It’s back-to-school day for government employees (have fun clearing those inboxes, kids!), and it’s make-sense-of-the-shutdown day for the rest of the political world. (Hint: It’s Obama’s fault! Actually, I’ll go with the idea that it’s the fault of a deep desire to reject modernity.)
As the political parties assess the shutdown/debt ceiling fight and its effects on the political landscape, a lot of Democrats are perking up at the possibility that Republican congressmembers who looked unbeatable a month ago might be more vulnerable than they appeared. We’re not looking at blood in the water just yet, but Dems are going to be fundraising like crazy in the weeks to come — and I bet we’ll see some challengers jump in to take on Tea Party types who represent districts that just became more competitive.
So look for plenty more emails like the one that arrived earlier today, urging Democrats to donate to the DNC so that the party can fight for swing districts. Turning the message into one huge graphic (reproduced to the right; full-size version here; landing page here) isn’t usually a good practice (big images can be hard to view on mobile devices, for one thing, and can also trigger spam filters), but in this case I have a feeling they can get away with it. With the Democratic grassroots disgusted at their opponents, I suspect that a clean and simple visual message like this will see a good response. Also note the heavy emphasis on visuals on the DNC’s Facebook page — the party committee has caught on to the power of imagery in the current communications environment.
I’m sure that the Tea Party groups will be trying to raise money like crazy, too, but how much of that will go to primary challengers taking on incumbent Republicans? Plus, a lot of these independent groups seem to be good at raising money but not so good at funneling it into something other than their own operations. Dems, by contrast, are more united than I’ve ever seen them, and pretty damn fired-up too. 2014 might just be interesting than previously planned….
– cpd