Trump’s Final Appeal to the Voters
This is a really good ad. I think this is what he had to work with, and he swung for the fences. I think future politics classes will look at this ad the same way they will study, say, the Goldwater campaign.
The only other commentary I will make is to note the points in the video where Trump identifies enemies, in order to get people to vote for him. I will identify people according to their official demographics, for a purpose that will be clear at the bottom.
0:05 Hillary Clinton (white Christian woman)
0:21 George Soros (Jewish man)
0:22 Janet Yellen (Jewish woman)
0:24 A whole group [20+ people] of financial ministers and central bankers, with all kinds of colors, men and women.
0:33 Obama walking with Prime Minister Abe (I think?) (black Christian man, Japanese man)
0:36 Bill Clinton (white Christian man)
0:44 Hillary Clinton shaking hands with Tony Blair (I think?) (white Christian woman, white Christian man)
0:48 Bill and Hillary Clinton representing “the political establishment” (white Christian man and woman)
0:59 – 1:04 More coverage of “global power structure” with 10+ foreign elites, both sexes and many colors
1:14 Lloyd Blankfein walking to podium at Clinton Global Initiative (Jewish man)
1:15 – 2:00 Video doesn’t show any more enemies, but instead shows the average Americans who will save the day.
So, naturally, in light of the above list, it makes sense that Paul Krugman tweets:
Given the Trump campaign's closing argument, I'm tempted to replace my avatar: pic.twitter.com/qTzbo4BLRO
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 6, 2016
Not to be outdone, Scott Sumner wrote:
PPPPS: Trump finishes his campaign as classy as he staged it, with an alt-right ad targeting three people in an international conspiracy of financial-types, who all “just happen” to be Jewish:
Minnesota Sen. Al Franken on Sunday called a new advertisement for Donald Trump’s campaign “something of a German shepherd whistle” designed to appeal to his supporters in the so-called alt-right.
The TV spot warns of the influence of “those who control the levers of power in Washington” and “global special interests,” and it raised eyebrows among observers who said it contains anti-Semitic overtones. As CNN’s Jake Tapper noted to Franken on Sunday morning on “State of the Union,” commentators have pointed out that it targets three public figures who are Jewish — billionaire George Soros, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
Maybe St. Bernard whistle would be more accurate. Or Great Dane. Or whistle best heard by people with tinfoil hat receptors.
Krugman and Sumner are getting sloppy. Trump’s ad also targeted a black guy and a white (Christian) woman. So the ad is racist and sexist, too.
Last thing: For those trying to understand how in the world DONALD TRUMP got so many people on his bandwagon, Krugman and Sumner’s smug attitude is part of the reason. Believe it or not, there are a lot of non-racist people who are sick and tired of walking on eggshells. So yes, *actual* racists would like Trump more than Hillary too, but when you’re not allowed to criticize some of the most powerful financial people on Earth because they’re Jewish, well, don’t be surprised if people eventually flip out and support a “protest” candidate.
Dr Murphy said “Believe it or not, there are a lot of non-racist people who are sick and tired of walking on eggshells. So yes, *actual* racists would like Trump more than Hillary too, but when you’re not allowed to criticize some of the most powerful financial people on Earth because they’re Jewish, well, don’t be surprised if people eventually flip out and support a “protest” candidate.” +1x10e9
Scott Sumner the currency monopolist strikes again!
I think I’ve managed to get him to totally ignore my comments. Woohoo!
I tend to agree for the most part. I didn’t even know Yellen and Blankfein were Jewish myself. Yellen is particularly interesting because if merely showing a Jewish Fed chair is sufficient to be anti-semitic then you’d have to go back THIRTY YEARS to get a Fed chair you could legitimately criticize.
That having been said I’d qualify this in one sense – it’s the whole dog whistle thing. This ad itself need not be anti-semitic in isolation, but it was wasn’t made in isolation and it’s clearly presented in a way that will hype up the real anti-semites on the alt-right and the borderline people in the Alex Jones audience. If it was consciously constructed to do that (which it almost certainly was) there’s grounds for some criticism.
