June 30, 2016

Headline I completely misread: "Air Wars Favor Clinton."

That's at ABC News, for an item by Michael Falcone that turns out to be about the money spent on advertising. Hillary spent 12 times as much as Trump this month.

I clicked through thinking I was going to read an interesting theory about how the Obama administration's military strategy of keeping drones in the air and boots off the ground would redound to Clinton's benefit.

35 comments:

Achilles said...

I hope they keep emphasizing how much money the oligarchs are giving Hillary.

Brando said...

I misread it the same way, and agree that the "no risk casualties" approach does help Clinton--she can talk tough without risking another Iraq. Not that this is good foreign policy, but politically effective.

I don't know how much TV ads matter this year--obviously a lot of older voters tend to watch TV (and tend to be swing voters this year) but an increasing number of voters get their info online. I think social media feeds are going to be a disaster of attacks this year. Prepare to block about half your friends!

Darrell said...

I thought Trump was spending $0 this month. Hillary is spending an infinite times more then.

Will said...

One of the interesting lessons of the Republican primary is that massive expenditures of cash on media advertising no longer have the effect that they once did.

Unfortunately, the media (which receives that cash), and the consultants (which get commissions on that cash) are loathe to report on this phenomenon, much less change this behavior, because it will directly effect their bottom lines.

I don't know if Trump is smart enough to realize this, or he is keeping his powder dry until after the conventions, or he is just dumb, but the effects will be interesting.

Darrell said...

Hillary would be better off building her own Federal detention cell. Put that $Billion to good use!

TreeJoe said...

Awesome dichotomy, though Hillary's air war in Libya didn't work out so well.

Hillary is outspending Trump 12 to 1 - so that means we have pretty solid evidence that dollars alone don't buy a candidacy, but that if they did, Hillary likes using big dollars to influence her elections? :)

traditionalguy said...

Air Wars means effective TV messaging. It would not include internet. Cable would be a half as big as Air time unless the Nets rerun, for free, the Cable TV and internet stuff as if it is campaign News.

The trouble is Hillary has no message except "Trump is Crazy." And Trump is the best communicator of the two, by far.

Hillary's only hope is to hide out. No News Conferences. No Debates. No speeches. Just rerun retouched 10 year old pics with her smiling next to deranged looking Trump pics...like Trump did to Cruz's operative wife.

AllenS said...

One other advantage that Hillary has is her new found Indian friend ready to take scalps.

Darrell said...

Warren is LaQuota Sue, I've heard.

Matt Sablan said...

"I hope they keep emphasizing how much money the oligarchs are giving Hillary."

-- For the most part, I don't think the average Democrat REALLY cares about money in politics. It's why Obama got away with backing out of his promise to accept public financing. It's why they don't care when rich billionaires buy anti-gun ads at the Super Bowl.

cubanbob said...

I'm trying to determine how much in ads Hillary is going to need to spend to get me to overlook the fact that besides being incompetent at everything she has ever done that she is also a mendacious grifter, criminal and traitor. Of course she could just send me enough money (tax free please) for my vote. And honey, don't play me cheap, make me a real offer, one I can honestly not refuse because my mouth is stuffed with gold. I maybe easy but I'm not cheap.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

Alternate headline:

"Corrupt, incompetent, unindicted felon skims millions from Wall Street friends to wage antiquated, 1990 style campaign against Trump."

Brando said...

"I'm trying to determine how much in ads Hillary is going to need to spend to get me to overlook the fact that besides being incompetent at everything she has ever done that she is also a mendacious grifter, criminal and traitor. Of course she could just send me enough money (tax free please) for my vote. And honey, don't play me cheap, make me a real offer, one I can honestly not refuse because my mouth is stuffed with gold. I maybe easy but I'm not cheap."

She's not trying to convince us, she's trying to fire up her own base. The GOP needs to figure out how to get people like us to the polls. Ironically, those Clinton ads might do the job.

Quaestor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
campy said...

For the most part, I don't think the average Democrat REALLY cares about money in politics.

No democrat cares one whit about money in politics if it's helping democrats.

Todd said...

Are they allowed to use such violent rhetoric and imagery in their headlines? I mean where they heck are the trigger warnings!

TosaGuy said...

