— Musings —05.05.2016 06:24 AM
— Musings —05.05.2016 06:24 AM
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There is no shortage of available footage for attack ads.
I usually find attack ads kind of pathetic, because they usually seem to take some tiny thing out of context and blow it up to absurd proportions to manipulate people. However, with Trump and the vast body of quotes, video clips, tweets, and whatever else that are so terrible, I am getting no sense that this ad is especially disingenuous or manipulative. It really just seems accurate. And I don’t usually associate Hillary Clinton with sincerity or honesty.
Although I am neither American nor particularly disposed to vote for the likes of Trump, so I’m sure it doesn’t matter what I think.
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That’s a great ad. However, none of those clips hurt him they were first said, so we’ll see whether a compendium can do the trick.
As liberals, Canadians and Europeans shake their heads in mystified horror, I’m starting to think there is something in the American soul on all sides that is attracted to these Manichean battles. Canadians shy away from divisive, uncivil politics but our neighbours seem to crave the chance to keep fighting their Revolution.
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Peter,
Huh? Harper and divisive were twins for the last nine long years.
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And there was that Rob Ford guy… although that was just Toronto.
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Heh. I gave up trying to argue with the HDS crowd long ago, but really, it takes a special kind of Canadian hubris to compare Stephen Harper to Donald Trump.
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Peter,
I don’t go that far but Harper was a very effective practioner of wedge politics. It helped him win three elections.
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Oops! Practitioner. Sorry about that.
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If the goal of attack ads is to demotivate your opponents voting base I don’t think this will do it. Neil MacDonald’s column today argues the Republican base will destroy the GOP all by itself with or without Trump. If I’m part of Trump’s base I see this ad and say, “look at the bunch of losers in this ad. What do they know? Heck, Romney lost twice! Quit making fun of me or you’ll be sorry.”
Also it’s done in a bit of a mocking tone that brings out the “I hope the underdog wins” in people. The music in particular. The Republicans will run ads that make Clinton look ruthless entitled and phoney.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Bernie’s support goes to the Green Party. All kinds of surprises ahead.
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It is very good, using well known and in their own quarter, respected, Republican politicians to criticize Donald Trump. Much more effective than using Democrats.
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Bush, Romney, etc, “RespectedRepublican politicians”. Lol, that’s a good one.
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Will just make people love Trump even more. It paints him as an outsider which is exactly what people are looking for.
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Dave,
Bingo!
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Trump worries me for all kinds of reasons. He’s so unpredictable and unlike any other nominee in U.S. presidential history that it feels like historical examples hold little predictive value in this case. The predictions about Trump since last summer have all proven to be wrong, so I’ve given up saying “he can never win”. He can absolutely win. His peddling of a blunt, simplistic fantasy of the President-as-Superman has a lot of appeal to people who have grown apathetic to partisan gridlock.
What gives me hope for Hillary, however, is pure simple math. Obama received 66 million votes in 2012. If Hillary holds together the Obama coalition, she wins. Ask yourself – what kind of voter who voted for Obama over Romney in 2012 would vote for Trump over Hillary in 2016? Does such a voter exist? Trump and Clinton are so dramatically different, how could a person who was once for Obama suddenly find Trump to be more in line with their beliefs than Clinton? Obama’s approval ratings are quite high at the moment, and his ratings have always been high among his partisan supporters. There’s no particular reason to believe that Obama voters will abandon the inheritor of his legacy. Trump may attract new voters, but he’s also going to cause a lot of moderate Republicans to stay home, or perhaps even cast a vote for Clinton. Plus, there’s a lot of enthusiasm out there to elect the first female U.S. President. So I’m optimistic that Hillary’s got this. It may not be the LBJ-over-Goldwater type of rout that some are predicting, but math is strongly on her side.
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“…what kind of voter who voted for Obama over Romney in 2012 would vote for Trump over Hillary in 2016?”
They might not vote for Trump, but they might sit it out, which amounts to the same thing.
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Why would they sit out? Obama remains very popular among his supporters, and Hillary is running on his record. To the extent that former Obama supporters stay at home for some inexplicable reason, surely they would be offset by former Romney voters who stay at home rather than vote for Trump. We already know of at least 4 such voters: George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, and Romney himself. There will be many others.
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It only solidifies Trumps as the anti-establishment.
Forbes take on the ad: http://www.forbes.com/sites/willburns/2016/05/06/new-hillary-ad-decimates-trump-or-does-it/#46211d4968b1
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Good ad but it won’t work. The people criticizing Trump in that ad are phonies, sore losers, and (in some cases) nutbags with their own baggage.