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Listen, this ad seems laughable but it's actually quite sinister. Worth pulling back the curtain on its true intent... (Spoiler: it isn’t trying to “appeal” to Latino voters.) https://twitter.com/ShaneGoldmacher/status/1289236481618219008
First of all, this is clearly a dirty tricks outfit. Their name is basically a Nixon tribute (remember the Committee to Re-Elect the President?) I hesitated in sharing their video, because we shouldn’t amplify disinfo. But the @nytimes (!) started it & others have followed.
The ad makes some...odd... choices, and I think it helps to understand the intent isn’t persuasion-- it’s suppression. This is a gleefully racist, cynical ploy to get Latino voters to stay home.
It doesn’t matter that the claim at the center of the video is a lie; or that that Joe Biden has, in fact, considered Latinas for VP; or that Trump obviously doesn’t plan to replace Pence with Ted Cruz. Obfuscation is the point.
Voters turn out when they perceive the votes of their group matter-- & the perception comes in part from the signals they get from campaigns trying to earn their votes. This ad is the antithesis, saying in effect "Trump may suck, but Latino votes for Biden won't change anything"
A quick search shows the same PAC has been running ads targeted at Black voters. The most recent spot recycles an older ad so egregious that Obama filed a cease-and-desist against it. https://bit.ly/3fmfEQZ
They have ANOTHER ad that tries to paint Joe Biden as a KKK-backing, n-word spouting racist. It’s so horrific that even @Facebook— notoriously slow to act on disinfo— has taken it down. The ad's message is, again, that voting won't change anything. https://bit.ly/33hfdow
These are vote-suppression tactics used in '16 by troublemakers both foreign & domestic, now mainstreamed. Conservative social media has been toying w/ the narrative that Dems cares more about Black than Latino voters. Trump has been winking at it in his own Goya ads.
It's not new, though. The radical right-wing has long tried to use anti-immigrant rhetoric as a wedge with Black voters, and anti-Black rhetoric as a wedge with Latino voters, at the service of electing politicians intent on screwing over all people of color.
Back to the Latino ad. Who's it targeting? An English version (left): young ppl in AZ and FL. The Spanish version (right): older voters in FL. They target irregular voters who aren't paying close attention to politics & don’t like Trump, but have no sense of Biden yet.
Clearly, the ad-makers felt no need for coherence. I'd guess the odd selection of Latino figures at the beginning of the ad is the product of (non-Latino) operatives sitting around brainstorming who might be recognizable to different Hispanic voters.
It doesn’t even matter that the ad is, objectively, ridiculous and poorly executed— typos, bad Spanish, weird argument. And, of course, blatant anti-Blackness. Have you been on WhatsApp? Quality is secondary to spreading a terrible idea, like a virus.
In many ways I'm less worried about this spot, which had less than $300 behind it on Facebook and is now inactive, and more about the ones that follow, that maybe won't be so shoddy. Are they testing the fences?
So, a question: is @NBCUTelemundo really airing this ad? Are Facebook and Google going to allow it, should it run again? What about future incarnations? (Needless to say, they shouldn't. This isn't legitimate political communication. It's disinfo.)
My last thought is that these kinds of bunk arguments don’t take root with voters who already have a solid base of information about Joe Biden. To defeat the bad actors, good actors need to out-communicate them.
A big part of that is on Biden, who could inoculate voters by finding every way imaginable, through his time and spending, to signal the importance of every single Black & Latino vote to his campaign. (He’s begun this of late.)
As importantly, it would make a difference for voters to hear directly from supporters of color who are loudly making the case for Biden, not just for voting in the abstract, across channels. Ultimately, credible messengers can beat the illegitimate ones.
It just so happens that messages that call out efforts to pit us against each other & emphasize communities coming together to make change test exceedingly well. Unity makes sense from both a moral and pragmatic standpoint.