The only TV I watch is on Netflix or Amazon Prime. I only see TV ads when I watch TV in a hotel while on the road for work.

The Trump campaign most certainly isn't ready for a national campaign, but not making the rubble bounce with millions of dollars in campaign ads isn't a problem.

Trump should put out a YouTube video and link it to everything: "Those constant ads from Hillary Clinton you see on TV are paid from the millions she has received those who regularly buy politicians. Not only is she bought and paid for by those who are making your life harder, she won't even let you watch your favorite TV show in peace.

Make people offended and personally disgusted by those ads.

Gusty Winds said...

Brando said...

I don't know how much TV ads matter this year

When a political commercial comes on TV or the Radio I turn the channel. They're all bullshit. And they are insultingly simplistic and stupid. Worse than a tweet. The doom and gloom narration is just over the top.

My family hardly ever watches television. DVR, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, kids on YouTube etc... TV is not the captive market it used to be.

Comanche Voter said...

Hillary will bomb him with [Wolf] Blitzer.

narciso said...

Ingraham dubbed warren, Ruth buzzi

Brando said...

"My family hardly ever watches television. DVR, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, kids on YouTube etc... TV is not the captive market it used to be."

Certainly not--I'm not even a millennial (I'm a Gen Xer) but only watch broadcast TV when I'm at a bar catching a game, otherwise it's all Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix. Ten years ago I was still catching TV shows right on schedule, watching the morning interviews, and would have seen all those broadcast commercials, but now the only ones I'd see (except during ball games) are Internet based.

I assume everything will be saturated, though--hell, Obama was even advertising in video games. They'll reach us all one way or another.

I just dont' know how effective ads are these days, though--we already assume they're mostly BS, and just confirm what we already think about those candidates.

cubanbob said...

Brando said...
"I'm trying to determine how much in ads Hillary is going to need to spend to get me to overlook the fact that besides being incompetent at everything she has ever done that she is also a mendacious grifter, criminal and traitor. Of course she could just send me enough money (tax free please) for my vote. And honey, don't play me cheap, make me a real offer, one I can honestly not refuse because my mouth is stuffed with gold. I maybe easy but I'm not cheap."

She's not trying to convince us, she's trying to fire up her own base. The GOP needs to figure out how to get people like us to the polls. Ironically, those Clinton ads might do the job.

6/30/16, 12:20 PM"

If the GOP needs to get people like us to get out and vote for someone who isn't a mendacious grifter and felonious traitor then its all over but the crying.

Hey Hillary! Honey promise me you won't play me cheap and I'll send you by private email my SWIFT info and account number and I pinky swear that once you buy me I being the honest guy that I am will stay bought. As soon as I get the funds confirmation my vote is all yours. Throw a sweetener in and I'll vote early and often for you. Love ya. P.S. Don't forget to tell the IRS and the DoJ and FBI to forget that I exist.

Nonapod said...

Aren't Democrats generally the ones grousing about too much money in politics? Now they seem to be touting it as this great thing that Hillary is outspending Trump 12 to 1? Whatever.

If this election accomplishes nothing else I hope it at least it greatly damages the big campaign industry. All those disgusting consultants, messaging and media specialists, and analysts working hand-in-hand with big donor plutocrats to game the system are some of the most amoral exponents of our modern election system. All their shenanigans are probably one of the biggest reasons we're having this revolt against the ruling class this election cycle.

Quaestor said...

Misread? Hardly. How can one misread something that is almost incomprehensible? Journalistic standards continue to devolve.

mccullough said...

I thought Clinton in the headline referred to Bill Clinton.

tim maguire said...

Silly you thinking it would be a substantive analysis of something meaningful and not just another horse-race thumb sucker.

Eric said...

Yay! Hillary's spending money on us. That is very good. For us.

tim in vermont said...

I know that I refuse to watch network TV when political ads become heavy. I wonder if she is annoying more people than she is reaching.

But she has to keep running them because that's what you do, and she has to go get gobs of money from people who will expect something in return. But Trump is an idiot for not playing the sell out game. Hillary has been playing this game since Arkansas.

eric said...

There was a time when writing, "You could make a million dollars with this one weird trick!" Would cause me to click on the link. What weird trick is that?!

