Swing State Project

This isn't the first time I've written on the self-destructing Kaine campaign. And unless Kaine gets smart and fires his faith-based campaign staff, it won't be the last.

You see, there is a science to political campaigns. Tactics can be quantified and evaluated. Cognitive scientists who study the issue can demonstrate that Kaine's strategy backfires and will hurt the campaign with both swing voters and the base.

Yet Tim Kaine has rejected science and instead chose to embrace a faith-based campaign strategy. When the right does this, it makes strategic sense as cognitive scientists have proven. When the left does it the candidate is going to lose.

The great thing about a reality based understanding of campaigns is that by learning the results for different actions, you can avoid poor decision making. Even though he is 10 pts down, the Kaine for Governor campaign seems to think such an advantage is unnecessary.

The worst part is the way the Kaine campaign seeks to impose their disproven zealotry on the rest of the Democratic Party.

From today's Washington Post:

In February, Kaine took his message to the Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner.

"Sometimes our candidates have trashed the religious right, when what we meant to trash is a bad idea," he said, prompting more than a few hard-core Democrats to squirm in their seats. "We should never, never label people who are from the religious right."

It is one thing for Kaine to make an ass of himself and lose his gubernatorial campaign. It is another when he says the word "never" twice in reference to Democrats living in a reality based world.