What Can Progressives Learn From The Way Marco Rubio Is Destroying Charlie Crist In Florida?

Ahhhh... the good ole days

Florida Governor Charlie Crist is starting to get desperate, hysterical... closing in on shrill. He's now attacking Marco Rubio, a candidate a few shorts months ago he wouldn't deign to recognize existed. Rubio went from being some no-chance extremist from the far right fringes of the GOP to a likely winner of the Republican primary. This might be good news for the Democrats since their own exceptionally weak candidate, Kendrick Meek, would have had virtually no chance against Crist, does have a shot against the extremist Rubio. But there's something even more important for Democrats to see in the battle between Crist and Rubio.

There may not be many sharp Republican minds worth paying close attention to but one who you ignore at your own peril is Florida Internet whiz Jordan Raynor's. Sunday he explained how Rubio has been able to overcome Crist's overwhelming financial advantage in a way that can work for Democratic insurgents as well. His point: "with the right candidate and the right message, the Internet could level the playing field and help reverse the conventional wisdom that you must run a "Traditional 3M" campaign to get elected to office. I argued that the Traditional 3M model was based on big money to launch a campaign, followed by momentum, with the candidate's message being a distant third priority. This model can be diagrammed like this:

Money ---> Momentum ---> Message

Using the internet to drive message directly to voters, victory is now possible for candidates who don’t have big money to kick-start their campaigns, by following a “New 3M” model that looks like this:

Message ---> Momentum ---> Money

Crist has followed the traditional path and raised more money than any other Republican senatorial candidate this cycle anywhere in the country. And for all the fanfare the ultra-right has made over Rubio, Crist has also raised more than six times more than his opponent. But, as Raynor points out, "[e]ven with all of his big money, Crist has fallen far short of reaching the 'Second M' of the Traditional 3M campaign cycle-- momentum. If anything, momentum has shifted against Crist and turned in favor of his opponent on the short end of a 5-to-1 financial disadvantage-- Marco Rubio... Rubio’s momentum has certainly not been driven by big money which drives a Traditional 3M campaign, leaving us with message. So far, Rubio’s message has been largely nationalized-- more about the future of a more conservative Republican Party than about the issues specific to the Florida Senate race... [H]e has been successful in harnessing grassroots anger and discontent with the political establishment (namely Charlie Crist) giving his campaign remarkable momentum that shows no signs of stopping."

And what's the message in this for Democrats? Sticking with Florida politics, look how Alan Grayson has been able to harness populist anger to such an extent that seven Republican-recruited candidates have sequentially dropped out of the race against him. He's arguably the most popular Democratic backbencher in Congress. Grassroots love his powerful, unapologetic working family message and they love that he's smart, takes no guff and speaks truth to power. How many times have you seen people writing on blogs that they wish there were 200 Alan Graysons in the Democratic Party?