Continuing from previous item.

There’s a more important factor. It’s not just the asking, it’s the location of the ask. The DeSantis campaign hasn’t appeared in my email, AND the DeSantis campaign hasn’t been using Substack. Haley used both.

The Haley campaign seems to understand that their buyers are disgusted with mass media. The DeSantis campaign is solely talking through the filter of mass media, where the message WILL be distorted and ignored and used as fuel for opposition.

Duane Jones had specific advice on this point.

= = = = = START QUOTE:

Advertising is like electricity. It has both voltage and amperage. Voltage is the media used: radio, television, newspapers, periodicals. And amperage is the power that makes the dynamo go, the power that puts the sell into advertising.

To get the most out of voltage and amperage you must consider the cost of current. For that reason it is important to confine the cost to a single market, or to a tight market group on which you can concentrate. Don’t pay transmission tolls over high tension lines to innumerable markets and risk resistance that may reduce the voltage and amperage.

= = = = = END QUOTE.

Engineeringly the electrical analogy is inexact, but it fits common understanding. The DeSantis campaign is paying a high toll for high tension lines with high resistance, trying to reach listeners who are mostly off the media grid. In Jones’s era direct mail was best to reach people without radio and TV, and it’s still best.

= = = = =

Footnote for clarity: This doesn’t mean I have any faith in Haley. I’m sure she will take the money and converge at some point. I’m only talking about campaigns as a form of entertainment with a bet attached, like lottery tickets. Once in every century or so, a politician does something right. FDR solved all the problems that government can solve. Ike genuinely tried not to create any new problems. We’re getting close to the century mark on FDR, so who knows….