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(Thanks to commentor Allison W for the link!)
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[…] “hammer[ed]” an “important message.” The Washington Monthly called it “effective.” And other viewers called it “very nice” and asked for “more of this, […]
mr. whipple
Well done.
Dan
Makes the point concisely, but who doesn’t already know this? It is a feature, not a bug. It’s the reason 26+/-% of the US love these guys.
JenJen
Wow. That’s actually surprisingly good, DNC!
jibeaux
@Dan:
The thing is, if they only got the crazification factor ( I think it’s technically 27%) of the vote, they’d never win anything. I think you have to keep reminding the swing voters and the inconsistently voting voters and new voters just how crazy they are.
It’s a good, punchy ad.
Now do some with “HELL NO YOU CAN’T!!!”, pretty please?
toujoursdan
Plaster TV stations with this now, through November.
New Yorker
Nicely done. This is the kind of thing the Dems need to stress more: how deregulation and “free market solves everything” bullshit leads to the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Goldman Sachs ripping off its own investors.
Zifnab
All fifty states. Played 24/7. Ad Nauseum.
Hell, I’d love to see them play this ad on Rush. Just so you could hear the fat man have an apoplexy.
Stroszek
Romney is correct. Health care providers and pharmaceutical companies are far more responsible for the country’s ridiculous health care costs. The problem with our current system of private insurers is that it doesn’t really provide a direct mechanism for keeping those costs down. If you wiped out all insurer profits and executive compensation, the savings for policy holders would be minimal.
Jim Crozier
Wow.
Fantastic ad. Run it nationwide and run it constantly. I wouldn’t even bother mixing up the message by running different ads. Just pound that into peoples’ skulls day in and day out.
Linda Featheringill
Very nice!
And yes – we’d like to see a lot of this ad and we would like for it to start soon.
Stefan
For those who can’t watch clips at work, what is this about?
Karen
OMG! This is what I always wanted! Showing what each Republican vote has cost the country and how it impacts the voter.
It’s short and concise. It might be making an Independent choose do vote Democrat.
Lolis
@Stroszek:
Insurance companies could spend as little of 60 cents of every dollar they got from customers on actual care. Insurance companies are part of the problem. To say they aren’t is baffling. They are not the whole problem but they suck up money for basically doing what Medicare does at around 4 cents on the dollar.
edmund dantes
If this isn’t in heavy rotation on normal TV in the run up to the election and not just a Web Ad to generate stories, the DNC and Democrats aren’t even trying.
NobodySpecial
@Stefan: It’s the Barton apology to BP, a snippet of Mittens claiming that insurance companies don’t drive health care costs up, and Steele telling people to trust Wall Street and not the government. The phrases are:
On the side of Big Oil
On the side of Insurance Companies
On the side of Wall Street
Republicans: This is how they would govern.
This thing needs to be everywhere like a Lost promo.
demimondian
OMG, what a TERRIBLE ad.
No, I’m serious. A negative ad should not say things like “trust the people who built the economy” or “nobody believes that health care is so expensive because of the insurance companies”. Those are both statements which will have positive valences.
Dan
@demimondian: Yeah, to idiots.
Crusty Dem
I’m with demimondian, it sounds anti-business without actually punching it home (to me, at least). The Wall Street stuff is weak, because the idiots trust Wall Street more than government, they need to connect the GOP with the corruption, not Wall Street in general. Ditto for Health Insurance. To be successful, this ad needs to be adjusted to connect the GOP to the obviously corrupt corporations.
I get that we like/agree with the points being made, but I don’t see how this convinces real american Joe Johnson in Bumblefuck, Ohio… That said, it’s probably made for us and not him, but that’s my point..
Dan
@Crusty Dem: Believe me, no one trusts Wall Street more than government. No one with a fucked pension or a fucked 401k or with any knowledge of Bernie Madoff, or the bailouts or …
fourlegsgood
That ad would be perfect if they would close with
ON THEIR SIDE
and fade to NOT ON YOURS
Captain Haddock
@Dan:
I have to agree. I have more than a few Republican voting relatives that would think this was all positive.
demimondian
@Dan: Perhaps you’d do better to spend some time with people, then. You’re simply wrong.
Crusty Dem
@Dan:
Agreed. And what percentage of the American population is that? 35%? 40%?
I acknowledge that there’s the 27% we’ll never get and the 35% we already have, its’ that middle 38% that are dangerous. Let’s face it, if you haven’t picked a side, it’s because you’re not paying attention, and those people aren’t going to be convinced by mildly positive statements about Wall Street or health insurance companies.
We all suffer from a false sense of the intelligence and attention that Americans pay to these things, because we hang around on these blogs with people who read voraciously and have high IQs (political and otherwise). Go out and connect with “Real Americans”, because they don’t know and they don’t really give a shit (for evidence, just remember the 2004 election)…
Tonybrown74
@demimondian:
I think you have a valid point … if those staements were made in a vacuum. But too many people have seen their premiums for health insurance go up year after year to take Mitt’s statement in a positive light. And the economic downturn caused by Wall Street is still ongoing on Main Street.
The add, in my mind, is excellent.
