Extreme rhetoric and political fundraising
In the wake of the violence at the Capitol on January 6th, I think it’s important for everyone involved in political life to reflect on how we got to that moment — and even consider our potential role in it. This isn’t an article promoting some sort of bothesidesism. I think it’s clear who owns the terror that was inflicted on the country last week. But such a significant event can rightly prompt self-reflection among more than just those most directly culpable.
The trend towards polarization predates the Trump years, but this president has been an extreme accelerant, to say the least. Beyond just hyper-partisanship, the last four years have been characterized by the breakdown of norms that have made behavior and rhetoric that had once been totally unacceptable, almost expected.
Political fundraising has not been immune to this. In fact, there are many that would suggest it has been a contributing factor. There’s certainly some merit to that.
Digital tools have empowered campaigns to reach a wider audience of potential donors. But as their reach has scaled, their message has become more simple — brief enough for a digital ad, an email subject line, a tweet. As competition for attention in those digital channels has grown, their message has often also become more extreme. Everyone on the receiving end of political fundraising emails or advertisements has experienced it. If you donate now, there’s a 500% match — if you don’t donate now, everything you care about could come crashing down at the hands of evil people who only care about the opposite of everything you care about.
It is hardly the same thing as inciting an insurrection. But it further numbs the recipient to claims that are increasingly outlandish, and diminishes the expectation that political messages are based in fact. If we can do something to help minimize that, I think we should.
Our focus at CallTime.AI is primarily on helping campaigns develop and nurture one-to-one relationships with their donors.
Our focus at CallTime.AI is primarily on helping campaigns develop and nurture one-to-one relationships with their donors. The intimacy of that approach (as opposed to one-to-many communication) can have a mediating influence on the tenor and content of the message. That doesn’t mean it is without its flaws. Too often there does seem to be a gap between what a candidate is willing to say in a personal conversation, and what they’re willing to blast out to thousands of people in their name. We hope to see less of that going forward, as political leaders consider the weight of their words.
For our part, as we continue to contribute to the political fundraising space, we’ll recommit to always asking ourselves: is what we’re building helping to deepen the quality of relationships to develop long-term capacity; or, is it promoting the escalation of bad behavior and heated rhetoric to generate short-term financial returns? Whether it’s a new feature, a new product, a new training, or other resource, we believe that what we make should help raise the public esteem of political leadership and deepen the trust they have in the political process. That’s our commitment, and we are grateful to all we work with who give us the opportunity to live up to it.
