“she probably could have done better than she did. Her web site was a disaster, she didn’t make the media impact that she should have, etc. I don’t know why, but I suspect it was simple lack of organization.”

actually it was a lack of interest in Mckinney & the Green Party. is it realistic to expect more from a presidential campaign with a total budget of $240k, few volunteers and states ballot status. is a campaign at this level worthy of significant media coverage?

nonetheless, its a big improvement over 2004 candidate david cobb. and i suspect some naive Greens will view it as proof the “party is growing.” LOL

From what I saw of McKinney’s campaign, which was very little, it was a mess.

Of course, Barr’s was a mess too.

I’m not talking political philosophy here, but nuts and bolts.

If Barr’s campaign had been run as competently as Badnarik’s, I’d have expected him to raise $3-5 million and poll 700-800k votes.

As much as I disliked Barr’s message, that message should still have played well. It never got a chance to, because it never seemed to be about the message. From the outside, it looked like it was mostly about trying to out-power-tie, out-cigar and out-limo the power tie, cigar and limo Beltway types to generate an image of “credibility” that means nothing to anyone who isn’t actually already one of those types or desperately trying to be one.

Fred Collins and Barb Goushaw would have given Barr about a week to play that bullshit before they strapped him to a chair, showed him a truck battery and some jumper cables, and had a serious discussion with him about what those jumper cables were going to feel like on his testicles if he didn’t knock it off and get serious.

Unfortunately, instead of Fred and Barb, Barr had Russ Verney and Shane Corey, textbook examples of the “desperately trying to be” set.

I’m not sure McKinney had a shot at polling in the range that Barr could have, but she probably could have done better than she did. Her web site was a disaster, she didn’t make the media impact that she should have, etc. I don’t know why, but I suspect it was simple lack of organization.

Normally I know when ANY politician of repute (or even minor activist) is coming to town for an event, because I’m on about a zillion email lists, etc. for precisely that purpose. I only found out that McKinney would be speaking in Alton, Illinois — right across the river — the night before the event, and then only because a single local activist decided to call every number on a sheet he had passed around at a recent Green Party event to get the word out. I saw no pre- or post-event press on the event. Whether the failure was at the campaign level, local party level, etc., I don’t know, but that’s basic stuff that has to be kept on top of.

Glad to do it, I just wanted you to know how to do it for the future. Glad we took care of that, too.

Tom,

I agree about the speech. McKinney says much that is good, and says much of it better than the vast majority of LP candidates. She also has the courage of her convictions.

Actually, when I went to the Green Party national convention last year, I was undecided between Barr and McKinney. I asked her in person what specifically she wanted to say to Libertarians who were unhappy with the party’s choice of Mr. Barr, to win them over to support her instead.

She gave what was to me a rather disappointing, boilerplate answer – that she would welcome support from across the political spectrum – and went on to defend Bob Barr as a true fighter for freedom. Barr later returned the favor by saying he wouldn’t be seen on stage with people like McKinney.

Her “strategy” of intentionally ignoring the mainstream media seemed to me to be a colossal blunder, and the campaign website could have been a lot better – the one area of Barr’s campaign that was relatively well managed, more so at the end of the campaign.

In the end, I remained undecided. Had I actually voted, I still don’t know what I would have done even with the benefit of hindsight.

In most states, she was the closest thing to a libertarian presidential candidate on the ballot or available as a countable write-in last year. The LP should be grateful to her for doing its work when it fell down on the job, and seek a more formal relationship with her.