I got an e-mail from Corey Platt, the campaign manager for Kay Barnes, who is running against Sam Graves in the 6th Congressional District. The e-mail isn't as bad as Howard Dean's worthless lying tripe, but it's not exactly stellar marketing. They are running a campaign for the US House, aren't they?
Maybe it's the office move cutting into available time, but e-mail to bloggers shouldn't consist of stupid press releases. And press releases that complain of recession and George Bush aren't exactly going to drive voters to change their minds.
The e-mail:
WILL GRAVES STAND WITH BUSH OR WITH MISSOURIANS?
Last week, Kay Barnes asked Congressman Sam Graves if he agreed with President George W. Bush that the U. S. economy is not in a recession, or if he agreed with the 74% of Americans who at that time believed we are?
Now, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released today, now 80% of Americans believe we are in a recession. (see article).
I know it's only May and news is slow, but does the Barnes campaign realize that George Bush won't be on the ticket in November? More important, does Kay Barnes believe that polling should determine how a politician votes? What if the polling is wrong?
8 in 10 Americans believe we're in recession? How could that be? Could it possibly be that a biased media has been harping on the idea that we're in recession? Would that explain the poll data? Since over 70% of the economy is consumer spending, and consume spending is based on confidence, perhaps the steady drumbeat of doom and gloom contributes to Missourians who believe the economy is in recession.
Unless it hasn't. Talk about bad timing. The news yesterday was that the economy grew in the first quarter.
That's my quick take on today's first-quarter gross domestic product
number, which showed that the economy grew 0.6 percent in the first
quarter. Now that's not a robust number by any means, but it's not so
bad given all the worry out there that the economy is headed off a
cliff. Before you declare a recession, as many economic pundits
have, shouldn't the economy, well, actually recess a bit—if only for a
quarter?
So if Americans believe that we're in a recession, it can only be because the source of their news is either incompetent, or willfully biased towards reporting bad news for some reason, perhaps to help one political party win at the polls in November?
So the message from Kay Barnes is that Missourians in the 6th Congressional District can be manipulated by fear and false numbers into voting for a Democrat. Her message is to believe a media that can't report accurately on economic data, and then to demand Sam Graves disagree with the truth?
Having seen the DNC e-mails, it's clear that the point of these e-mails is simple. If you're a Barnes supporter, they figure you're dumb enough to give money, but only if you really hate George Bush. Remember that the next time you hear about Republicans playing on your fears.
*If someone wants to forward me a stupid Sam Graves e-mail, I'll be happy to mock that too.