Here’s Donald Trump’s new “hard-hitting” campaign ad:
x YouTube Video“Speaking to wealthy donors, Hillary Clinton called tens of millions of Americans “deplorable”.
[Hillary speaking]: “You could put half of Trump supporters into what I’d call a basket of ‘deplorables’...the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic...you name it.”
People like you...you and you...deplorable.
You know what’s deplorable? Hillary Clinton viciously demonizing hard-working people like you.”
Two simple observations:
1. At no point in the ad does either the voiceover or the visuals bother trying to claim that any of Hillary’s claims are false. I mean, the crowd shots do include a shot of a black guy, women, and one shot of someone holding a “Veterans for Trump” sign as counters to the attacks...but they all flip by so quickly I’m not sure anyone will get that. Oh, and they make sure to include a quick shot of Trump handing out play-doh, which isn’t exactly a winning argument.
2. In addition, the ad is targeted not at independents or squishy Hillary-leaners, but specifically at those already supporting Trump. This might make sense if he held a narrow lead and was just trying to shore up his base, but he’s the one who needs to win over undecideds.
Anyway, that’s my take.
It also occurs to me that the “she’s demonizing hard-working people!” descriptor at the end might even end up backfiring by offending the other half of Trump supporters. After all, if she’s only calling “hard-working” people racist, then that must mean that any Trump supporter who isn’t racist must not be hard-working either!
Of course, that’s getting a little too subtle for most. The question is whether the other “half” of Trump supporters take it as:
“Hey, I’m hard-working, therefore Hillary must be calling me racist!” (which the ad intends), or “Hey, I’m not racist, therefore Trump must be calling me lazy!”UPDATE: In addition, as several people have noted, the way the ad is edited, it very much makes it seem as though the big RNC crowd is applauding Hillary when she calls them out as racists, misogynists, etc.
I’ll also add that what’s stupid about this is that it would’ve been pretty easy for Trump’s team to make an effective ad attacking Hillary over “deplorables”...cut out the part where she explains what she means (racist, sexist, etc) and replace it with longer shots of Token Black Guy, Token Hispanic Guy, Self-Hating Women, etc. and have the voiceover say something like “she’s calling people like this racist, sexist”, etc.
Finally, I’m very happy to report that according to Sahil Kapur:
xTrump official says "deplorables" ad will run for approx $2 million on broadcast + cable this week in OH PA FL NC. https://t.co/Gl8WOKg9Bm
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) September 12, 2016As Blue Aardvark noted…
x@charles_gaba Please proceed.
— blue aardvark (@AardvarkBlue) September 12, 2016