Tag Archives: Joe Perticone

Is This Missouri Republican’s TV Spot the Most Racist Campaign Ad of 2024?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and checking out Jim Swift’s Overtime newsletter at The Bulwark, when I came across this item.

Meanwhile, in Missouri… