“As a Republican, you have virtually no margin of error, and Trump’s campaign is nothing but errors”, said GOP strategist Reed Galen, who worked for former President George W. Bush.
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Donald Trump’s first general election television ad focuses on some of the same themes he’s been hitting since his first day on the campaign trail: safety, immigration and border security.
“In Hillary Clinton’s America, the system stays rigged against Americans”, intones a narrator. ‘Syrian refugees flood in. Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay.
“It’s more of the same”, the ad says, “but worse”. She has shown herself to be quite capable of answering tough questions on the fly during the Democratic debates and the Trump campaign would be forced to find another talking point.
“Donald Trump’s America is secure, terrorists and risky criminals kept out”, the narrator says. In Trump’s America, the ad says, borders would be secure and Americans safe. Only 27% predicted Trump to be a “good” or “great” president, compared to 55% who said he would be either “poor” or “terrible”.
In addition, the Pew Research Organization a year ago concluded that after rapid growth of undocumented immigrants entering the United States from 1990 through 2008, the number has remained stable from 2010 through 2014. The “system” is “rigged against Americans”.
One glaring reality of Election 2016 is the lingering and extremely high unpopularity of the Republican and Democratic Party nominees.
NBC obtained the new ad buy.
Many admire the 70-year-old billionaire for his political incorrectness, but some said they’d like to see him tone down his shoot-from-the-hip comments.
Their goal was to expand public perceptions of Bill Clinton to encompass other, more positive facts, such as his poor upbringing, hard family life, college scholarships and decision to return to Arkansas as a public servant rather than accept a high-paid corporate job. Last month, we noted that immigration on the whole isn’t really a victor for Trump.
In North Carolina, the Trump campaign will spend $838K, directed mostly at voters in Charlotte ($347K) and Raleigh ($220K). Jaylani Hussein, director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, criticized Trump for “anti-Muslim and anti-Somali rhetoric”. This was a softer, even more humble trump.
Perhaps Trump is hoping to reframe the issue of immigration to his advantage. It is similar to an ad he ran before the Iowa caucuses in February. Maybe Trump is actually trying to reach out to Republicans. Because it’s with Republicans that he’s faltering.
The ad airs in several states, not just OH, but in the ultimate swing state, such a message may appeal to Trump’s working-class voters, while the state has comparatively fewer Latinos to be alienated by the commercial. But the state changes as you drive east – a big reason why Clinton leads by about nine percentage points in recent polls.
Trump, in a statement, praised Manafort’s work on the campaign and called him a “true professional”.
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It’s just that the ad that’s running seems like a normal primary election ad.
