If you saw this horrible ad last night on the World Series on Fox, you probably wondered where this Russian propaganda came from. Actually, this morning, Political Wire wondered if this ad was paid for by Vladimir Putin. However, because of the proliferation of dark money, we may never know. And if Putin has found an indirect way to invest in turning this election in his favor, as he did in 2016, 2018 and 2020, then this is exactly the kind of ad he would (or perhaps actually did) write. Who knows?
This is akin to what we would have seen if we had had television in the 1940s and Adolf Hitler had been able to advertise on it.
The Citizens for [In]Sanity ad is horrible. It paints as dark and dangerous a picture of the United States as I've ever seen in political advertising. It also strongly makes the point that we're wasting money in the Ukraine taking care of these incredibly valiant, brave people who are fighting to reverse Putin's totalitarian, fascist, world-conquering fantasies.
And here's the point. We cannot, as Democrats, ignore this direct challenge to the sanctity of the United States, to this election, or to our international safety.
In 2004, right before the presidential election, I was working in Columbus, Ohio for America Coming Together, when Osama bin Laden came out on the Friday before the election and criticized America's intrusion into Afghanistan and George Bush. John Kerry immediately blasted that statement and repeated his claim that Bush and his military had let bin Laden escape from where he was holed up in Tora Bora in the Afghani mountains. However, there was no serious coverage of Kerry’s response and messaging, there was no response in Democratic advertising and the issue got no traction before the election—which Kerry lost partially because voters thought Kerry was weak on national defense (as aided by the hatchet job of the Swiftboaters on Kerry’s Incredible Vietnam service record).
Fortunately, this is not 2004, and we have a president in Joe Biden with the guts and foresight to stand up and fight for democracy.
Now it is the time for us (and for the Democratic Party), as Democrats, and as citizens and patriots, to stand up for justice in Europe, for democracy, and for the honorable fight for it in a darkening world:
OR, we can do as previous Democratic campaigns did and pretend that if we just ignore the international dangers that they will just go away--and most likely, if we do nothing, it will have the same disastrous results produced in 2004, because there is no question the dark, fascist corners of the Republican Oligarch campaign are going to spend big money questioning if supporting Ukraine is a benefit to the US.
We cannot afford to avoid this fight, which Dark (and possibly Putin-directed) Money, is turning into one of the major closing arguments for Republicans--whether they all support this position or not.
Call your campaign! Call the DNC! Call the DSCC! Call your Democratic congresspeople and let them know that you want them to spend their money and focus thier closing message on the threat to Democracy embodied not only in Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, but also in the endlessly twisted ideology of Steven Miller, of false-front Putin organizations, of Putin’s bots and trolls, and the Putin-loving wing of Republican politics….(in addition, of course, to emphasizing the need to protect a womans’ right to chose, Social Security and voting, climate and racial justice.)
**Citizens for Sanity is a new dark money group founded, among others, by that open gangrene wound, Steven Miller. Here’s a great DKos look at Citizens for Sanity from back in August, and here’s a DKos look at Citizen’s for Sanity’s racist ads they’ve been running in swing states.