Jay Weber Show transcript 11-19-24 6:10am
A Bloomberg News analysis says political ads-do-seem to ‘buy a senate seat’...but they don’t really buy a presidency.
This is based on their deep dive into political spending this election season-
And the fact that Kamala Harris and the democrats raised and blew over a billion dollars. They outspent Trump and the republicans by 300-million dollars. And... oops.
Kamala Harris didn’t win one of the swing states where most of that spending went.
This is true. Yes.
There’s been a long-time believe that ‘money wins elections’...but that is quite often-not true-in local and state races....and it doesn’t necessarily apply in races for congress, either. It’s always great if you are the candidate with the most money to spend, but it doesn’t always ensure a win.
When you get into the senate and presidential races, however, the rule seems to apply more.
In my many decades of doing this-i find that it -is almost always the senate candidate or presidential candidate who spends the most money who wins.
I don’t even think it’s controversial to say you can ‘buy’ a US Senate seat here in Wisconsin if you put enough money behind it. It’s also why nearly every incumbent senator in the u-s senate wins re-election over and repeatedly until they retire or die: once ensconced in the US Senate, it is very, very difficult to shove you out.
Eric Hovde just learned that lesson in a year that set up great for republicans and republican candidates. If -anyone-was ever going to pry tammy Baldwin out of her senate seat-it was going to be Hovde. This year. Great candidate. Largely self-funded, so he was able to at least keep pace with her spending- which poured in by the tens of millions of dollars from big leftist donors and special interests from around the country.
Both parties know that the power of the incumbency is so strong that -once in office-it’s very difficult to flip these seats.
And so, in the senate races, whichever candidate spends the most money is normally the victor- and that’s almost always the powerful incumbent.
It also tends to hold for the presidential races, but the link is weaker between spending and winning-as the Bloomberg analysis points out.
You also need to spend the money wisely, and in this instance, Kamala Harris and her team members really didn’t.
And their mistake goes back to something we were talking about ‘here and there’ throughout the course of the election: how the democrats -once they had coronated Kammy-didn’t even think they needed a message.
They were certain they could simply flood the airwaves with anti-trump and glowing Kammy ads...and buy the win.
In fact, they were so confident in this effort, Kamala Harris and her team- and the other top democrats-actually bucked against the idea that the party needed a clear agenda.
No, no, no. Trump smears and re-inventing kamala’s public profile would be enough.
And it wasn’t. Because- gee- in a normal year, studies have shown that voters quickly start to tune out and ignore political ads.
In a normal year-they quickly become wallpaper.
But in a year in which the Harris campaign ran nearly a billion dollars in spending in just seven states?
Wow-the people in those states got bombarded with ads-and didn’t appreciate it.
The Trump team did better than the democrats this year-who- ironically-were boasting about the better ground game.
It turns out the dems -didn’t-have the better ground game.
Another revelation by those doing a deeper dive into how Kamala Harris campaign spent its money: they had so much of it flooding in, that they felt no need to spend it wisely.
This is how they settled on a plan to toss millions and millions of dollars at Beyonce and Eminem and Lizzo....and assume they could buy votes that way.
Yesterday the NY Post reported that Kamala’s campaign actually paid Oprah’s company nearly 2.5-million dollars for that silly, fake, town hall they did. This is more than double the initial estimate of one million dollars.
Oprah went all ‘Clintonian’ when she was asked about her million-dollar payoff...and said...I didn’t get paid a cent. Not a cent.
And she was lying: her production company was said to have been paid a million dollars to produce that farce of a town hall. The NY post now says the actual cost was nearly two-and-a-half million.
A huge waste of money.
And this is part of the much larger estimate of what the Harris campaign spent: it wasn’t a billion dollars spent. It was more like 1.5 billion.
And they still didn’t win a single swing state!
Wow. They were bad at this.
This compares to the estimated 720-million dollars that the Trump campaign spent. So, he spent half of what Harris did, and trounced her, anyway.
Those figures don’t include the spending by the outside interest groups who also spend on their behalf...but....when it comes to special interest spending-the democrats always flood under republicans with that, too.
Folks- in decades of watching presidential elections, this is a new one ‘on me’ ...and a ‘new one’ for the modern era, so far as i know:
The candidate who spent less than half. Half. Of what his opponent did, won.
So, what was the difference maker?
And this was huge: trump might have spent ‘half the money’ kamala did...but he spent quadruple or quintuple the time that she did...on the campaign trail...doing so-called ‘free media’ interviews. Spending three hours with Joe Rogan. Spending hours more with other lesser known ‘bros’ and ‘lunkheads’ with podcasts who spoke to a different group of voters...etc.
Trump is the king of ‘free media’ and he is the king of getting the most of our holding massive rallies...a few times a week...instead of doing five smaller campaign stops to glad-hand at factories or county fairs.... which is the traditional way of doing it.
Trump simply outworked Kamala Harris-by leagues-
And- got tons and tons more ‘free media’. He also had the more substantive message and was on the right side of all the most important issues for voters. In a way- Kammy never had a chance.
And she didn’t, because her team never put her in the position to ‘have a chance’. They knew she couldn’t riff like trump. They knew she couldn’t come off as ‘normal’ like trump.
They knew she couldn’t be trusted to do even the easiest of sit-down interviews.
She was genuinely as terrible a candidate as i suggested she was when they picked her.
Someone posted this on x-and it’s simply true: Kamala Harris didn’t lose because she didn’t do Joe Rogan’s show-she lost because -she could not do Joe Rogan’s show.
Do you get the difference?
It wasn’t a matter of making the mistake in not doing it.
It was she and her team knowing that she didn’t have the skills, the smarts or the savvy, to sit for a three-hour interview with Rogan.
This is about ‘candidate quality’. Not about ‘scheduling mistakes. And every democrat who is willing to be honest with themselves knows it.
Meanwhile-another wonderful side effect of Kamala’s ugly loss: Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons, and the Obamas are all officially ‘done’ as the figure heads of this democrat party.
Even their roles as democrats-emeritus took a hit this year that they likely won’t come back from.
What i mean by ‘democrats-emeritus’ is- the Clintons and Obamas kept being called back out of retirement to fundraise and tour and make appearances for Kamala and today’s democrats.
And this is routine in both parties.
But Bill Clinton really failed this time, and made several admissions and said several things that made Harris and today’s dem party look extreme and foolish-
And the Obamas clearly didn’t even really want to participate, but when they did, their tone was so elitist and scolding that they very same crowds they were supposed to impress-said ‘screw you. Go back to Oprah’s yacht’.
And I don’t think Bill Clinton cares. The fog of advanced syphilis seems to be fogging his brain...
And Michelle Obama also couldn’t care less.
But I’ve run across a few stories now that suggest Barry is ‘struggling’ with the realization that his era of influence is over. And everyone is saying it.
This guy has been historically popular in his party-and will likely continue to be in the esoteric polling that will continue to be done after all, he was America’s first Black president.
But as for influence over the party policy or strategy?
He can sit down next to bill and Hillary Clinton because no one wants to hear it.
photo credit: Getty Images
audio version of the segment here > Turns out Kammy spent 1.5 BILLION and didn't win a single swing state