But now I never click on those stupid, leading headlines anymore. At some point they hit a saturation point and stopped working.

This is the same with political advertising.

It's not the advertising I'm worried about.

It's the on the ground organization. It's getting every old person with senility to the polls and having College Democrats filling out the ballot for them. It's busing every bum in the city to the polls and giving them a pack of smokes and thanking them for their vote. It's the trunk of the car filled with Hillary votes.

Brando said...

"It's not the advertising I'm worried about.

It's the on the ground organization. It's getting every old person with senility to the polls and having College Democrats filling out the ballot for them. It's busing every bum in the city to the polls and giving them a pack of smokes and thanking them for their vote. It's the trunk of the car filled with Hillary votes."

That's the rub--the ground game, where micro organizations in every neighborhood gather their volunteers to get their friends and neighbors registered, target them for their pet political cares, and get them to the polls (or absentee ballots) which is what the Dems have been building up. Supposedly the RNC has been trying to catch up, but theirs is more a "all ballot" effort and not focused on just the presidential race. And unless Trump has been hiding a massive secret ground game that he has yet to reveal, he has a lot of ground to cover in four months.

n.n said...

It's an interesting juxtaposition of a double entendre. Obama, Clinton et al's Journolistic and Progressive wars. The former over hearts and minds, and the latter over bodies and land. The money, of course, doesn't matter. It grows on trees and is redistributed at will.

Anyway, Clinton is Pro-choice. I think people finally appreciate the logical implications of this religious/moral philosophy. It is impossible to hold someone to selective or variable principles. It is the "secular" equivalent of Islam's doctrine of Taqiya.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of air wars and political ads...

"The Los Angeles Times reports that when the St. Regis Mohawk tribe announced plans to build a casino near a racetrack in the Catskills, Trump decided to bankroll an ad campaign aimed at convincing local communities to kill the project.

Trump plunged $1 million into a purported “grassroots” anti-gambling organization called the New York Institute for Law and Society that warned the casino would bring “increased crime, broken families, bankruptcies and, in the case of the Mohawks, violence.”

But that’s not all: Documents obtained by The Los Angeles Times show that Trump personally signed off on a strategy devised by longtime ally Roger Stone to depict the Mohawks as a violent people who would bring ruin to everyone else in the area.

“Roger, do it!” Trump scrawled on a proposed flier that said the Mohawk tribe was well known for being a violent group that sold drugs and smuggled undocumented immigrants into the country.

Trump and his associates were ordered by the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying to pay $250,000 for deceptive advertising by not disclosing the fact that Trump almost single handedly funded the New York Institute for Law and Society, despite the fact that the organization falsely boasted it had raised funds from more than 12,000 donors."

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/revealed-trump-bankrolled-a-racist-ad-campaign-against-native-americans-to-protect-his-casino-biz/

mikee said...

So by spending money on TV, Radio & Print ads, Hillary is doing what, exactly, other than cementing her popularity with TV, Radio, & Print advertising executives?

AllenS said...

"There are known knowns" -- Donald Rumsfeld

"There are a lot of unknown Unknowns" -- AllenS

FullMoon said...

Unknown said... [hush]​[hide comment]

Speaking of air wars and political ads...

"The Los Angeles Times reports that when the St. Regis Mohawk tribe announced plans to build a casino near a racetrack in the Catskills, Trump decided to bankroll an ad campaign aimed at convincing local communities to kill the project.

Trump plunged $1 million into a purported “grassroots” anti-gambling organization called the New York Institute for Law and Society that warned the casino would bring “increased crime, broken families, bankruptcies and, in the case of the Mohawks, violence.”

But that’s not all: Documents obtained by The Los Angeles Times show that Trump personally signed off on a strategy devised by longtime ally Roger Stone to depict the Mohawks as a violent people who would bring ruin to everyone else in the area.

“Roger, do it!” Trump scrawled on a proposed flier that said the Mohawk tribe was well known for being a violent group that sold drugs and smuggled undocumented immigrants into the country.
etc../

Followed the link to see Trumps flier. It references reports on 20/20, Dateline. 60 minutes and the New York Times to back up the claims. Guess he didn't just make it all up.
And, like Scott Adams said, Hillarys army going with the racist angle.