While watching the NFL playoff games this weekend a few political ads came on during commercial breaks.
Here’s what I thought. I’d love to know what others think.
Hillary Clinton
As this progressed, I expected it to be from a Clinton-supporting PAC. I think it’s a powerful ad, but what the hell? Is this the kind of campaign they are going to run? I’m worried this could backfire, and it just seems entirely unnecessary this early, but I guess they are understandably terrified of Sanders doing well in the first two states and they want to spook certain Democrats.
Bernie Sanders
This hits the same notes as the rest of the campaign. No one has a more consistent and narrow message (for better or worse) than Sanders. I think it’s a good ad in that it humanizes and makes the wild-haired radical image a bit harder to stick. The narrow campaign focus may limit his potential for broad appeal, but he is hitting the most pressing issues facing Americans – which the GOP candidates refuse to address. I think this probably doesn’t move the needle much, though.
Donald Trump
If it wasn’t so scary, this would be funny. It almost seems like a spoof. For a good chunk of GOP voters, it’s probably an A. For people not receptive to this type of message, it only does damage. If you like Trump or might like him, this helps, if you don’t like Trump, I think he wants you to hate him.
I may have missed some, but I haven’t seen a Jeb! or Christie ad this weekend. That seems surprising, especially for Christie, who should be investing a lot in markets that cover parts of NH.
I appreciate you doing this!
I’d actually LOVE this to become an open thread with a link to each new ad as it appears.
A few notes:
I think the first ad is great, and says what needs to be said. If the mainstream media did THEIR job of conveying just how dishonest ALL of the GOP candidates are, then ads like this would not be necessary.
The last (Donald Trump) ad requires a special note. The last scene, accompanying a voice-over about Mexico, in fact is a video of a scene IN MOROCCO. It epitomizes the flagrant lies of the Trump campaign.
For example, the logo and timestamp of the original report (the Italian “Repubblica TV” network, according to the above link) were erased from the Trump ad. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign, Hope Hicks, defended the lie:
Another Trump campaign operative, Katy Tur, tweeted:
Outright and flagrant lies, proudly crowed about by a dishonest campaign, and largely ignored by the mainstream media.
As David has observed earlier, the rise and lies of Donald Trump are horrifyingly reminiscent of the early years of Adolf Hitler and the German Nazi party.
Our mainstream media should do a FAR better job of rejecting outright lies, such as the dishonest description of Moroccan refugees.
Right after the (painful) end of the Seahawks-Vikings game, there were a few more.
Another Bernie ad, this one focused on nurses and health care:
An anti-Rubio ad from a PAC supporting Jeb! (adding that exclamation point will never get old):
And a Christie ad (from the America Leads PAC) focused on Guantanamo:
I think this is the worst of the bunch.
Rubio’s ads are really clunky.
I thought it was excellent. New Hampshire is (sort of) a swing state. She is defining her true opponent while they’re killing each other at the same time.
I know a lot of active liberals think about Bernie a lot. Hillary might, but I doubt it. Bernie might win New Hampshire, maybe. But he’s Bill Bradley, and Hillary is right to train her focus on the nutjobs.
The second sentence of Bernie’s ad…ugh. There is obviously a lot of inequality in our country, but his sentence has fractions and numbers, and takes more effort to put together mentally than it should be in a 30-second ad. There’s gotta be pithier ways of describing the inequality of the American economy.
Here is the sentence you apparently object to in the ad for Bernie Sanders:
Do you REALLY need a calculator to understand that “fraction”? Do you really think it takes effort on the part of voters to compare “fifteen” with “one hundred million”?
If our electorate needs something “pither” than fifteen versus one hundred million, then the game is over and we’ve lost.
Quick Test Then: How much wealth did the 12th richest American acquire last year? What about the 99,999,999 richest American?
The ad doesn’t tell us that at all.
I agree with sabutai that this statistical characterization of inequality is too complicated for a quick sound bite in a 30 second add. It unnecessarily and confusingly conflates income inequality and the wealth gap. It unnecessarily causes someone really paying attention to wonder what “in two years” means (which two years?). It uses a wonky term (“acquired more wealth”) when a simpler verb (“made” or “got” or “stockpiled”) and a simpler noun (“money”) are readily available. It uses a big and seemingly precise, yet difficult to wrap your head around, number (one hundred million) with vague descriptors like “bottom” and “combined”.
Do you really doubt that something like this could have made the same point more quickly and clearly to the average person?:
“Is the economy rigged? Well, thanks mostly to tax cuts for the rich and low wages for everyone else, the richest 5% of Americans now have more money stashed away than the rest of us combined.”
Al Franken’s 2014 ad is the gold standard for a basic economic argument about inequality.
Al Franken’s piece is about the rigged game. Bernie Sanders is talking about wealth concentration.
Because he’s talking about a rigged economy, in his own words.
You may personally find a sentence stuffed with three numbers, one rather large, to be okay in a thirty second ad. You’re a professional engineer. Your average (*average*) voter, probably won’t. A good ad works for its audience, not its creator.
