An outsider's look inside the electoral-industrial complex.
TV has zero effect. You can run ads all night long telling people to vote, and it doesn't work. Robocalls have a negative effect, they actually make people less likely to vote. Personal calls, some effect. What really works is having people go door to door and talking to voters. Preferably people from that neighborhood. People like to meet real people, as opposed to being shouted at from a TV screen.
Journalist Andrew Cockburn examines America's manic, multi-billion dollar campaign season and finds disfunction everywhere - from politicians and PACs leaping finance regulations to line the pockets of consultants selling massively ineffectual television ad strategies, to a media too busy counting cash to bother with accountability - and explains why the Sanders and Trump campaigns are finding their own successes outside the election-industrial complex.
Andrew wrote Down the Tube: Television, turnout, and the election-industrial complex for Harper's magazine.
Related Interviews
Christopher Ketcham
Jan 11 2023
The Blind Greed of the Ultra Rich Dooms Us All / Christopher Ketcham
Paul M. Renfo
Jun 10 2020
The dangers of innocent children: Strangers, families and the carceral state.
Danny Haiphong
Apr 13 2020
This was always going to happen: Lessons for the left on the loss of Bernie Sanders.
More with Andrew Cockburn
Andrew Cockburn
May 4 2019
The hollow centrist: Joe Biden's four decades working against the working class.
Andrew Cockburn
Sep 10 2016