The only thing I think I would change is the music score. It should be just a monotone and more ominous.
rdldot
Nicely done. The only thing I would add is at the end. Say ‘Again’ after ‘This is how the Republicans would govern’ which reminds the voters why they voted them out in the first place. The simple fact is that most people that vote don’t vote ‘for’ anybody. Every election is a referendum on the party in power. If people are happy, or at least content, they keep who’s there. If they aren’t at least content, it’s vote the bums out. The Dems have a problem this year, and the only way to overcome it is for either the economy to pick up a lot, or to point out the differences between the way the parties govern and hope that sticks. Good ad.
srv
Yeah, the Wall St. stuff isn’t going to help. They’d really do better to dig up all the Republicans and their privatize social security comments and have the dow chart in the background. Put casino, ponzi and SS together.
Annie
@New Yorker:
And, the mining tragedy in W. Virginia.
Bondo
@Lolis:
Insurance companies may add a level of inefficiency (I’m not sure where you are getting 40% from, it is more in the 10-15% range on average), but more importantly, the problem with American health care right now is less of cost than of growth. Insurance companies are not at all responsible for the growth dynamic.
You could cut out insurance industry waste and save a little money but it would quickly be eaten away by cost increases. So Romney is essentially right. The problem is that Democrats have found it easier to demonize insurance companies rather than the pharma/durable medical equipment companies and medical providers that are really driving the health care cost problem.
ajr22
“Im almost confident Jobs were created under George W Bush”(c) Michael Steele. Well, i’m very confident that he is an idiot.
John S.
Demimondian is right.
The concept of the ad is excellent, but the execution is terrible. Can the DNC please hire a decent fucking advertising agency? Shit, I would offer up my services for a fraction of the going rate just to see something GOOD for a change.
Crusty Dem
Since it’s easy to say “this sucks”, I’ll offer suggestions for improvement without (though the non-Barton quotes are not what I’d choose, how can you not include some of Michelle Bachmann’s idiocy?). Start with the politician saying something, overlap with video of the consequences. Joe Barton starts apologizing to BP, overlap with video of the well and oil-covered birds. Michael Steele talks about trusting Wall Street, overlap with video of Madoff and Stanford being frogmarched (maybe w/Goldman Sachs headline, too). The Mitt example is the toughest, because I can’t come up with a 10 second visual that encompasses the debacle that is our health insurance industry…
The key is to overlap the GOPer’s comment with something that viscerally repulses people (that’s why the BP apology is so damaging, it’s not just a mistake, it disgusting). If you can watch the image without feeling discomfort, it’s too mild.
Davis X. Machina
@Bondo: Not popular to say, but right.
Violet
Saw this last night. Excellent. The DNC has plenty of material to work with. The Republicans are constantly saying stuff like this. They can make multiple ads like this from now until November. More of this please.
Steve
Those Mitt Romney clips are just jaw-dropping.
eric
Some of you need to get out more. The Romney stuff is great because he is so smug. Plus, in order to reubt the ad you would have to defend the insurance companies (i) without pointing out where they harm people or (ii) say insurance companies never harm people. The latter is insane and the former will lead to latter when push comes to shove. If our republican overlords have taught us anythign about political advertising, it is that literal truth is not as important as truthiness.
SenyorDave
The Democrats have done a horrible job of communication. They don’t have the stomach for hardball.
Dan
@demimondian: Thank you for correcting me. And with such a stunning argument.
Lavocat
The soundtrack should either be the universal sound of a cash register or, better yet, Pink Floyd’s “Money”.
Violet
@Lavocat:
“Money” would be ideal.
Ella in New Mexico
@toujoursdan:
Better yet: start a series of commercials with all the REST of the stuff that’s out there. Keep those visuals fresh in the minds of the voters.
Allison W.
YES!! thanks for posting.
Allison W.
The idiots trust Wall Street? the ad is not trying to reach the idiots, its trying to reach the rest of this country who don’t know what the GOP is saying or doing. And what better person to show defending Wall Street than that clown Michael Steele?
One ad I would love to see is a montage of Republicans saying no (including boehner’s Hell No) along with visuals of someone being denied health insurance, another person inquiring about their unemployment benefits, a visual of public employees (teachers, firemen, police) being laid off, a visual of the people who were affected by the oil spill, people who lost their savings due to Wall Street’s greed, etc. And then end with John Cornyn saying “the American people like to hear the word no” – yes that sob said that.
Stroszek
@Lolis: I actually said they were part of the problem, just not a very big part (in terms of cause). The reason we go after insurers is because it’s more politically palatable than going after doctors and hospital administrators, but the reality is that we’ll have no cost containment until we do. If all insurers operated at Medicare-level efficiency, we really wouldn’t save that much money and cost growth would continue anyway. The primary reason Medicare saves money is because it basically imposes government price controls on providers, and this is how every other developed country, including those that use private insurers, keeps costs in check.
Stefan
Yeah, to idiots.
Well, considering that half our country is idiots….
demimondian
@Dan: You’re welcome. At that, saying more than “you’re wrong” was time poorly spent.
bjkeefe
@Dan: I am less confident than you are about general awareness, but even in light of your polling statistic, I would say it can’t hurt to remind the unmotivated to get out and vote this November.