There is more than one way to rig a game. He is talking about WEALTH CONCENTRATION. Al Franken is talking about big banks defrauding the rest of us.
If an average voter can’t comprehend the difference between “15” and “one hundred million”, then our political system is broken beyond repair.
I invite you to offer wording for how you would talk about about wealth concentration without using several numbers.
How else DO we talk about wealth concentration?
OKay…
“By the most common measure of inequality, the United States is more unequal than most advanced countries in the world.”
“By the most common measure of inequality, the United States is more unequal than any time since the beginning of the Great Depression”
Of course we’re talking the Gini coefficient, but no need to invoke it.
“The top 25 hedge fund managers make more than all the kindergarten” teachers of America combined”
“The richest one percent of America hold over a third of the wealth in the United States.”
The first two you offer don’t say anything to me.
The third is better, but still misses the point — I doubt that the top 25 hedge fund managers are anywhere close to the 15 wealthiest people in America (maybe), and I don’t know how many kindergarten teachers there are.
The last has just as many numbers as the first (“15” versus “one” and “100 million” versus “third”), and is less persuasive.
I guess resist the premise that we must target our political advertising at an audience so illiterate (or innumerate) that it cannot understand “15” versus “100 million”.
While Tom is certainly a professional engineer, I’m pretty sure he’s not a professional engineer. Lest you think it’s a pedantic term of art, I can’t list myself as an engineer in my job despite having a PhD in engineering because I don’t have a PE.
You aren’t somervilletom, PE, are you st?
I’m not a member of NSPE and never attempted the feat.
I always thought, perhaps incorrectly, that this was aimed at the people who keep complex institutional heating and cooling plants from blowing up. I think that’s its own kind of “engineer” (as in “Stationary Engineer”, I think), and I’m pretty sure I’m not one of them.
I also note that contemporary US media practice seems to be embracing the European practice of calling the person who operates a railroad train a “Driver”. This is a change from the more traditional name of “Engineer” (the locomotive was an “engine”, and its operator was an “engineer”).
I am also not a “Sanitation Engineer”, even when paid to sweep floors (I did that during my youth). I frankly prefer “Programmer” to “Software Engineer” because we do not have anything close to the theoretical understanding of “software” needed to provide any reasonable foundation for engineering based on that theoretical understanding.
I do, however, hold a BS in Electrical Engineering, so it is fair to say that I am a credentialed EE.
Prominently featured on this organization’s Who We Are and What We Do page is a description of it’s 2011 “Race for Relevance”:
Most organizations that I’ve encountered who strive to be “relevant” are not.
I’m really not trying to be argumentative here, I’m just mystified by this reaction. I just don’t see the point of your questions.
“Acquired more wealth” is clear to me. It is NOT “income” (like “made”), I don’t even know what “got” means in this context, and “stockpiled” is something different.
We have a wealth distribution where the 15 wealthiest Americans ACQUIRED more wealth in the last two years than the bottom ONE MILLION combined. “Acquired more wealth in the last two years”, to me, means the difference between the wealth today and the wealth two years ago. Is there something confusing about that?
It sounds to me as though you’re saying that because these are staggering numbers that defy common sense (they DO!), we shouldn’t talk about them. I think that’s precisely why we SHOULD talk about them.
This ad is talking about the difference between the wealth held by these 15 people today compared to the wealth those same 15 people held two years ago (I suspect that membership in this elite club is stable). He is comparing it to the total wealth held by the bottom ONE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE (about 1/3 of the population) today compared to two years ago.
Wealth is different from money. Suppose Ralph has a $20B stock portfolio, a $100M oceanfront estate, and a total of $123.45 in all his bank accounts and cash. How much “wealth” does he have (at least 20.1B)? How much “money” does he have ($123.45)?
The trouble with your closing sentence is that it SIGNIFICANTLY understates the reality. The US population is about 321 M, according to the US government.
YOU are talking about the “richest 5% of Americans” — about SIXTEEN MILLION people (“the richest 5%”). Bernie Sanders is talking about FIFTEEN people. If you try to graph this distribution, you’ll find it has an incredibly thin and incredibly tall spike at the “wealthiest” side of the distribution. It’s a bit easier to graph on log-log paper, but lay people aren’t generally accustomed to that (hence confusion about how much strong a magnitude 6 earthquake is from a magnitude 4).
If there’s a more clear rephrase, I’m fine with it — so long as it says the same thing. I find the sentence used in the ad to be absolutely clear.
Rubio just confirms he’s over his head, and its hard to see what Trump gets from his. Otherwise it’s pretty clear what these are for and I think each succeeds pretty well. Christie’s was particularly chilling.
I do not understand the criticism of the Clinton spot. Backfire? How? It’s a very partisan ad,indeed that is the point, but I rather hope that will carry over into the general. She’ll be better off rallying the base than reaching out to Trump supporters, I think!
Still hunting for the fractions in Bernie’s second sentence (which I though was a good summing up).
I cannot believe he is so proudly trumpeting his proposal to ban people from this country on the basis of their religion. That is so profoundly un-American and one of his biggest negatives. The same script and footage with one of those deep scary voices could make that a negative ad against him. Plus, how exactly does he plan to force Mexico to pay for our wall? It’s almost as if he were punked into running that ad by someone claiming to support him, but really wants to sabotage him. I call “own goal”.
