Yesterday,
New Deal democrat pleaded with Chairman Dean to make one national ad to help Democrats get elected. Truth is, we don't have to rely on the party anymore. A lot of us are taking it into our own hands to make national ads. People power, baby.
As the title suggests, a friend of mine and I have made 10 ads, all first person testimonials, that we hope might sway Republican and Independent voters all over the country. I wrote about my ad project HERE last Sunday and we're finally ready to go live tomorrow.
More about our project over the flip.
As I wrote in my earlier diary, a kernel of an idea to make our own people-powered ads led us to write scripts, gather a passionate tech crew and a bunch of talented actors together on a Saturday in October to shoot ten ads.
Our theme:
Vote Democrat for a change.
The idea is not to throw red meat to the base (sorry, base.) Rather it's to reach out to Republicans and Independents who normally may not vote for Democrats, letting them know why this year it's imperative they do so. Plus the double meaning of "for a change" was irresistible.
We gathered actors and regular folks alike who represent the themes we wanted to stress in our ads. We have a former Republican who mourns the loss of her Republican Party.
There used to be room for fiscal conservatives who care about the environment and are pro-choice. That isn't true anymore.
We have an independent speaking about the absurdity of the notion that there is no difference between the two parties.
Who's destroying environmental protections? Republicans. Who's taking away a woman's right to choose? Republicans. Who's subverting our liberties in the name of security? Republicans.
And we have someone who was willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt and assume many of the mistakes that were made in the Iraq war were honest ones, finally ask:
How many more mistakes are we going to let them make?
At the end of each ad, the speaker pleads with the viewer:
Vote Democrat for a change.
What I've done is set up a channel on YouTube. We're still playing with it so I'm not ready to send links yet but tomorrow I'm going to diary one of the ads, feature both a link to it and a link to the channel itself where all our ads will be. In addition I'm adding as favorites other user-generated ads I've found. It's amazing the things people have already done.
I'll then need all of you to view the channel and the ads to rate them up, comment away, etc. but perhaps more importantly, send them to your friends and family. We all know Republicans and Independents and hey, if we can change one person's mind...
The ads look like what they are: amateur videos made for next to nothing. And we do have a slight synching problem and other tech issues. But overall I think they came out pretty damn well. I'm really happy we embarked on the project and I hope I can count on this community to spread it around.
Thanks, everyone and look for me over the coming days while we launch our Vote Democrat For A Change YouTube channel and MySpace page.