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Is the Democratic Party in ‘Utter Disarray?’

Posted on
December 13, 2016
by Andrew Cullen
Despite all predictions to the contrary, 2016 ended up being a very bad year for Democrats. The party managed to pick up a few seats in the Senate, but still has a minority in both houses of Congress, and in just a few weeks the Democrats won’t have the power of the presidency either.

All the Election Day losses for the Democrats led to a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking – the kind that was just ripe for this super PAC to pluck for a minute-and-a-half long political ad.

Tracking a Party in ‘Utter Disarray’

To the tune of awkwardly biblical music, America Rising’s ad, “Utter Disarray,” is filled with the day after Election Day news clips, where the Democratic Party (and many political pundits) were still in awe at the results from the night before.

We see pundits from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to Democratic operatives like Van Jones – even politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Tim Ryan; all of whom are criticizing the mistakes the Democratic Party made in the 2016 cycle. Albeit, too little too late.

“This is a party that has been bleeding out at every level,” Scarborough says, despite the fact that the Democrats actually picked up House and Senate seats in 2016 (though not enough to gain a majority).  We also see CNN’s Manu Raju say of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, “behind the scenes she is scrambling to lock down support” in her election to lead the Democratic Party. Ten days before this ad rolled out on YouTube, Pelosi beat Ryan 134 to 63 in the closed-door elections and was nominated to her eighth term as House leader.

The epic biblical orchestra comes to a crescendo as Bloomberg’s John Heilemann pins the Democratic losses on President Barack Obama. “They had Democratic control of the House, Democratic control of the Senate,” he says. “He leaves with the party in shambles. In utter disarray.”

Standard Operating Procedure

America Rising PAC was founded in March 2013 by Matt Rhoades, the former director of opposition research for George W. Bush’s re-election and Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign manager.

In 2014, the PAC split into two entities – a standard PAC and a limited liability company (LLC) that houses a video library of raw opposition footage that Republican candidates and other GOP-aligned groups can use for attack ads against Democrats.

Throughout the 2016 election cycle, America Rising trailed most of the Democratic candidates in the country and also collected damaging news reports about them to be used in attack ads. The PAC even rolled out quite a few digital ads itself.

On the Democratic side, a similar group, American Bridge 21st Century tracks Republican candidates – perhaps most famously, in the 2016 cycle, Marco Rubio who they followed in a giant robot suit that said “Robot Rubio.”

With many super PACs already looking ahead to 2018 and 2020, PACs like America Rising and American Bridge have plenty of time to comb the airwaves, stocking up their war chests.
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