14 January 2016
Must Advertise
by J.R.Thomas
“There is no such thing as bad publicity” the old advertising rubric has it. And Donald Trump, his lead as front runner for the Republican Presidential nomination ever increasing, has proved that, in shovelfuls. Whatever he says fills the headlines, and pushes the ratings up among the party faithful. He is way ahead of the field, except, that is, in the two states first to nominate their chosen ones. In Iowa he is running second to Ted Cruz, the Tea Party leaning evangelical junior senator from Texas. And in New Hampshire whilst he is ahead, on twenty five per cent, Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ohio Governor John Kasich (a man with no local connections and a back-marker elsewhere) are all on about fifteen per cent.
Trump knows how to ride a bandwagon, and he also knows that bandwagons that stop get abandoned by their passengers very quickly. If he cannot win the first two states to poll, the danger is that his bandwagon will sink to the axles and travel no more; so Donald has to give the thing a push now – Iowa is only three weeks away. He has in the past said that television advertising is money wasted. This is a subject Trump may think more deeply on than most of the candidates, as a prescient businessman and, more especially, as he is spending mostly his own money. But his views seem to have mutated, as he has now begun a series of TV advertisements in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Trump gave an exclusive showing of the first television advert and an interview to the Washington Post. It is probably what any follower, and even more so what any opponent, of Trump might expect – footage of Obama and Clinton followed by short clips of fighting, terrorists, figures crossing the Mexican border, closing with Trump been cheered at a rally. In thirty seconds The Donald’s core policy on defence, terrorism, foreign policy, is set out. It has of course created a liberal media storm, not least over the accusation, cheerfully admitted as true by the Trump team, that the supposed Mexican border incursionists are actually refugees from the Middle East. With all the controversy generated, the clip has gone viral: publicity way beyond the US$2m a week being spent on TV placements.
As Trump said to the Post, until now all his publicity has been free, unlike that of his Republican fellow candidates who have been spending heavily -Jeb Bush in particular. (A cynic might think that the more a candidate spends on advertising the less well he does in the polls.) The other candidates are spending money raised from supporters and followers, whilst Trump is spending his own cash. Trump said “I’m $35million to $40 million under budget ….and I feel almost guilty for not spending money”.
This is very Trump of course, and the endless media fascination with him, and chorus of outrage which follows him around, ensures him unlimited publicity without him having to open his pocket book. Which brings us to Trump’s present problem, and what may be his under considered strength.
The problem is that while he is showing well in the national polls, neither Iowa nor New Hampshire are natural territory for the bouffant haired one. Iowa is rural, religious, conservative, old fashioned. A lot of Iowa caucus participants do not like the New York real estate developer flamboyance, nor do they see Trump as god fearing man, and in particular they did not like been told that they were idiots, in that one real slip in his campaign so far, when he castigated them for backing Carson. This probably especially works against Trump in the caucus systems where the choosing is in town and community meetings, where there is open discussion among voters.
New Hampshire is not dissimilar. It is rural, farming, traditionalist. Whilst New Hampshire folk pride themselves on individuality and their founding father roots, they lack the religious fundamentalism of Iowa. Nevertheless, the state is far from natural Trump territory either.
And Trump’s strength? It is blue collar white working class urban USA where he is piling up votes, from what might be thought of as natural Democrat voters – but the sort of voters who are seeing Hillary as a dangerous liberal. Trump in recent polls has an over twenty per cent lead on Hillary in this demographic. That is a lot of votes and means that Hillary has to do especially well amongst women, ethnic minorities, the young. This worked for Obama and there is no reason why it cannot work for Mrs C but the demographic gives Trump a strong base constituency which, if bolted to those loyalists who will always vote Republican and a number of floaters who don’t trust Hillary, might mean he can win the GOP nomination; and win again in the real fight in November.
But for that to work he must continue to look like the only possible winner . If he loses in Iowa, which looks likely, and also in New Hampshire which looks just possible, then his campaign may start to slow and stall. Hence a new keenness to capture every possible vote, to get every possible Trump voter excited enough to brave going out on a winters day or night. TV advertising might just do that.
His eleven rivals now are not fighting so much as to win, but to stay in the race, to get enough votes to look like viable alternatives if Trump does stall, potential Trump stoppers. A Trump stopper has to be able to put together a coalition of the wider Republican party interests; which is what keeps everybody else running – even Jeb Bush, now at four per cent.
Mr Trump is not only fighting for the Republican nomination, he is fighting the Democrat nomination as well. Not for himself, but for Bernie Sanders. The Trump dream scenario is to grasp the GOP standard at the convention in July and to have demolished Hillary so thoroughly that the blue standard bearer in Chicago turns out to be Bernie. Donald thinks Bernie would be a walkover in the main contest.
Now Mrs C has walked into a fight in one of her weakest areas. Bill. Bill is a popular figure still, with that Kennedyesque charisma. But his dubious relationships with several ladies threw up, and continues to throw up, a lot of mud, mud that slips off Bill, but oddly, sticks to his wife. Mrs Clinton made a speech in which she defined herself as the great fighter for women’s rights, and said that all women should be entitled to proper justice. She must have known what floodgates that might open, and it has. Up has come Bill’s past, together with a number of women claiming to have been maltreated by Bill. They have been in the public eye before and the public, as the public does, got bored with their stories. But now there is a new angle with Hillary aiming at the Oval Office and the whole durned thing has started up again.
Hillary must have known that at some point this was going to happen, and maybe she wanted to get it out now so that by the summer the public have had enough and the stories will die away. Bernie has dealt with it the only way he can, and as he is a gentleman, the way that would naturally come to him, which is to say it is not relevant to the issues and ignore it. That is not the way of The Donald though, who is making all he can of it.
Could this stop Hillary’s run? Probably not, unless genuinely new things start to emerge. There is no active acceptable mainstream candidate as an alternative to Hillary and the party grandees certainly do not want Bernie to take over as their sole candidate. So she will keep the Democrat machine support unless she starts to look fatally damaged – at which point she will be overboard – and so, effectively will Bernie, to be replaced by some safer pair of hands. Maybe Joe Biden and Martin O’Malley should not be making plans for long vacations just yet.