From the Atlantis’s Ronald Brownstein, as objective a political analyst as you can get, is that the crazier he is the more he wins over Republicans and loses independents and moderates. The data seems to back his analysis up. So, while I still think he is a danger to the republic because his noxious ideas by virtue of being within the two party system will be mainstreamed, we may be looking a gift horse in the mouth. Time will tell.
Moving to the extreme in the primary and then pivoting back to the middle for the general is pretty standard fare.
How does Trump walk back his rhetoric? I think he can’t, and I think the GOP adults in the back room think he can’t either — which is why they’re so frustrated with him. It isn’t the rhetoric, it’s the one-way nature of it that damages Trump come November 2016.
That was the core of Brownstein’s argument. The are at a place where their base can only be satiated by rhetoric and commitments that are alienating to a majority of Americans. Trump will be there McGovern. And it won’t surprise me if we see a large contingent of Republicans for Hillary if he wins the nomination. Which is not necessarily something to gloat about, considering what some of them want to do.
Jeb! had one on tonight, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXHVAuRrXy4
Hopeless.
I’m not sure how this ad is supposed to appeal to anyone under the age of 80.
Embed code didn’t work like I expected, here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDWFbW0ekSg
“Keep us safe. Make us boom.”
Not exactly six words that make sense together for a party that mutters terrerrism every chance it gets.
Oh, that rascal!
“He’ll cut the head off ISIS … and take their oil”
than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING
These are my sentiments on the pathetic state of the Republican Party today.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
As if we needed further confirmation he is a candidate running on yesterday’s platform. Wonder how it will cut in to Cruz’s support in Iowa.
Seriously, of all the things Trump has said and done in this campaign, nothing is more damning a Phyllis Schlafly endorsement.
Most of the people I run into on a daily basis (the mailperson, the clerks at my cardiologist’s office, the folks that I work out with at the health club, the couple that I sat next to at the cinema) echo the sentiments of Trump–especially as to bombing the shit out of the Muslim terrorists. I do not think that it helps the liberal cause to call so many working class Americans “Nazis.” Ironically, this is the favorite tactic used by national socialists in Russia to describe their foes in Ukraine and Georgia.))))
…when a viewpoint is so outrageous the only moral option is to push back hard, politics be damned, though I’m not convinced what you have heard is representative anyway.
Demagogues have used widespread prejudice against scapegoats for as long as there have been demagogues. That does not make it honorable or right.
I have no doubt that America is full of anti-Muslim prejudice — elements of America have been stoking that prejudice since 9/11. When you hear such clearly prejudiced rubbish, what is your reaction? Do you smile sweetly and ask them to please pass the sugar, or do you graciously let them know that you find such racism nauseating?
I don’t know about calling anybody a “Nazi”. I do know that if a clerk in my cardiologist’s office made such I comment, I would IMMEDIATELY inform the doctor in no uncertain terms of the rude comment, and ask the doctor if this behavior was tolerated.
So I ask you, what in your view is the appropriate response to the outrageously prejudiced scapegoating of the Donald Trump campaign?
many ordinary people. The facts of the matter are that many Americans do not react positively to beheadings, immolations and suicide bombings. And they do not like the pc attempt to whitewash the “Religion of Peace.”
I do not share your ideas about prejudice. Having lived in a Moslem country for two years, I know first hand the suppression and horrors of this religion. If that makes me a racist, so be it. I did not post these comments to change anyone’s thinking; there are hardened views on both sides of this question. I posted it because I wonder if everyone here knows that their views on this subject are probably in the minority. Trump has obviously taken advantage of the fact that people are sick and tired of being politically corrected to death by this administration as well as the liberal press and establishment.
I don’t doubt that a number of people feel as you describe. I’m quite sure that similarly large numbers of people supported Jim Crow laws in the southern states in the 1950s and 1960s.
I need to say that I’ve lived in a “Christian” country for 63 years, and I’ve seen my share of the “suppression and horrors” of Christianity. It isn’t Muslims who dragged people around behind pickup trucks. It isn’t Muslims who burn crosses or hang victims in trees in the south. Where does the torture and murder of Matthew Shepherd fit into the picture you paint?
People do terrible evil things everywhere. People do terrible evil things in the name of pretty much every religion.
In my view, refusing to tolerate scapegoating based on religion, race, ethnic origin, gender preference, or immigration status is not a matter of “political correctness”.
If you tar all Muslims with the abhorrent acts of a few then yes, you ARE racist. I’ll tell you that right-wing self-professed Christians are a much greater threat to anybody here in the US than any Muslims. Funny how our right-wing violence is so readily ignored when we have some Muslim bad-guys to talk about.
Donald Trump is flagrantly lying. His video, with a voiceover talking about Mexicans, is in fact a video of Moroccans. The scapegoating of Donald Trump really IS indistinguishable from the scapegoating of Jews in pre-war Germany during the rise of the Nazis. The specifics are different, the technique is EXACTLY the same.