democrats would have to capitalize on this. Alsoas we have talekd about, gerrymandering assists incumbents, which naturally assists the majority party.

Still,

In recent weeks, a startling realization has begun to take hold: if the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who masterminded the 1994 elections that brought Republicans to power on promises of revolutionizing the way Washington is run, told TIME that his party has so bungled the job of governing that the best campaign slogan for Democrats today could be boiled down to just two words: "Had enough?"

Then, a page or two later in the article, a paragraph we could write, having studied about the importance of constituent casework:

Republicans can take some comfort in the fact that one general rule about politics remains true, even in this difficult year: as mad as voters are at Washington in general, they are still pretty happy with the individual people who represent them. In the TIME poll, 63% of respondents said they approved of the job their local lawmaker was doing. That's one reason Republican strategists say they plan to battle the national tide by localizing individual races.

The article also discusses the need of Republicans to stand together -- recall that this is one of the strengths of the party that Hacker and Pierson identify.

The most obvious line of defense for Republican candidates is to point out their differences with the President, as the party-wide revolt over the ports deal amply demonstrated....
But party leaders are warning privately against taking that strategy too far. "If Diet Coke criticizes Coke, people buy Pepsi, not Diet Coke," said Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee. In an internal Republican Party memo provided to TIME, Jan van Lohuizen, a longtime Bush pollster, warns candidates tempted to distance themselves that "President Bush drives our image and will do so until we have real national front-runners for the '08 nomination. If he drops, we all drop." Another Republican strategist describes the problem for G.O.P. candidates this way: "Adding weight to the anchor doesn't help them."

Yes, you can use Time, or other newsweeklies, as your news sources.