Does everyone know what the Friday dump is? It started in Presidential administrations during the development of the TV age for covering politics. It was discovered that like anyone, journalists hate hanging around doing real work late on a Friday, so their most fervent hope on the White House beat is that they will "close the lid" and declare the newshole from them finished for the day. Scribes scatter, the real nefarious shit starts happening in the Oval Office, and we settle in for Bill Maher and a beer.
Taking advantage of this propensity to ignore potential news on a Friday, administrations learned to release bad news they had to put out, on Friday afternoon. It was hoped that everyone would look at the large "dump" of paper on their desks and say "nope, that's a Monday story." Monday would come and it would be time for Monday's news, not Friday's. So whatever was in that dump, gets passed over or given the short shrift in the news cycle. Bad news goes out, and dies there.
Needless to say, this technique has filtered down, and perhaps always existed informally anyway. But you rarely see candidates rather than incumbents do it. Maybe because Merkley has electoral experience, he knows the rules of the game already and is keen to play it. But last weekend Merkley clearly tried a Friday dump--but he also mixed in a diversionary attack on Steve Novick, as insurance to drive the cycle even farther away from his own release.
Well of course he didn't literally confees it, but after weeks of speculation based on the testing of negative personal attacks in his polling, apparently Jeff Merkley has taken the advice of DC masters and his campaign management, and gone Kitchen Sink Negative on Steve Novick.
I mean, is there one big consultant's manual on what to do when you fall behind in a race? Hillary realizes she has to tear down the frontrunner in order to have a chance at winning, so her argument for the Presidency has devolved into Reverend Wright, Profesor Ayers, flag pins and Louis Farakkhan--none of whom appear to be involved in the most pressing problems America faces (unless it's the admittedly serious problem of dumbassery of our political process and the rancid media who promote it).
And now here we have a major, highly rated polling outfit showing a near supermajority of Democrats ready to decide, and Steve Novick is pacing the field. What does third place candidate Jeff Merkley do? Start attacking with the help of uninvolved third parties--except this time, Steve's the bad guy EVERY TIME! Barack, Hillary, Bono...ironically the only traditional negative-association attack Merkley uses is Ralph Nader, who to many Democrats is now more radioactive than Wright and Minister Louis put together.
Let there be no doubt that the rest of Merkley's poll questions, that tested how he was doing against Novick in the primary, said exactly the same thing as SUSA--if not worse. This isn't frontrunner tactics, this isn't even even-up tactics. This is what they would call in backgammon a "back game": you're pretty well screwed from winning on the numbers; you're too far behind. So you sit near your opponent's goal and try to pick them off, rather than moving your pieces forward. It only rarely works, but a small chance is better than no chance, so it's what you do. Sound familiar?
Until now, Merkley had only chosen to get upset about Novick's strong words in forums and through bloggogates. But reproduced for you below are at least two of three new videos going right after Novick for his sharp tongue--and what happens when it gets tied.
(Definitely worth the discussion, and I'll get to a response soon. For now, just read... - promoted by torridjoe)
Many Novick supporters have taken exception to the claim that Novick has "gone negative." TJ offered this distinction between what Novick has done, and actually going negative:
Lying, misleading and bringing up things that are not relevant to the campaign are negative tactics. Explaining why you're a better candidate than your opponent is not.
Negative campaigning is trying to win an advantage by referring to negative aspects of an opponent or of a policy rather than emphasizing one's own positive attributes or preferred policies.
You didn't just cite a Wikipedia entry that notes it is unreferenced and unverified, did you? :) Wiki is by no means a dictionary.
Fight! Fight! Fight! TJ blasphemed the infallibility of Wikipedia, an injustice that could not stand. To defend Wikipedia's honor, I went to the PSU library and got my hands on something containing "professional editing," specifically a book called Negative Campaigning: An Analysis of U.S. Senate Elections. It seemed like a relevant title. Here's its definition:
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