(May 3, 2018 03:51 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: .... he/she calls you on your phone, and then what you hear is a recording? Well I got that tonight. We have a provincial election coming up soon. For me it was distasteful just because IMHO it's not only insulting my intelligence but I'm also thinking 'do people really fall for this stuff?". No way in Hell was this call sincere in my mind, for me it reeks of a psychologically manipulative tactic. I was going to vote for that party (Liberals) but after that call I no longer feel it's possible for me to do so. Leaves me with no one to vote for as the other parties have failed to put forth quality candidates to take over the leadership (Premier) of the province IMHO.
Is this what politicians think of us....easily swayed, duped, cajoled, etc? Not impressed with an obviously dubious phone call.
Robocalls seem to have become a standard feature and multi-party indulgence of Canadian electioneering, despite the fraud and scandal revolving around such back in 2011. (I.e., if not for so many voters having chucked their landline phones, more of them would have routinely encountered that tacky mode of romancing from all major campaigns in recent years, or will in the future.)
There's an attempt nowadays to distinguish between "campaign management" as those who carry out strategy and "political consulting" as those who devise and establish the plans executed. But whatever the current distinctions, the administrators of a campaign are largely operating in a generalized reality where originally concrete and particular voters are abstracted into idealized, quantified, data-classified entities to be persuaded by evolving statistical models / tactics and traditional gambits.
Even though for the sake of saving face a candidate may intermittently give the impression that they're in charge of and closely monitoring their campaigns (like the public hand-waving of overruling a staff decision)... They're still often in the same position as an average citizen hiring a lawyer to represent them or paying a trainer slash physical therapist to order them around like a drill sergeant; or a nouveau entrepreneur handing over promotion of her product to the expertise of an ad agency / firm.
While the candidate can certainly intervene and even outright fire high-ranking campaign supervisors (or encourage them to resign)[*], usually the latter have gotten to where they're at in the first place because they have a skill-set for masterfully massaging and persuading the whole host of egos operating under their grooming gaze. From financial donors to volunteer staff to paid advisors to especially the candidate (him/her)self.
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[*]
Trump did an unconventionally robust amount of that.
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