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Sunday, May 29, 2016

All the Way With HRC

I've argued that contrary to what some say you can win based on the 'politics of fear.' Don't get me wrong, no election is purely about fear but neither is it purely about aspiration. It's usually a combination of both.

There is plenty of aspiration with Hillary starting with her being the first female Presidential candidate of a major party.

But there's no question that thanks to Donald Trump, a lot of independent and even Republican voters who aren't normally in play can be in play this time.

The other day my buddy Artie told me his very Republican mother is considering voting for Hillary Clinton. But she is sure she won't vote for Donald Trump.

If you want to see how the politics of fear can be productively used, start with All the Way With LBJ back in 1964. In significant ways his opponent was very like Donald Trump.

True, at least Goldwater had actual government experience. Trump is a cross between Goldwater and Wendell Wilkie.

This only makes Trump an even more risky bet. Whoever thought the old Daisy ads would be relevant again?

"It’s rare for a political ad to go viral, and rarer yet for an ad 52 years old, but that’s just what happened in March with “Confessions of a Republican.” The theme of the spot from Lyndon Johnson's 1964 campaign was eerily contemporary: a young actor talking about how his lifelong identification with the GOP was just shaken by an extreme nominee who “scares me.” “When the head of the Ku Klux Klan, when all these weird groups, come out in favor of the candidate of my party — either they’re not Republicans, or I’m not,” he says.

“Confessions” was a linchpin of perhaps the most influential ad campaign in political history, a creative, theatrical attack by Democrats on the disruptive right-wing Republican candidacy of Barry Goldwater. Before 1964, political ads were staid, awkward scenes — short speeches read on-camera. But LBJ's ad campaign was the political equivalent of Sgt. Pepper’s, a masterwork that changed what people thought possible from the medium. Fears of nuclear radiation were related by showing a child eating ice cream. One spot showed Klansmen burning a cross as a drawling voice-over read a KKK endorsement of Goldwater. Another began evocativelywith a nighttime landing of Air Force One — the return flight from Dallas after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Another is arguably the most famous ad in political history, “Daisy,” in which a young girl in a sunny meadow counting petals is menaced by the mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb. “Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay home,” intoned the announcer. The New York Times called it “probably the most controversial TV commercial of all time.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-johnson-lbj-campaign-1964-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-political-ads-daisy-213925#ixzz4A3HrcIab

Wow. I mean we have Klansmen and other white nationalist groups getting behind Trump. We have his supporters attacking conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and his family on anti semitic grounds.

The stakes were too high then and they're way too high now.

The stakes are too high for Americans to do anything but vote for Hillary Clinton on November 3.

3 comments:

  1. Mike, I think I saw you write that you'd seen the HBO movie "All the Way." Is that correct?

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  2. Yes, I saw that last week and wrote about LBJ.

    http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/05/all-way-with-lbj.html

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    1. It's strange: I have HBO, but it doesn't show up in my "in demand" choices. About 10 short 1 or 2 minute videos about the film show up but not the film itself. It also appears to be online in hbogo.com. So I'll try watching it there, but if it is available on my TV, they sure didn't make it easy to find.

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