Shrum's firm paid $5 million by Kerry campaign

[quaoar]

Shrum is now 0-8 in presidential campaigns. Why does he keep getting hired?

http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/12/30/104050/09

$5 million for Shrum? And so, where/whom did the other $139 million that went to Riverfront go to? It's a racket by the K St and DC Consultant Class. The media consultants get paid fees, up to 15%, based upon the amount of TV ads they are able to place. This encourages them to buy the most expensive time slots, and spend as much as possible on TV ads. We saw it with the Dean campaign, it happened with Kerry's too, and it's going to continue to happen until we demand our own campaign reform in return for our financial funding of the Democratic candidate campaigns.


The riginal infor from the blog post comes from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35062-2004Dec29.html

[blm]

1. Shrum, the architect of the "People won't understand BCCI is the key to

ALL worldwide terror, so let's not tell them that it was John Kerry who investigated and exposed the international financing of terror while the GOP and BushInc were trying to cover it up."...you mean THAT dumbass Shrum?

He should stick to writing speeches.

[musette_sf]

2. I'm reading "House of Bush,

House of Saud" right now, and Craig Unger, who I believe is a fine fellow otherwise, does not mention Kerry at all in regard to BCCI.

It's the new revised paperback version, which makes one ref to Kerry of the sort of "we don't know at this time who will win the election".

So this was added, but not a word about Kerry in relation to BCCI.

[blm]

4. Unger must have had some motivation for leaving that out. Maybe knowing

the election would come down to the two of them and didn't want his book to be considered a political hit piece to effect the outcome.

Every book about BCCI has Kerry as a prominent figure.

[cally]

11. I don't understand your comment

I know you supported Kerry. Is Kerry involved in all the BCCI stuff? I know....why don't I know this stuff????

[blm]

14. Kerry is the one who investigated and exposed BCCI. He made the connection

when he was working on IranContra.

[elehhhhna]

3. Gosh. I could have screwed it all up for half that amount.

[InvisibleBallots]

5. Shrum is doing a great job

He's doing exactly what he is paid to do. Think about it.

[WCGreen]

6. "Nice job if you can get it...

If you can get it
Won't you show me how........"

[DaveinMD]

7. I ask this question a lot

I'm a direct mail consultant, but not one of the big boys. These guys keep getting hired and keep losing. Meanwhile, I won 70 percent of my races but can't get a targeted congressional race.

[John_H]

8. This is what's killing us

And it goes a lot deeper than the big boys. Work on a a couple of mid or higher profile campaigns and you'll run into a dejavu fest of the same stale-brained consultants, the same I'm-23-bvut-I-know-everyhing operatives,the same 50% chance of telling a message from a massage press people, even the same prom king and queen gophers over and over and over again. As a campaign person, you may know their names, you may know their pathetic records, you may have left a room shaking your head in disbelief that these people are left in charge of anything at all.

The trouble is rank and file dem donors have no idea that they're providing a living to these Mozarts of incompetence as well as subdizing a spotless record of defeat simply because these people big buds with Mignon or Donnie or whoever else.

Here's an even more ebarrasing factoid: I do PR in the private sector in the DC area, so naturally every month I get a few cold-call resumes accross my desk from people looking to get out of politics and make some money. If I compare direct counterparts from both parties, the rethugs will be 5-6 years older, have been better paid by 20-25 percent, have worked somewhere out of politics (which shows me that the GOP looks for people who have experience life outside of the coed dorm at princeton) and, even worse, show a better grasp of the media than their direct dem counterparts.

The bottom line to this too long post--is that the only way this racket is going to end is if the donors wise up, cut off the cash, and demand a change.

[DaveinMD]

9. I'm going to break through soon enough

Daschle losing helped. A partner at a big firm worked in his office. If Senate races wanted party support, they had to hire that firm. At some point, the party will wise up and spread the work around. If I have 2 Congressional races, I'll do a better job than the firm that has 30 of these races. They just don't give the personal attention needed to run individual campaigns.

[John_H]

15. "At some point the party will wise up..."

I hope you get a ton of work now that Daschle's lock on direct mail is gone (unless the guy from daschles office now works for reed) and I have a buddy, who you may even work with who says the same thing. But my view is a little less optimistic.

A lot of people are moving from the campaign and the DNC to the big firms. Apparently, many others will remain at the at the DNC or go over to the leadership offices. So it will look like this: Rupert Pupkin, one of the architects of Kerry's brilliant press strategy, has now been hired to run Reed's message operation. His former Colleague w/ Kerry, Travis Bickle, has been hired by a big firm. Thusly, we can llok forward to a dem message operation thatlooks a lot like the SBL response, which looked a lot like the response to the first two yesars of chimp's presidency, which looked a lot like gore's response to chimp's campaign attacks. And even better, the execution of that plan is going to be conducted largely by the same firms who have served us so well over the last 4 years.

II think we need to clean house from top to bottom if we're going to win a single seat in 06. And I think the only way that that will be done is if rank and file dems demand it.

[proudbluestater]

10. I could have been a GIANT flop for a cool one mil

[nascarblue]

12. Skull and Bones and $51 Million, that's why....NT

[JNelson6563]

13. Actually, if you think about it

he was a success. ;-)

Julie