Trolling Trump Isn’t The Same Thing As Beating Him
The Lincoln Project, a group of “Never Trump” Republicans who have now dedicated themselves to defeating the president in 2020, makes the “the best ads on television,” according to Vermont’s former Democratic Gov. Howard Dean. They understand voters better than Democratic ad-makers, a Politico Magazine essay declares. Need some metrics to back up this assessment? Just check Twitter, where their videos routinely rack up more than a million views and glowing reviews from Democratic partisans.
The Lincoln Project’s ads attack the president in direct and uncompromising terms, portraying him as a traitor to American national security for his friendships with authoritarian Russian leader Vladimir Putin, or as out-of-step with a tradition of American leadership.
But pundits praising the group’s ads may be making one of the defining errors of the Trump era, mistaking virality for effectiveness and popularity with committed partisans for persuasion.
Democratic strategists and ad-makers view much of the group’s output with a mix of skepticism and jaundice, noting many of its lines of attack were tested by the party in the past and found to be less effective at persuading undecided voters than messages focused on health care, the economy and how Trump’s decisions directly impact voters’ lives. They broadly view the group as more of a media phenomenon than as a truly useful ally in the war against Trump.
A spokesman for The Lincoln Project didn’t respond to a request for comment.
For one thing, for The Lincoln Project’s ads to be the best on television, they’d actually need to be on television. They barely are, and especially not in the markets that matter. The group has spent just $2.4 million on television advertising, according to data from CMAG, with the biggest portion of that spending occurring in the utterly uncompetitive Washington, D.C., media market. On Thursday, it strangely booked advertising time in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
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