A lot of speculation for a guy with a blog named “Facts and Other Stubborn Things” or is the projection qualified as “other?”
The speculative bar here – that Alex Jones watchers will have their interest piqued by references to globalists and that the alt-right knows their Jews – is quite low. Not a lot of a speculation in my comment.
It’s interesting you two are focusing on that paragraph. I do agree with Bob for the most part. It’s not an overtly anti-semitic ad. But it pretty deliberately appeals to the alt-right and the Alex Jones crowd. I think that’s difficult to deny.
I don’t think of Alex Jonesers as generally being anti-semitic, fwiw.
I call BS. Nothing more than confirmation bias. That portion of the ad could literally have been an ad Sanders or Warren could have made and no one would interpret it in that fashion.
I agree completely Dexter (except for the BS part). That’s why I said I agree with Bob.
The speculation that it was crafted specifically for that audience is, as Dexter pointed out, hardly more than confirmation bias. The globalist nature of all of the references is clear and even explicit but it doesn’t take a Alex Joneser to be an anti-globalist any more than it takes a 911-truther to know the history of false-flags (Reichstag Fire) and covert operations (Ajax).
“It’s interesting that you chose to criticize me for attempting to revive Krugman’s dig rather than praising me for halfheartedly conceding a point.”
Dod whistle talk is usually flpa doodle innuendo, and it is here. What is the point of a supposed dog-whistle? It is, supposedly, to smuggle a message to those in the know. If Trump wanted to do that, why would he wait until the last ad? Wouldn’t he have done it a year ago? And why would he risk exposure by such clever sleuths as Franken?
You must surely be in the most knowledgeable 1% about the fed and markets, but admit you did not know who was and was not Jewish. So how does this work as an OVERT appeal?
And how can it be both overt and covert?
Absurd. Murphy nails this one.
Craw – he’s been talking about globalists for a while and appearing on Alex Jones and Michael Savage pretty regularly. Why do you say he’s doing this at the last minute?
re: “So how does this work as an OVERT appeal?”
It’s not overt. Who said it was? Or are you referring to me saying the alt-right would know? They track this stuff. They might not be “in the know” on most Fed stuff but I guarantee you they can rattle off a list of Jewish bankers a lot faster than I can.
You are not addressing my hypothesis. Say a candidate wanted to dog whistle. She’d do it early, then stop. After all, once the secret bat-signal is sent there would be no need to resend it, only risk. So the whole dog-whistle theory makes little sense from the get-go, even before it hits Bob’s objections.
And you ARE saying it’s overt if you say its trying to sway people by parading a bunch of specifically Jewish faces to influence them. That too makes no sense as Bob points out, and it really does clash with the dog -whistle idea because that is covert.
I didn’t even know who Lloyd Blankfein was until I just looked it up today. Now I’ve done a bit of searching and frankly I cannot find any place where Blankfein has discussed his religion in public, nor has he declared any particular beliefs of that nature.
People seem to presume he is Jewish because of his family name, but on the whole he is quite private about his theology (and that’s fine by me, I’m certainly not criticizing him for privacy). He certainly isn’t Orthodox in his outlook because he supports gay marriage.
That said, Blankfein’s strong connection with Goldman Sachs, very likely benefiting from Fed QE policy would have a lot more to do with why he is being criticized. Being in a central financial market position and then betting against your own clients might well be legal but morally it stinks to high heaven. I would be very interested to hear an opinion from a deeply religious Jew as to whether such behaviour is regarded as kosher.
I found this, rather oblique, reference to religion:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-11-10/28286
Clearly Trump isn’t the only guy out there who is critical, so I guess Krugman is going to be Konsistent and go after every one of the anti-Semites. Yeah, not likely. Krugman is so obviously partisan, and totally out of ideas.
Oh look, it only takes a moment to discover that Krugman himself has criticized the same people that Trump criticizes… over the same issues! You could float an aircraft carrier on Krugman’s hypocrisy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/opinion/17krugman.html
Yeah, that’s what Lloyd Blankfein got blamed for as CEO. Right there, exactly what Krugman said. Sheesh.
And what did either Obama or Hillary do about that? Fix anything, did they ?!? Sheesh again.
Nice catch!
The “dog whistle” argument reeks of special pleading. Does there exist a way that the Trump campaign could have made this ad that wouldn’t potentially “hype up the real anti-semites” without excluding all references to any individual Jews? Even if no Jews appeared on his enemies list, would it not potentially trigger those horrible anti-semites for Trump to mention Wall Street or finance at all? We’re always told those are anti-semitic code phrases themselves, after all.
Besides, remember when the Trump campaign announced that 88 generals had signed a letter of support for Trump, and this was held up as “proof” that Trump is a Nazi, since “everybody knows” that 88 is a secret code that means “heil Hitler?” Is this the level of Dan Brown-ish code proofing you wish to associate with? Dog whistle indeed.
Which said: I didn’t know Janet Yellen was Jewish either.
“Yellen is particularly interesting because if merely showing a Jewish Fed chair is sufficient to be anti-semitic then you’d have to go back THIRTY YEARS to get a Fed chair you could legitimately criticize.”
That depends on whether the problem is ethnicity or religion. Religiously, Greenspan was not a Jew, he was an Objectivist.
Daniel,
(1) Suppose you wanted to make an ad saying there was a group of insiders who were screwing over the public, and you were talking to Americans. How could you *not* include Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs in that ad? George Soros is literally the #1 person on Earth to accuse of heading up such a movement. If anybody criticizes the Kochs funding higher education, is that a dog whistle too?
(2) Whether the ad has a dog whistle or not, look at what Sumner actually wrote:
“Trump finishes his campaign as classy as he staged it, with an alt-right ad targeting three people in an international conspiracy of financial-types, who all “just happen” to be Jewish…”
I would buy a futures contract that Sumner didn’t even bother watching the ad, before accusing its creators of being anti-Semitic (or appealing to anti-Semites). His description is so totally wrong.
But, in fairness, he was relying on the objectivity of Sen. Al Franken and CNN, when discussing Trump.
(1) – AGREE!
(2) – Also agree.
The ad doesn’t name names so I’m guessing the average viewer of this ad, i.e. the target audience, doesn’t recognize any of the players shown. Besides Bill, Hillary, Comey, Obama, and Trump, the only two people I recognized were Merkel and Yellen. Even Bob’s guessing at some of them.
This is a story of generic power brokers harming the country.
The only people who recognize these people are policy wonks who need to look inside themselves to see anti-Semitism and bigotry.
Will Trump’s Anti-Globalisation Agenda Win him the Election?
I don’t know, but his latest powerful “Argument for America” ad – apart from the anti-Federal Reserve nonsense (which seems quasi-libertarian) – is absolutely a message of anti-globalisation and anti-free trade:
That ad is, more or less, a masterpiece. This man, whether he wins or loses, deserves huge credit for having raised economic issues that the left has been talking about for years and years: namely, the disaster of free trade, the disaster of de-industrialisation and the catastrophe of globalisation.
Make no mistake, our current neoliberal system of globalisation has failed, and it will be a paradox of history if a populist Republican will be the one to break it. Crucially, as Trump points out, massive Third World immigration (whether legal or illegal) is also part of this catastrophic program of neoliberal globalisation, and the mainstream left, to its shame, is fully on board with this aspect of globalisation.
Will this be Brexit all over again? Again, I don’t know, and people are endlessly telling me that Hillary will win, so the next day will be very interesting indeed.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2016/11/will-trumps-anti-globalisation-agenda.html
Well, it’s been good for some and bad for others.
Software, for example, is impossible to put protectionist barriers around. From my experience in the software field, I’m not personally worried yet about being out competed, Australia has a reputation for doing excellent work. Wages have definitely come down, and there’s no union to artificially keep wages up, but although those falling wages are bad for people like me, I’d hardly call it a “disaster”.
I’m always curious as to how the anti free-trader makes the bureaucratic decision regarding which items to make at home and which ones to import. Bureaucrats have special knowledge about these things and are so much smarter and trustworthy than us normal folks.
