Desperate for a boost as she lags in the polls, presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand launched a campaign ad that took more direct aim at Donald Trump’s record in office than any other Democratic contender to date.
Released on the eve of a planned tour of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan – three states that Obama won twice but broke for Trump – Gillibrand tried to position herself as the savior for blue-collar Midwestern voters suffering from the gap between Trump’s campaign rhetoric and his actual policies.
The two-minute spot dwells on a series of “broken promises” Trump made to voters in 2016 on which he’s failed to deliver. Alternating between his campaign pledges and the reality as reported by major media outlets, Gillibrand highlights how Trump failed to lower drug prices, bring back jobs to workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, safeguard social security and Medicare, address the water crisis in Flint, and pursue background checks for gun purchases. Left unsaid is that the Trump administration keeps a website of promises the President has supposedly kept while in office.
As a faced-pace drum beat reaches its crescendo and transforms into a soaring orchestral melody, video of Gillibrand on the campaign trail emerges to assure viewers she will fix what is broken.
Interesting is a discrepancy in the imagery the campaign chose for the full ad and for the 30-second TV spot that aired in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Youngstown, Detroit, Lansing and Flint. In the two-minute ad, the video shows a series of shots of the assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio General Motors shuttered in early 2019. The television spot, however, shows footage of the decaying Fisher Body plant in Detroit—one abandoned long before Trump took office.
Whether the Broken Promises tour can help Gillibrand qualify for the Democratic debates in September is yet to be seen. But we are likely to see more of this narrative – the “Broken Promises” of Trump’s administration, particularly when it comes to the promise of jobs and renewal in the rust belt.
Released on the eve of a planned tour of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan – three states that Obama won twice but broke for Trump – Gillibrand tried to position herself as the savior for blue-collar Midwestern voters suffering from the gap between Trump’s campaign rhetoric and his actual policies.
The two-minute spot dwells on a series of “broken promises” Trump made to voters in 2016 on which he’s failed to deliver. Alternating between his campaign pledges and the reality as reported by major media outlets, Gillibrand highlights how Trump failed to lower drug prices, bring back jobs to workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, safeguard social security and Medicare, address the water crisis in Flint, and pursue background checks for gun purchases. Left unsaid is that the Trump administration keeps a website of promises the President has supposedly kept while in office.
As a faced-pace drum beat reaches its crescendo and transforms into a soaring orchestral melody, video of Gillibrand on the campaign trail emerges to assure viewers she will fix what is broken.
Interesting is a discrepancy in the imagery the campaign chose for the full ad and for the 30-second TV spot that aired in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Youngstown, Detroit, Lansing and Flint. In the two-minute ad, the video shows a series of shots of the assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio General Motors shuttered in early 2019. The television spot, however, shows footage of the decaying Fisher Body plant in Detroit—one abandoned long before Trump took office.
Whether the Broken Promises tour can help Gillibrand qualify for the Democratic debates in September is yet to be seen. But we are likely to see more of this narrative – the “Broken Promises” of Trump’s administration, particularly when it comes to the promise of jobs and renewal in the rust belt.