Editing 1948: Campaign Fundraising Emails

Many politicians and organizations in the United States have taken to using email to conduct aggressive fundraising drives seeking campaign contributions. Signing a petition or expressing interest in a cause can lead to being added to a myriad of mailing lists for similar groups, all looking for support. This comic shows a caricature of the kind of inbox that can result from this. The emails get more and more absurd as the list goes on. For example, the last one combines a request for campaign contributions with the infamous 'Nigerian prince' {{w|advance-fee scam}} emails.

|A key factor in the success of a fundraising campaign is the amount of the donation that is asked for or suggested. Even if the donor is ultimately free to donate whatever amount they want, the initial 'ask' can have a significant effect on the amount donated, due to the psychological effect of {{w|Anchoring (cognitive bias)|anchoring}}. Increasing the suggested amount may increase the amount of the average donation, but it may also put some people off donating altogether. Finding the sweetspot allows the fundraiser to maximize the income generated.

Most modern bulk mailing platforms allow users send different versions of their emails to recipients at random. Using analytics packages, they can then determine which version of their messages is most effective at eliciting the desired result (such as making a purchase, reading a story, etc.) from recipients, or even from particular segments, and to refine future emails accordingly. Use of these techniques has resulted in fundraisers moving away from traditional 'round' numbers ($10, $25, etc.) to ask for more unusual looking amounts which increase the average amount donated, either by exploiting {{w|Psychological pricing|such effects}} as the "99 cent" phenomenon or giving those that ask an appearance of 'knowing what they're talking about' to give the potential donor the impression that they're good with details and wouldn't be overwhelmed by the pressures of being in office.

However, it would be unusual to use quite such a precise amount told them, which may actually appear cynical in its attempt to bleed the donor to a maximal amount, and put many off donating altogether. This is rather than at least the pretense to be coming directly from a more optimal and restrained need/capability calculation. The email then compounds this by stating outright that this is what they have done, and entirely sheds any of the veil of it not being calculated ''simply'' to manipulate the recipient (even/especially if it had not been recalculated to differing odd values for each recipient), plus explicitly suggest that someone other than the message author did this so no longer conveys much of any innate confidence and trustworthiness one might have had in the sender themself.

|This email, apparently from a candidate for the US Senate, takes a common populist approach of repeating particular phrases to imply that they will stand up for the interests of the common people against a system that is rigged against them, without giving any meaningful indication of what they intend to achieve. Not only is the mere statement of "jobs", without any kind of explanation of what problems they believe there are, or what they suggest doing about it, entirely unhelpful, they also seem to suggest that, despite them being elected, it would be everybody else's responsibility to solve it.

|Candidates often like to portray themselves as trailblazers for a particular community, who have persevered and achieved despite the odds. Normally, one would make a virtue of being the first ''from'' a university to do something, rather than the first to achieve something involving the university itself. Flying a plane through a university is risky, at the very least,{{Citation needed}} and depending on the definition of "through", could imply destruction of buildings or the plane itself, which might paint the candidate in an irresponsible light. The implication of "formerly all-male university" may be that the university was changed from being all-male in response to this candidate wrecking it with a fighter jet. This may also refer to the viral 2017 Congressional campaign ad of {{w|Amy McGrath}}, the first female Marine to fly an {{w|McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet|F-18}} in combat.

|The first few words here might suggest the writer is about to explain how, having initially been skeptical, Amy's inspirational message and/or character has won them over to her campaign. This kind of message is used to make a candidate seem relatable and credible. In fact, though, they just didn't know what she was talking about, as they didn't know what Congress was. Since they clearly don't know much about the subject, this would fail to lend the weight it is aiming to.

|'''Are you familiar''' with the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch? His work illustrates my opponent's plan for…

|Each of these are typical credentials that a candidate might cite in order to imply that they are hardworking and committed. However, it is extremely unlikely that one person would take on all of these responsibilities at the same time, and attempting to do so might suggest that they lack focus and aren't really that committed to any one thing. Also, it would be very difficult for someone to do all of these things simultaneously (e.g. running a small business while deployed in Iraq), so the person might come across as lying in order to impress people.

|This is another populist message listing off hot button topics. However, after starting out with some typical promises to fight fairly commonly despised things, it then becomes more controversial. It promises to fight the climate, with the peculiar implication that damaging the climate is the goal, and 'our children', which most voters would think would need protecting. This may be suggesting that politicians using these kind of messages are likely to be hiding bad intentions behind their attractive sounding slogans (or they may be just trying and failing to write a populist message without fully understanding it). The fight "against our children" may be a reference to a popular {{w|Bushism}}.

|A typical form of {{w|clickbait}}. (Don't read another table entry until you've followed that link! Reference #10 will shock you). It is not a reference to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZFjoX2cGg the Mark Rober squirrel obstacle course], a video that was released two years after this comic came out, but it may reference [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWU0bfo-bSY this now-private video].

|When a politician makes an offensive comment, it's common for the politician's opponents to send out fundraising emails pointing out the politician's offensiveness as a way of generating donations to the fight against them. Political strategists will often keep dossiers of such remarks to be used when needed in campaigning season. More recently, there has been a trend for trawling opponents' social media accounts for controversial comments they may have made several years previously, or even as a youth. Here, the sender's reaction and e-mail fundraising effort appears to be unusually delayed, as it refers to an alleged comment by {{w|Gerald Ford}} (potentially a reference to his infamous gaffe that there was "no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe"), whose term as President of the United States ended in 1977 and who died in 2006.

|The email apologizes for running months of attack ads against American actor {{w|Tom Hanks}}. Hanks is generally a popular and uncontroversial figure with [http://archive.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2008/01/06/nice_guy_tom_hanks/ a reputation] for being [https://www.ranker.com/list/tom-hanks-was-the-best/lisa-waugh nice and likable in person], making him an unusual target for attack ads. This implies that the sender does not even know who their opponent is, and has mistakenly targeted the wrong person, demonstrating some significant ignorance and incompetence.

|This e-mail alludes to [https://secure.actblue.com/ ActBlue], a political action committee that provides technology to help Democrat and progressive organizations to campaign and collect donations online. In reality, there is no ActBlue family, nor any "Jennifer ActBlue" who is the heir to its fortune; the name ActBlue is a portmanteau from the words "action", in a political sense, and the color "blue", which is {{w|Red states and blue states|closely associated}} with the Democratic Party in the USA. Even if Jennifer ActBlue was a real heiress, a candidate whose only hope to win revolved around seducing a wealthy woman would be facing serious problems.

|The opening line is designed to sound like spam for an {{W | Advance-fee scam}}. These scams typically involve impersonating someone rich, often a Nigerian prince, who claims to be in trouble and promises to share a large sum of money if the victim helps him by sending a small fee in advance. However, the second sentence of this email switches to sounding like a political fundraising email instead of an outright scam. This is either to establish a degrading comparison between flagrant scams and fundraising emails, or just to create a bait-and-switch joke. Another possibility is that the email sounds like it is a scam because it is a scam.

|A candidate who {{tvtropes|HitlerAteSugar|compares}} himself to {{w|Hitler}}, even when promising to be GOOD instead, will probably not get many votes. The title text does however conform to {{w|Godwin's law}}.

[[Category:Comics featuring Adolf Hitler]]

[[Category:Comics featuring politicians]]