Preaching to the choir or effective messaging? Being in the choir, I’m not sure….
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I like the add, but it’s just preaching to the choir.
There’s lots of examples I can point to, but a couple of lines really stands out:
“I still think this country is great.” Me too. But the MAGA crowd doesn’t, and many moderate voters don’t either. My wife, for example. She voted for Biden in the last election. But inflation has her in a tizzy. The reasons for inflation be damned – it happened during the Biden administration, so it’s his fault (and by extension Harris’s fault) . And the fact that inflation rates have fallen is lost on her. Her response is, “but the prices haven’t gone back down to what they used to be.”
“Only one candidate stands for opportunity [and] shares our values.” Ask folks which candidate stands for opportunity and which candidate shares their values. If you ask my wife, or anyone that works in my office other than me, they’d probably say that Trump is the only candidate that stands for opportunity.
On values question, the people in my circle don’t like that Trump is a felon, but they aren’t convinced that the prosecution wasn’t a political witch hunt. I’m surrounded by pro-choice folks who like state’s rights, so Trump’s stance that he would not support a national ban on abortion is enough to forget about Dobbs. There is broad agreement in my circle on culture war issues like the objective classification of gender based on biological sex at birth, and that Trump shares those values but Harris does not.
My wife watched the debates (I couldn’t stomach it). Her take away was that Trump is weird, but economic times were good during his administration. We saved A LOT of money and bought a big house with a great interest rate during the Trump administration. Harris, on the other hand, doesn’t answer questions or say what she’s going to do to help inflation. The only specific points that Harris talks about would potentially increase inflation (e.g. $25,000 for first time home buyers).
Sticking to my wife, because I know her positions so well, she likes what she hears when Trump says that he wants to control the Fed and get them to lower interest rates. Yes, that contradicts her inflation worries, and it is a horrible idea. But she doesn’t see that. She sees that she wants us to move to another house, but we’re golden handcuffed to a 3% mortgage that we got at the end of the Trump administration (when, according to her, the economy was run by someone who understands business and is good for middle class professionals like us). We can’t (because I refuse) to move from a 3% mortgage to a 6.5% mortgage. She thinks Trump will get interest rates back down.
This commercial does not touch on the things that matter to her. It’s just preaching to the choir.