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he doesn't even prescribe a solution, he says whatever the people there decide. his messaging has been laser focused on "america first" rather than being in favor of any faction and the only reason anyone thinks otherwise is because of his name.

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probably not, which heightens the need for more professional campaigns moving forward. the next statewide we shoot for will probably be against one professional centrist, not 3 of them splittling votes and making bizarre mistakes, its gonna be hard!

a frustrating thing about this election is that crowley didn't run an actual campaign. obviously that means it is frustrating we lost but it also means analysis is limited. how do you win a statewide in wisconsin, drop out and go on the news with tony evers for two weeks i guess is the plan?

im not going to pretend to be hyper familiar with the wisconsin boe site so it is possible there is a bit more but the last report was filed 8.3 and only had 150k of ad spend so i think that is at least in the right ballpark

Sunshine: Wisconsin Campaign Finance

i would also! a sad part of political journalism is the baseline inability of them to do actual post mortums like this; only gossipy bullshit. anyways im looking at hong's disbursments here (campaignfinance.wi.gov/browse-data/...), and 250k in ads of any kind just isn't enough for a statewide

campaignfinance.wi.gov

Discover insights into political campaign funding in Wisconsin with Sunshine - our comprehensive and data-rich platform.

i guess in short (and this has helped me clarify these thoughts so thank you) to me the problem for hong was a less professional than ideal campaign, with the absence of tv ads being a symptom of that rather than the cause of the loss

admittedly it is hard to fundraise as a socialist but it is part of professionalizing a campaign (as are i admit tv ads); although even there there are tradeoffs (what percentage of the "online ad spend" was actually donor acquisition for example).

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i suspect we are again in agreement here, gotta fight for every vote. still, there are constraints. fundraising has similar negative connotations to tv ads but if hong had an extra mil in the bank, even if she burned it on yard signs that probably moves the needle.

and sometimes brokeish campaigns couch their inability to buy effective tv ads on some sort of purity which is pointless face saving that only perpetuates these bad habits.

we are in total agreement here. i do think there is a self destructive trend in progressive campaigning that tv ads are somehow unclean and should be avoided on the merits. that is bad. tv ads are effective. they are also expensive and require a degree of density that can be hard for some campaigns

i did a bit of a longer response but the short answer is depends but no they dont

so it is hard to quantify the exact outcomes. still, i think it is really difficult to make an intellectually honest case that anyone but hong dominated the airwaves. its all a little fuzzy i admit but if we removed the names and just laid out the numbers most people would agree imo.

and obviously only a campaign can do that. now with hong it gets even more complicated because these aren't like aipac stevens ads where they actually want her to win the general; these are rga ads meant to help in the primary but not too much, so they make her look scary but anti trump

the other side of it is even harder to measure because ad quality can vary so much. it isn't easy but an outside group could produce a more effective ad for their candidate than a campaign itself. the traditional thinking is that the most effective ad is the candidate talking directly to the camera

measureable is a very complicated word in this kind of thing but there are two basic ways this comes into play. legally, tv stations have to charge the lowest possible rate for actual campaign ad time. it depends on a lot of different factors but back in my day this was about a 40% savings vs pacs

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they, like every campaign we will care about in the next several decades had various limits and constraints that htey had to operate in. its good to air tv ads but there are tradeoffs in these things and just saying "Buy. Tv. Time." is (while not totally wrong) shallow and incomplete (5/5)

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especially if your play is at a very specific age demographic (we saw clearly the more general attention the race got the worse for hong.) the campaign would have been better if they could have flooded the state with ads and a field team and digital ads but they couldn't. (4/)

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you can *maybe* buy 1000 points of tv in milwaukee or madison for a week with that. everyone is james carville on social media but it is actually an interest academic and practical question as to how to spend that type of money, what method, when, it is very lazy to go just huck it on tv (3/)

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and you have to correctly allocate your funds between field and various forms of advertising and staff, it is not the most obvious thing to do. i'm seeing about 200k of ad spend on the boe, i'm guessing there is at least double if not 500k more of that unreported yet. (2/)

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it is just very monday morning qb. if you have 1.4 million dollars running a statewide and outside groups (admittedly less effective and less cost efficient than self run ads but not nothing as we would all acknowledge with other outside groups!) are dominating the air for you (1/)

there were about 3 million dollars worth of essentially positive tv ads for hong, about twice as much as crowley raised in total. if tv time was the magic bullet she would have won running away. it's very easy to call losing campaigns idiots but tradeoffs are real and complicated on campaigns.

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obviously it didn't work but given the situation (mega normie turnout probably bad for you, but have to get youths out, outside groups handling TV and you don't have a ton of money anyways for an effective statewide ad campaign) i think it was reasonable

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tichbou @tichbou.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

while generally good advice this whole thing has become a little overstated. she had a 2-3 mil dollar (more than crowley) ratfucking ad campaign talking about how strongly she opposed trumps immigration policy. in a monetarily constricted primary they decided streaming had more bang.

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this is the ideal ballknower body. you may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

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tichbou @tichbou.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

hong is favored now imo if you look at what is outstanding (votes before her bad news cycle mostly)

tichbou @tichbou.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

aes winning by a small enough amount that you could plausibly argue aipac should have spent 10 mil more would be chefs kiss

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tichbou @tichbou.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

opposition parties just don't lose seats like michigan in environments with this kind of presidential disapproval, electibility concerns (for either candidate) are at best misguided worrying and more often deliberate bullshit

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tichbou @tichbou.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

we've got at least 5% more disapproval coming, mao wins michigan this year

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they should have started with the decisive bombing campaign, i dont know why they even tried the indecisive bombing

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it would be funny to trap her into this insane voice for the rest of her life; thats the first compelling reason to vote for her ive ever seen.

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dan biss not so much (obviously more tolerant than like haley stevens but still gets the scary red track aipac stuff etc). its easy to be tolerant of someone who either poses no threat/is not running against you.

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tichbou @tichbou.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

its the difference between a pro and an amateur. neera's career prospects for the past 30-40 years have depended upon the success of the party, everyone she knows is a party hack etc. magdi is in essence some lady who likes to argue online. the incentives are wildly different.

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wont do enough for lindsay's sister

tichbou @tichbou.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

i think there is exactly one individual endorsement in american politics that moves voters these days and he isn't playing in democratic primaries.

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the whole race only makes sense if there is some dark skeleton in barnes's closet imo

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false might be the wrong word, incomplete is probably more precise.

i suspect this will prove to be wishful thinking and false. it might take decades but there will be a time where israel is basically not a factor in our fp and i suspect that aipac will remain a widespread boogyman, israel will remain a prominent feature in conspiratorial discourse etc

gottheimer is a vicious pos but politics ain't beanbag these people exist

well they are doing it because they are bad faith opponents of him but also because he used imprecise wording (either casually but probably because it has some benefits on the margins) which creates an easy hole for them. probably still a net vote winner.

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