Hillary Clintons' new ad stoops to fear mongering:
It's 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep, But there's a phone in the White House, and it's ringing — something's happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.
Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It’s 3 AM and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?
It's not clear what demographic of the population they're appealing to with this ad. When you run ads, do mail or other types of direct voter contact, you don't try to appeal to everyone. You have a sense of who you need to appeal to, who you need to hold, who you might be able to pluck away from your opponent's base, and who's truly up for grabs. Furthermore, you know what messages appeal to which slices of the electorate.
In a Democratic primary, where almost all Democrats are against the war in Iraq and have a strong revulsion to the fear mongering Bush did to squeak out his 2004 win over John Kerry, it's hard to figure out which slices of the electorate that may be up for grabs in Ohio and are necessary to keep Obama from winning will respond strongly to this ad. In Wisconsin, Obama won or tied every major demographic except elderly voters. Elderly voters may respond to this ad, but if Clinton is trying to hang on to elderly voters, she's done.
Coming at this point in the campaign, this ad feels like evidence of futility and a last-ditch attempt to revive a dying campaign. Clinton ad guy Roy Spence used the red phone schtick back in 1984 for Walter Mondale against Gary Hart. It's like the Clinton team has run out of ideas and are now just tossing out stuff that may have worked 20 years ago, because nothing else is working now.
The Clinton campaign seems so bereft of inspiration, and Mark Penn is so ridiculously untrustworthy, that they're trying to spin this as something from Mr. Rogers:
Asked if the ad was reminiscent of the famous Lyndon Johnson ad showing a young girl picking at a daisy before an ominous-sounding announcer counts down from 10-to-one towards a nuclear apocalypse, Penn said:
This is a positive ad. Very soft images. Not at all like that ad. Soft images. It poses a question to people -- who do they want to pick up the phone? Let them make their own judgment. This is a spot that puts [the question] in the hands of voters.
The Obama campaign hit back hard in a conference call this morning--with a brilliant retort about how Hillary’s already had a chance to protect us ... and failed. Via Greg Sargent at TPM Election Central, we get the response, given by Obama campaign manager David Plouffe:
"We don't think the ad is going to be effective at all. Senator Clinton already had her red phone moment -- to decide whether to allow George Bush to invade Iraq. She answered affirmatively. She did not read the National Intelligence Estimate. She still, curiously, tries to suggest that it wasn't a vote for war, but it most assuredly was...
"This is about what you say when you answer that phone. What judgment you show...She, John McCain and George Bush gave the wrong answer."
Clinton is on shaky ground when she fights with Obama about foreign policy and Iraq, because more Democrats agree with his positions than hers on talking to leaders of countries we consider threats or enemies. But what does this ad say about the way the Clinton campaign is trying to win?
Here's one response that could apply to the Clinton campaign's turn toward fear-mongering:
"This election is a race between hope and fear, between division and community, between responsibility and blame, between whether we have the courage to change, to stay young forever, or whether we stay with the comfort of the status quo."
Here's one that addressed George W. Bush's effort to sow fear and division in the 2004 campaign against John Kerry:
Now, one of Clinton's laws of politics is this. If one candidate is trying to scare you and the other one is try get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.
Instead of spreading fear, the Clinton campaign should have heeded those words, spoken by the Man From Hope, Bill Clinton.
But the last word goes to Barack Obama himself:
I will never see the threat of terrorism as a way to scare up votes, because it's a threat that should rally the country around our common enemies. That is the judgment we need at 3:00 a.m., and that's the judgment that I am running for as president of the United States of America.
[h/t to Nuisance Industry for the Clinton quotes]
Comments are closed on this story.