Friday, August 19, 2016

FIRST TRUMP GENERAL ELECTION AD: ECONOMIC ANXIETY? WHAT ECONOMIC ANXIETY?

We've been told that the surprising success of Donald Trump in this election can be attributed to white America's increasing sense of economic displacement, as manufacturing jobs continue to disappear and the well-to-do benefit disproportionately from the economic recovery. We've been told that Trump is appealing to the same sense of economic unfairness that drove the campaign of Bernie Sanders.

So here's Donald Trump's first TV ad of the general election campaign. Where's the economy?



Here's the ad's voiceover:
In Hillary Clinton’s America, the system stays rigged against Americans. Syrian refugees flood in. Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay, collecting Social Security benefits, skipping the line. Our border open. It’s more of the same, but worse.

Donald Trump’s America is secure, terrorists and dangerous criminals kept out. The border secure. Our families safe. Change that makes America safe again. Donald Trump for president.
Economic anger? Nope. The entire ad is about fear of the Other -- including, we can safely infer, that opening shot of a polling place entrance and the words "system rigged," which, to Trump's base, is a dog whistle meaning "Democratic machine bosses in big cities with large non-white populations are going to manipulate the vote in Clinton's favor."



The rest is about Muslims and Mexicans, then about manly symbols of American strength (helicopters, Border Patrol vehicles, an aircraft carrier) keeping citizens safe in Trump's America. There's a brief reference to Social Security, but it's about them damn furriners taking our benefits.

Somehow an ad that starts by telling us that the system is rigged doesn't see any rigging in the economic system. Sorry, Bernie!

You can keep telling yourself that the Trump phenomenon is all about jobs and declining incomes. It isn't.

10 comments:

Leo Artunian said...

It's hard to see how this ad can appeal to anyone apart from Trump's core supporters. The dire warning that the US has "open borders" and "illegal immigrants convicted of crimes get to stay" is obviously meant to feed the fear of dark-skinned foreigners that is the stuff of right-wing fever dreams.

Victor said...

First, you start off with fear and hatred of "The Other(s)!"

THEN, you mix in some economic messages - between more fear and hatred of "The Other(s)," who, of course, are coming for your job, or your kids!

BOOOOGA-BOOOOOOOOOOGA!!!!!

KenRight said...

I don't know of anyone who has said Trump is about economics to the exclusion of nation and ethnic solidarity, the core defining America.
Wasn't it Stalin who held Russian Slavs were the most socialistically developed group in the world whose vibrant core was necessary to help the USSR bring socialism to the world? And didn't he win the battle with Trotsky who denied it?

Modify with "populism" for "socialism" and you've got the program which seeks to ensure Social Security available for all in a country not overrun with the alien. The multicults uber alles crod just doesn't get it.

Victor said...

No, KenRight,
Actually, it was Lenin and Trotsky who said that.

And listen, read up of SS:
EVERYONE who is working, and is on the books (even under a fake name and SS #) - even semi-legally or not - pays into SS, Medicare, and Medicaid.
But, not EVERYONE collects!

I'm tired of your diatribes, which have very little to do with reality.
Hence, the "Right," attached to your "Ken!"

It should be KenWRONG!!!

Gerald Parks said...

Just saw the Rachel Maddow Show ...she reports t hat the stats come from an "Institute" that uses eugenics "research that states African Americans and Hispanics are genetically inferior to so-called white people of Europen "stock".

This "Institute" is listed as a white supremacist hate group.

Gee ...GOP/Republican Party ... how IS that African American outreach going?

Can't wait to see tomorrow's headlines about this and the newly hired campaign managers "spin" when asked to 'splain it.

Also wondering just how long that campaign ad will run?

Ten Bears said...

As I recall, the last time Eugenics was popular was the first time Fascism was a popular political philosophy here.

Look at those fat asses, fat bellies, fat cheeks, chins and jowls; hairless, pink-skin prone to lesions, boils and burns; weak eyes, weak ears, weaker brains subject to irrational dependencies upon adolescent fairy tales to justify sex with children and keep the bed dry at night, stink like a restaurant grease pit on a hundred degree day all holding on to their little pee-pees like maybe they’re gonna lose it.

I am laughing, at the “superiority".

Ten Bears said...

The graphic that accompanies the foregoing at my place is a shutterstock photo of some 'Meircian Neo-NAZIs. Who IMHO like Confederates are NB Traitors. Enemies of the American People, Enemies of the American Way of Life, and if not taken out back of the barn and summarily executed rounded up and escorted at gunpoint to reservations out on the hinterlands, preferably Mars or the Moon's of Uranus.

Gerald Parks said...

GeraldP Aug 20 · 12:18:59 PM
Yet ANOTHER stellar example of GOP/ Republican governance in 21st century America!

Bush/Cheney 2000-2008 set the standard and tone.

Wars, invasions, loss of civil liberties, torture, mismanagement of government services, little or no government oversight/regulations on businesses, Bankers and Wall Street, huge job loses, high unemployment, squandered surpluses, tax cuts for the wealthy, near economic collapse, bluster and faux bravado when faced with any real or precieved threat!

Please note that the FIVE worst States are under GOP/Republican governce. Except for LA which only rcently replaced former (R) Gov Bobby Jendal. Who frist drove the State into a ditch and then began digging deeper!

Their governance in 21st Century American has been nothing short of dismal, disasterous, dark, draconian and deadly to American Citizens!

And now they want to elect THIS wannabe despot dictator with a vision of a dsyopican America!

Damn ...WE can do better than this!

KenRight said...

Victor

Lenin was critical of Stalin early on for the latter's creeping Great Russian
socialist leanings, not wishing to grant non-Russian parts of the USSR more autonomy, etc.
As for SS, just as Europe is finding it hard to continue socialistic programs because of demographic "challenges" so will your multicultural US which Trump is trying in his own uneven way to shave off the more extravagant excesses thereof.

Ten Bears' "American Way of Life' has existed--somewhat dominant, on the surface at least... since maybe the late 1960s. The "retrograde" American way of life with its accomplishments and flaws dominated from 1776 until then.

Ten Bears said...

Ken, it would be my pleasure to recommend you for a substantial raise to your Israeli employers.