'If Everyone Hates Political Consultants, Why Are They Still in Charge?' with Tim Lim
Battleground with Amanda Litman and Faiz Shakir
The Recount
4.8 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a group, political consultants have terrible reputations. They're supposedly grifters, scammers, and embezzlers who line their pockets with donors' money while running uninspired, cookie cutter campaigns. And yet, even though everyone in Democratic politics seems to hate them, they almost always end up running campaigns. Amanda and Faiz talk with Tim Lim to find out why.
Tim Lim is a Democratic strategist, an entrepreneur, a leading voice in comprehensive media planning and yes – a political consultant. He is President of Lim Consulting Services and a Partner at the Hooligans Agency, a progressive creative agency. Tim most recently served on the National Finance Committee of Biden for President as well as for the Biden-Harris Transition. He also served as a founding Co-Chair for Gen44, the young professional arm of President Obama's re-election campaign and served on the National Finance Committee of the Hillary for America campaign in 2016.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Fashikir. |
| 0:02.0 | I'm Amanda Littman. |
| 0:04.0 | And this is Balagrond, a podcast from The Recount and I Heart Radio. |
| 0:08.0 | Every Thursday, we try to answer the questions about politics you didn't even know you should be asking. |
| 0:14.0 | This week, we're trying to explore if everybody hates political consultants, why are they still running campaigns? |
| 0:21.0 | Our guest today is Tim Lim. |
| 0:23.0 | He's a political consultant himself. |
| 0:25.0 | He's a Democratic strategist, an entrepreneur, and full transparency, a board member for my organization run for something. |
| 0:31.0 | Tim and I have been batting this question around in private over WhatsApp for years. |
| 0:36.0 | So I'm really excited to bring it out and give it to you to listen to. |
| 0:39.0 | So Amanda, what is the reason that people seem to dislike consultants so much? |
| 0:44.0 | You know, people making arguments about consultants can come up with any number of reasons. |
| 0:48.0 | They might say consultants are grifters, our scammers, our embezzlers are incentivized to suggest a campaign strategy that might be good for the consultant's bottom line, but not necessarily good for the outcome of the campaign. |
| 1:01.0 | Consulents tend to be risk averse. |
| 1:03.0 | They're running cookie cutter efforts for all of their clients because they're working on so much at the same time. |
| 1:08.0 | There are also working for corporations, so your work for McDonald's or Walmart often underwrites the work that they can do for democratic causes. |
| 1:18.0 | They're often primarily run by white men, especially older white men, especially older, wealthy white men. |
| 1:23.0 | They don't make room with the table for young people, young women, young people of color, they overcharge. |
| 1:28.0 | And the one that stands out to me the most as somebody really works on these local campaigns is that they're not on the ground in the community. |
| 1:35.0 | They're not all literally based in DC. There is a sense of group think and a sense of removal from the campaign strategy that doesn't give them the kind of informed perspective that really makes a local campaign and even a congressional or statewide campaign successful. |
| 1:51.0 | It's just it's so hard to bring fresh thinking and fresh perspective and a new way of approaching campaign strategy when you are starting and ending with consultants who are removed from the process. |
| 2:04.0 | You know, it's hard to get new fresh thinking new ways of constructing arguments, pushing the boundaries of what might be possible. |
... |
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