After I posted my little "concept ad" a couple weeks ago...
...I received literally hundreds of emails from my fellow Kossacks and others asking how they could put this ad on the air.
Now we can!
Many of you may remember TruthandHope.org from the last election cycle. It was founded by Eugene Hedlund in 2003 and is based in Southern California. Eugene is a Mortgage Banker who has lived in Orange County, California for most of the past 15 years. Before joining the mortgage industry, he was an executive at an advertising agency, who coordinated nationwide advertising campaigns. Many of you know him has a fellow Kossack.
But what you might not know is that he, like me, was a lifelong Republican and was a fervent supporter of John McCain in 2000 & ultimately George W. Bush when we secured the 2000 nomination. However, after witnessing how the Bush administration took advantage of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, sank our economy with excessive tax cuts & unfunded mandates and most importantly sent our brave soldiers to war based on lies, he knew we needed a change & that the upcoming election would be the most important crossroads for our country in memory. Governor Howard Dean stood out to him as the one candidate who combined not only the steadfastness & moral courage to stand against George W. Bush, when it was not popular to do so, but the organization & momentum required to actually win the Democratic nomination & have the opportunity to face Bush in open debate. With this chance, he could clearly state what & how things would be different, were he President for the last four years not only the next four, something the other candidates could not do, for they had supported the President at every turn. It became clear that in this most important of elections, there was one message of Truth & Hope. The time had come for doing, rather than just saying all that could be done, in this most important fight of our lifetime. That is how TruthandHope.org was born.
How it grew was through the efforts of many coming together around the country, most having never met, many never did, to create hard hitting media campaigns to bring this message of change to the airwaves in a clear way, first in support of Governor Dean and then supporting Senator Kerry in the general. Ads were made in part or whole by people in Seattle, Kansas City, San Francisco, Boston, Irvine and others. It was a truly grassroots effort with volunteers coming together nationwide to help with creation, contributions and/or spreading the word. It came into existence on a Monday preceding a vote the following weekend in Washington & Maine & had media on the air by Thursday. Throughout the campaigns, TruthandHope accepted submissions of amateur media created or in concept, allowed contributors to choose where their money went, which ads & location, and sent regular updates to members accounting for how their money was spent in totality and in true grassroots fashion, as opposed to the entrenched "political media pros" way of we know best so send us your money & then go away. TruthandHope.Org PAC aired radio ads in every contested primary & caucus until Senator Kerry claimed enough delegates to earn the nomination, culminating in a television spot aired all over Vermont that caused Gov Dean himself to publicly credit TruthandHope.Org with his win in Vermont on CNN that night.
In the general election, TruthandHope aired television ads in battleground states up through election day. The television ads that were created can be viewed through the youtube link on our website or here. I see TruthandHope.Org has a mention in the dkosopedia here as well. This new effort is in that same genuine grassroots tradition and this time we will win all over the country.
After seeing the response to my little ad above, and going through other ads of mine (like the Stop Devos series some of you may remember), Eugene decided to restart TruthandHope.org with the express mission of airing a broadcast-quality version of the ad above (with some changes I'm working on now), and at least two other ads this cycle. Our ads will be full 60-second ads -- long enough to actually convey information, not just sound bites -- specifically detailing why McCain is such a dangerous choice. We're confident this approach will stand out from the usual back-and-forth mini-ads, and be heavily promoted online, as well as aired on television as much as financially possible (which, of course, depends on how many donations we receive!)
Because this is an grass-roots project, we will not be designing these ads in a vacuum. I have already listened to some of the best suggestions from my diary which unveiled the ad above, and am implementing those suggestions as we speak. Over the course of the next month, I'll be writing occasional diaries asking for your advice and help in scripting additional ads. (i.e. "could someone find me a statistic that shows the number of foreclosures from 2005-2008" or "is any of you an articulate Lansing-area woman who would like to look right into the camera and beg America not to elect McCain")
Make no mistake -- these will be biting, hard-hitting ads designed to reach the open-minded independents and fence-sitters who have no idea how extreme some of the McCain-Palin positions really are. Obama and Biden are limited on how negative their ads can go. PAC advertisements, as you have seen by those never-ending Bill Ayers ads from the American Racists Project, can be a little more biting. That does not mean we're going to tarnish Obama's positive campaign, or run baseless personal attacks. But it does mean, in an ad about McCain's abysmal record on women's issues, we're allowed to bring up his propensity for rape jokes and anti-woman language, whereas Obama's campaign cannot (for practical, "above-the-fray" reasons). In addition, we will endeavor to reach the disaffected Republicans by pointing out specifically how their own party has a worse record on promoting fiscal and international responsibility than we do. As two individuals who were once conservative, and now see why those nice-sounding ideals don't work in practice, we're in a good position to understand the "mind of the enemy", and know what to say that might have won us over a few years earlier.
I have no idea how many of you who promised to chip in to run the above ad will read this and actually chip in :) , but we need as much help and support as we can get. This is a chance to further advance the democratization of the political ad process, to have our specific progressive voice be heard, and expose McCain for the sell-out unstable warmonger he has sadly become.
Let's get to work.
http://truthandhope.org/