My guess would be that PoF’s limited commentary on candidates is because they don’t have enough staff resources to give detailed commentary, and/or to talk to the media in every state race where they are involved.
I imagine they run ads on certain topics (i.e. not just pandemic prevention) because those are the ones that voters care about, i.e. just to help their candidate to win.
I expect they rarely go “negative” for the same reasons as most groups—because it’s not effective enough to be worth making enemies of the other candidates.
Now what about the main point of your post? I think we could divide the problems you identify into two buckets: (1) dem voters thinking PoF is bad, (2) folks reading thinking EA is bad. Regarding (1), I agree that these happen to some extent, given PoF’s current strategy, but am less sure how to solve them. To some extent, it is easier to provide a rationale for each candidate once they have a track record, which will be true when more pandemic preparedness bills have been voted on. Re criteria for evaluating candidates, I think there are potential problems, in that the nature of pandemic preparedness legislation can change a lot over time, so it’s hard to fit your desiderata on a checklist. And it’s not clear that you would want to elevate their prominence in that kind of way, because it could turn it into a more partisan or factional issue, which is not currently desired. So this part might not be so easy. As for funding source, I thought it was known to be almost entirely from SBF? Regarding (2), maybe this is counterbalanced a bit by the broader media about EA and longtermism in regard to Macaskill’s latest book. I expect most will hear about EA in other ways!
Anyway, tough problems, but I think relatively unclear solutions. Still, nice post!
A few quick points:
My guess would be that PoF’s limited commentary on candidates is because they don’t have enough staff resources to give detailed commentary, and/or to talk to the media in every state race where they are involved.
I imagine they run ads on certain topics (i.e. not just pandemic prevention) because those are the ones that voters care about, i.e. just to help their candidate to win.
I expect they rarely go “negative” for the same reasons as most groups—because it’s not effective enough to be worth making enemies of the other candidates.
Now what about the main point of your post? I think we could divide the problems you identify into two buckets: (1) dem voters thinking PoF is bad, (2) folks reading thinking EA is bad. Regarding (1), I agree that these happen to some extent, given PoF’s current strategy, but am less sure how to solve them. To some extent, it is easier to provide a rationale for each candidate once they have a track record, which will be true when more pandemic preparedness bills have been voted on. Re criteria for evaluating candidates, I think there are potential problems, in that the nature of pandemic preparedness legislation can change a lot over time, so it’s hard to fit your desiderata on a checklist. And it’s not clear that you would want to elevate their prominence in that kind of way, because it could turn it into a more partisan or factional issue, which is not currently desired. So this part might not be so easy. As for funding source, I thought it was known to be almost entirely from SBF? Regarding (2), maybe this is counterbalanced a bit by the broader media about EA and longtermism in regard to Macaskill’s latest book. I expect most will hear about EA in other ways!
Anyway, tough problems, but I think relatively unclear solutions. Still, nice post!