Timing Matters

In state and federal politics, what matters is how the subset of people who actually vote feel about their electoral choice on a small range of days in late October and early November, once every two years.

When public opinion is stable, this is no big deal. But, when public opinion is volatile and has lots of almost random noise variation from day to day and week to week, timing becomes critical, because some tactics are more effective at some times than others. When that happens, improbable things that don't reflect the typical or average views of the populace can prevail.

Mid-term election day is about two and a half months away, with mail in ballots going out in October.

The drumbeat of hits against the Trump administration has been relentless, pretty much from the day that he was elected, and mostly in "own goal" and "run on errors" situations that were easily avoidable. There has been one atrocity after another.

Today, Manafort (Trump's former campaign chairman) and Cohen (Trump's former lawyer) were convicted of serious corruption charges, while a California GOP politician and his wife were indicted for campaign finance violations.

The trick for a campaign strategist is to get the timing right. 

Tee public can only think about so many issues at once. If too much happens at once, only the greatest outrages will get notice and the rest announced at the same time will be ignored.

The public has a short memory. If something happens too soon, it may be forgotten. 

If something happens too late, it may not be in time to make an impact. For example, in Colorado, a very large share of all ballots have already been cast on election day, so news then has little impact.

Bad news to spur people to action, has to be balanced against good news like a special election win or near win in a district that should have been unwinnable in normal times.