Update: As of 7 p.m. on Jan. 23, the Sanders video had had 1,890,434 views on YouTube after two days and was rising fast. The Trump video had had 28,828 views after five days.
It’s fascinating to watch the political propaganda that comes out in election years. The propaganda is a kind of mirror that reflects either what we are as a country in 2016 — or what those who want our political support think we are. The contrast between this Bernie Sanders ad and the Donald Trump ad is striking. One is inclusive and hopeful. The other is fearful and includes images of dark-skinned scapegoats.
White working people who support Trump are right about one thing: Someone is eating their lunch, and their lives are getting harder.
Their incomes have been stuck for decades, and they are hanging on by their fingernails. While mortality is declining in other rich countries and among most demographics, white working-class people are dying younger, mostly because of suicide and the use of drugs and alcohol. Their divorce rates have risen dramatically, while for more educated people divorce rates are declining. Never have white working-class people (though they can’t quite admit it) been more in need of — and more reliant upon — the social safety net. That includes unemployment insurance, help paying for medical care, disability benefits, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.
The Trump ad reveals how desperate the right wing has become in trying to maintain the fiction that it’s poor people on welfare and people with dark skin who are eating the lunch of struggling white people. It’s the fiction that we’re running out of money and that undeserving poor people (rather than rich people) are sucking up all the money. It’s a propaganda that has to lie to people and stoke fear to get their support. It’s stunning that the man in the ad is a billionaire and that the targets of this ad seem to believe that a narcissistic billionaire is going to help them.
Notice how the Sanders ad is targeted at younger millennials and at a broad and much more hopeful demographic of Americans. These people have better sources of information. They know about the alarming rise in inequality and where our wealth and income are really going. It’s an everyday America that we know and love. It’s propaganda that doesn’t require deception. And though it’s sentimental, it only aims at inspiring people to vote and to get involved in a movement.
As propaganda, the Sanders ad is vastly superior, because it’s 100 percent inoffensive and gives no ammunition to the opposition. Whereas the Trump ad is repulsive to everyone but his supporters. I feel sorry for Trump’s ad agency. There is no way to package the man that doesn’t make the skin crawl on 68 percent of the population.
I have no idea whether Bernie Sanders can win this election. But at the moment, he is winning the heck out of the propaganda wars.
Note: The YouTube video below apparently has been deleted by the Trump campaign.
3 Comments
I’ve never met anyone that is openly in favor of Trump being the Republican nominee or being elected POTUS. I might know people who want him as president but haven’t said so.
I don’t see how anyone could be in favor of Trump. He hasn’t offered anything policy-wise to the narrative.
At this point, Sanders is the most reasonable candidate.
It’s funny how no one seems to know any Trump supporters … and yet … the polls. Maybe the picture will clarify a bit after Iowa.
The only thing I can understand that he has going for him is that what he says, which he doesn’t hold back, connects to the idea that started with the Tea Party and has taken on a life of its own in his campaign. Then again, I never knew anybody that attended local Tea Party meetings – only ever saw signs about them. The fervor surrounding him is worse than I’ve seen for any candidate.
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