Part 16: - Week 8

Week 8



Alright, a bit late, but we're moving on to week 8. First of all, what are we going to be doing?

The answer is fundraise. Lots of it.



So first, let's move ourselves and our Money Man to California.



And now it's time to make some fucking bank. We have exactly enough stamina to do three fundraisers, so let's do that.







Ka-ching! This is why you focus on California. In total, in our situation, you can probably get about 100K more out of every fundraiser than we would have gotten from Texas. And that can add up.

So with those fundraisers, our week is over. Let's see what week 9 brings!



Ah, here we are. We just got our first interview opportunity! Interviews are... well, I'll just show you. We're off to Arkansas - but first, Michelle's turn goes as follows:

- She builds her Campaign HQ in Ohio up to level 3, and gets a Political Operative there too. We're going to have to invest in that state too if we want to win it, but it's not an immediate need.
- She goes to Kansas and takes the interview, which seems to have had a positive effect. Furthermore, she puts down a TV ad over her supporting Farm Subsidies. This pretty much kills the ad we put down in Kansas attacking her over the same issue, and it should also help in the other farm-heavy states. However, Farm Subsidies is a niche issue - I don't think using TV ads on niche issues is worth it. If you invest that kind of money, put it in an issue that 1) you have a strong established stance on and that 2) is important in very many states.
- Finally, she just goes to Florida.

Now, we're off to Arkansas!



This... isn't great. I think? I have a lot of things that I don't quite grasp about interviews, and I'll tell you what those are after we're done with it.



The interview has a simple format. We get a short intro.



Then, the interviewer asks a question.



We're then given a certain amount of answers, depending on our Intelligence stat, and have to pick the best one. We have a time limit of 60 seconds to do this.

- We stop subsidizing marriage entirely. The bigger problem is that we give such generous legal and tax benefits to married couples. I think that the government should stop subsidizing marriage entirely. However people choose to live, gay or straight, single or married, we should treat them the same.
- Marriage is between a man and a woman. I simply feel that marriage should remain between a man and a woman. And almost every voter I've spoken to feels the same way.
- I would support civil unions. I believe that gay couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples, and I would support civil unions that are treated the same as marriage under the law. But the word 'marriage' is a powerful one for many Americans, and fighting over that has caused a lot of unnecessary strife.
- Any couple should be allowed to marry. I believe that any couple who is willing to make a committment should be allowed to marry. Anything less is homophobic and discriminatory.

Now, what is the "best" answer? Well, that's a good fucking question. From what I can tell, answers can appeal to the left, and the right, and can raise or lower issue importance and rating, nationwide. For instance, "civil unions" appeals to both left and right, and that's it. "Between man and woman" appeals to the right stronger and doesn't appeal to the left by the same magnitude, and slightly raises the importance of Supporting Gay Marriage. "Any couple should be allowed" appeals to left, doesn't appeal to right, slightly raises importance and also makes Dems support it more and Reps oppose it more, slightly. Finally, "stop subsidizing marriage" appeals to nobody and raises the importance of the issue.

Note that that doesn't explain which answer is the best for us. Should we appeal to our base, or should we find the meaningless platitudes? I don't know. Personally, I appeal to the base, so I pick "between man and woman".



We're then given another question.



And need to pick another answer.

- If you can't beat them, join them. I say we give in to them. They're willing to fight to the death, and most Americans I speak to get annoyed when their Wi-Fi doesn't work. Clearly, these guys are doing something right.
- It's not our problem to solve. Americans don't have the appetite for another war in the Middle East. As President, I'd focus on terror threats closer to home. We'll let the folks over there deal with ISIS.
- It's time to send in the military. Let's show some spine. We need to engage ISIS where they operate. It's time to send troops in. We'll bring democracy and freedom to the region, by force if necessary.
- We'll train and equip allies in the region. We must never back down from ISIS, or groups like them. But we've seen the cost of putting our soldiers in harm's way. We should continue to cooperate with our allies in the region, training and equipping local forces to pursue this fight. Together we'll stop ISIS.

"If you can't beat them" is the insane answer, and loses you points with the Dems, the Reps and even the Independents. "It's not our problem" is the platitude answer that appeals to both. "Send in the military" appeals to the right and not to the left, and "train and equip allies" is the other way round. So of course, I pick "send in the military". Red meat for the red base.



Finally, we get an outro.



And then we're told how we did in the vague terms of "good interview" or "bad interview". I got a good one, but I feel like Michelle probably had a better one. Nothing to back that up, just a gut feeling.

Anyway, here's a few questions I can't answer about interviews:

- Does the show you're on matter? They say Not-Colbert's show skews liberal (of course), but does that actually mean anything?
- How does the awareness gain work? Just flat nation-wide?
- What do you want to focus on in the answers? Platitudes? Red meat rhetoric?
- What exactly is the effect on issue scores? You'll see that our score in California on Supporting Gay Marriage has actually gone more towards support, somehow.

Lots of not sure in there. Still, just going there and throwing out the most red meat possible seems to work well enough, so I just do that.



So, that's it for the leadup to this week.



We crash in the polls again, because of course.



And another look at California, just to show what I mentioned earlier. Alright, it's been four weeks, so...

THEMCD'S HOT CAMPAIGN STRATEGIES, TIPS AND TRICKS


Alright, we're starting to move into the real meat of the campaign, but not quite there just yet. First, here's the new spreadsheet page giving you all the stats around the nation. For those that don't want to dig in, here's the gist:

- On the issues front, nothing much is happening as far as importance is concerned, with the exception of Supporting Gay Marriage sneaking into the top five in a few states. In almost all of them, the independents are lukewarm towards it, so it's not a winner of an issue for us to get behind, but Michelle isn't gaining too much out of it either.
- On the awareness front, Michelle has us beat in pretty much every state. That's the price we pay for California, but it could turn out to be worth it. Money is power.

So, what should we do from here on? Hm. Well, here's the things I think we need in some way:

- Money. We could totally spend another week, maybe even two weeks, just fundraising in California. Money goes a long way to paper over ground game weaknesses in this game.
- Buildings, particularly of the Campaign HQ and Consulting Office variety. We need a base income to support ads, and we need Political Capital to get some operatives into the game, which could be a gamechanger.
- Ads, especially in swing states. We have a good advantage in a key issue (Fighting ISIS) in that Cruz starts out with a heavy slant towards supporting it. Ads are more effective if you already have an established stance on the issue. Popping down some ground game ads in swing states and maybe a single TV ad could go a long way to supporting our campaign. However, we need a base income for this. We can only support a handful of ground game ads and not a single TV ad right now.

Of course, we can't get all three at once. We need to focus. Personally, I would go with the money, since if we want to do ads, we need buildings, and if we want to do buildings, we need more money.

VOTING

Same as usual. State, Action, Issue. I wonder if there's going to be anything that could come up that would force me to deviate from that formula at this point.