Claude TaylorVerified account @TrueFactsStated 23h23 hours ago
Offer. We are rolling out a series of hard hitting billboards like one below on Matt Gaetz, Steve King, Dana Rohrabacher, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes and Darrell Issa. If any Dem House candidates wants to cosponsor a billboard going after their GOP opponent-Mad Dog PAC will pay half.
I like it
Yeah,
this'll play.
Hey other Democrats- do that.
I don't like the first ad. The second one is
almost great -- it should lose the "this is what separates us from the other side ... they don't [care about people]" stuff at the very end.
scoobygang mentioned
in another thread that people like Ivan and Yankee who've historically disagreed with him on most political issues have recently found a lot more common ground with him. If I may presume to put myself in that same category, I think I can say that it's not because scoobygang has made such compelling arguments that he's brought me over to his side on a host of issues. It's kind of weird because scoobygang makes exactly the sorts of arguments that I'd
expect to win me over -- they are factually informed and sensibly rooted in reason rather than emoticons -- and yet to the extent he's changed my mind on various subjects, it's usually on fairly peripheral issues rather than something fundamental like "the left is correct more often than the right." The people who
have changed my mind on that latter issue are people like Trump and the other Bannonites and their fans. I haven't been pushed leftward so much by good arguments on the left as I have by bad arguments on the right. I've been agreeing with scoobygang more often not primarily because scoobygang's arguments are intelligent and reasonable, but more because the people most prominently disagreeing with him are thickheaded louts whose side I don't want to be on. And I suspect that's pretty normal.
So I agree with the spirit of what that first ad is trying to do. Iowans in Steve King's district will be persuaded to vote Democrat in the next election not by convincing them that Democratic politicians or policies are awesome, but by convincing them that Steve King is an embarrassing racist. So far, so good.
The problem is not the strategy, but the tactic. When a bunch of Democrats call Steve King an embarrassing racist, it's pretty weak evidence that he's an embarrassing racist; and especially to the moderate Republicans the ad is presumably trying to target, it's rather off-putting. It's kind of like how I can call my brother a jerk, but if somebody else calls him that, I'm taking my brother's side. When Democrats call Steve King an embarrassing racist, a lot of Republicans might vote for Steve King just to stick up for the Republican family against an outside attack. (In addition, the cutesy check-boxes are too smug by half.)
I'd much prefer an ad that embraces the "show, don't tell" philosophy. Instead of calling Steve King names in conclusory fashion, give people enough information to draw their own inferences. Instead of saying that he's an embarrassing racist, put up a quote by King saying something that normal, thoughtful people will read and conclude on their own:
man, that guy's an embarrassing racist. Just calling him an embarrassing racist is likely to backfire because it will put moderate Republicans on the defensive -- and people are seldom persuaded to come over to your side when you put them on the defensive. They're more likely to resent you out of spite. It'd be better to not do that.