Texas Political Ad Cringe

[Forestluv]

@Mannyb I think the country is hyper polarized into binary Us vs Them conflicts of opposition. I was really hoping Bernie could win and we could transcend that. My hope at this point is there is a change at election. With new leadership, there can be a shift of the Overton window. Things like Proud Boys can become fringe and marginalized again, allowing some space for consciousness evolution.

[Mannyb]

@Forestluv I hope you are right, judging by what I see it’s hard to believe tho

[DocWatts]

4 hours ago, Mannyb said:

@DocWatts @Preety_India could you link to some good Biden and progressives ads to show to my conservative relatives and friends? ??

Really wish I still had those campaign leaflets that I described, as it was a perfect example of the contrast between an informational and aspiration based campaign approach (Biden), and a fear based and emotionally manipulative campaign (Trump). 

I'll see what I can dig up when I have a bit of time. Just out of curiosity, were you trying to use these to convince your conservative friends to consider your point of view, or were you more interested in the differences between the tactics of the Trump and Biden campaigns?

 

[seeking_brilliance]

@Leo GuraGura(phone bug) 

Trump's attitude that America is broken and needs to be 'rebooted' (reloaded) and fixed, is catching on, drawing a strong crowd. 

 

Edited September 27, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Mannyb]

37 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Really wish I still had those campaign leaflets that I described, as it was a perfect example of the contrast between an informational and aspiration based campaign approach (Biden), and a fear based and emotionally manipulative campaign (Trump). 

I'll see what I can dig up when I have a bit of time. Just out of curiosity, were you trying to use these to convince your conservative friends to consider your point of view, or were you more interested in the differences between the tactics of the Trump and Biden campaigns?

 

I’m interested in the tactics first to get a clear picture of how they are Campaigning (as I reside outside the us I don’t have much exposure), and then upon analysis I’d share the findings with my conservative relatives/friends. For me a central point of politics should be to find a common ground on which both sides can stand on and build from there. 

[Forestluv]

Contrast the original Blue team ad with Green team ad. A very different orientation.

 

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

Contrast the original Blue team ad with Green team ad. A very different orientation.

 

Not enough explosions. Sorry, voting Trump.

[abundance]

Sadly, this may persuade some people

[Gidiot]

@Forestluv I’m of the opinion that a healthy green person that has a lot of healthy blue in him like beau of the fifth column is really appealing. I don’t buy into the theory that only blue could send effective and persuasive messaging to red. Yellow could do even better than green as well, that was the topic in another thread, I think a lot of it in politics is beyond spiral dynamics too, a lot of is a persons appearance and their tone and age, as sad is that sounds, sometimes you need a female to talk to a female or a military person to talk to a solider etc to persuade them regardless of the level of development, just an insight I had. 
 

a lot of politics maybe all of it is actually identity politics, more than people would like to admit. Haha

Edited September 27, 2020 by Gidiot

[DocWatts]

7 hours ago, Mannyb said:

I’m interested in the tactics first to get a clear picture of how they are Campaigning (as I reside outside the us I don’t have much exposure), and then upon analysis I’d share the findings with my conservative relatives/friends. For me a central point of politics should be to find a common ground on which both sides can stand on and build from there. 

@MannybWhy does it seem like there's always plenty of political advertisements for me to toss into the recycle bin when I'm collecting my mail, but fewer examples I can dredge up of that sort of those direct mail political advertisements when I do a Google search? But I digress...

So these aren't the exact format of the political advertisements I receive in the mail every week for each candidate, but are as close as I could find after a handful of Google searches, and are broadly representative of the campaign tactics for each.

Notice how the format of Biden's advertisement is primarily Informative; it's goal is to communicate tangible policy positions in a clear and concise way; also notice how there's no mention of Trump in that advertisement. This seems to be broadly consistent with what I've seen out of the Biden campaign, where his ads may mention Trump briefly, but Trump isn't really the focus. If I had to sum up the mood of his campaign, it's one of reassurance; he's trying to convince the Country that he's a reasonable and responsible person, and this is usually backed up by concrete policy information on things he hopes to achieve once in office. He is also trying to portray himself as a Moderate (which he is), with the hope that this will come as a breath of fresh air to the country after the extremism of Trump.

 The Trump advertisements by contrast are intentionally trying to be emotionally manipulative by preying upon people's fears and anxieties. While the direct political advertisements may occasionally mention policy, very little concrete information is provided on what Trump hopes to achieve during a second term. And for that matter, there's also comparatively little focus on his accomplishments during his Presidency. His main campaign tactics primarily consist of attacking his enemies ("The Radical Left" is the most common phrase I see in his adverts), and trying to scare people away from voting for Biden by claiming that he's a Radical Leftist (which is not true; Biden is a centrist in the American political system). His adverts tend to contain emotionally charged imagery and phrases chosen to tap in to people's grievances and anxieties, while also claims that are just factually not true, such as : Joe Biden supports abolishing the Police ( he does not), that voting by mail is fraudulent (little to no evidence for this), etc...  Reason for this is over the course of four years Trump has had little in the way of accomplishments that he can boast about, so from a strategy standpoint this sort of negative campaigning where he demonizes his opponents and preys upon people's fears is really the only other avenue he has available to him.

While there might be some blurring of these lines (I'm sure if you go looking for it, you'd be able to come up with a Counter example for these trends from the Biden/Trump campaigns), these are the overall trends I've noticed from both campaigns. And for what it's worth, I live in an area of the country (Michigan) that's a Swing State, and is going to be pivotal in this upcoming election, so it hotly contested by both campaigns, and a heavy target for political advertising. I should also note that negative campaigning isn't a strictly partisan issue, but it does seems to be much more heavily split along partisan lines for this election in particular.

Sorry for not having more/better political advertisements to post here as examples; if I find something that's more illustrative of this, I'll update this post.  Hope this helps in the mean time!

Edited September 27, 2020 by DocWatts
clarity, grammar