Bob, Good points.
David Bernstein has an excellent piece in the Washington Post on this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/11/07/why-i-cant-join-the-condemnation-of-trumps-allegedly-anti-semitic-ad/
Great post, thanks David.
I certainly can’t say that this particular ad is anti-semitic. But given the previous record of Trump that should hardly matter. The evidence of what Trump i slike is already there for all to see, if they want to.
You guys now have a mercantilist, xenophobic, sociopathic, mysoginist compulsive liar for president. I think it is very sad.
Hey. I’m not sure how to tell you this, but Hillary lost.
Sorry that you are unable to use your eyes and ears.
Mercantilist: Did you see her donor list?
Xenophobe: New McCarthyism: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/31/a_new_mccarthyism_greenwald_on_clinton
sociopath: there’s to many things to point to for this one but how about just: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y
compulsive liar: wow, again, too numerous to count … “public face and a private face” Hillary’s testimony vs. Jame Comey’s testimony about the email. There’s multiple videos here.
Good luck.
Sorry you cannot see the difference between confirmation bias and research. Just look at the liar category. Sure, Clinton lies, as does everyone, but check out the fact checkers to see who lies more. Don’t bother, I will tell you: it is Trump by a massive margin. As for compulsive, just look at the lies he tells. He lies when there is clear and uncontroversial evidence for all to see that he is lying. An example is that he was against the war in Iraq, but there are many,many more.
There is a difference between finding the odd example and presenting a case. I am not entirely surprised that someone who supports Trump does not understand that. I see this quite often, where people support the unsupportable by using a few sticks of evidence that supports them whilst ignoring the forest of evidence against.
Anyway, if you really think that Clinton scores higher in those categories than Trump I am sure nothing I can say will change your mind.
Harold, “what color is the sky in your world?”
You just equated Trump’s claim that he was against the Iraq war (he was) from the beginning (he wasn’t) with someone that admitted she lies as a matter of principle.
Any other moral equivalence you want to draw that will make you look equally as absurd?
Perhaps equating bloviating alpha-crudeness as a Hollywood star that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow if it were made public at the time (no, I’m not justifying it), with the actual habitual intimidation of rape victims and humiliation of child molestation victims on the witness stand to benefit someone you knew was guilty?
Maybe we should discuss Trump tax evasion with the actual sale of the State Department and charity fraud perpetrated by the Clinton Foundation (watch “Clinton Cash” and follow the links in the references).
Or should we compare Trump’s perfect record of support for LGBT community with Clinton’s flip-flopping depending on the current cultural winds and acceptance of $20Mil+ from Saudi Arabia, where they kill homosexuals.
Or maybe we can compare Trump’s ACTUAL record on the Iraq war (by late 2003 he was clearly against it; while everyone else was still licking their war-mongering chops) with Hillary’s toppling (and cackling over the toppling) of Lybia in order to funnel more guns to Al-Qaeda (Al Nusra), supposedly our enemy.
Or that $20mil from Saudi (when she KNEW they were funding ISIS (see the appropriate Wikileaks)) is all it takes to garner support from the US in the form of an actual blockade for the starvation of Yemenie civilians, vs. calling out Saudi Arabia as the problem.
The “fact checkers” like Politifact that tell you Trump is the habitual liar are actually … habitual liars. This has been easy to document since 2012. Follow the website PolitifactBias where the DOCUMENT the bias and then check the DNC collaboration with politifact revealed in Wikileaks docs (including, but not limited to: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/9613 ). Bob and Tom even LAUGHED at how ridiculous the Politifact claims were when they “fact checked” Obama vs Trump’s statements on crime AFTER WALKING THROUGH THEM (episode 57: http://contrakrugman.com/ep-57-everything-is-awesome-so-why-are-trump-and-ryan-complaining-wonders-krugman/ ).
There’s a reason the Trump supporters look at people like you and think you need to be “red pilled.” They’re right.
Funny, fits perfectly for Hillary – last paycheck CTR.
HAHAHA.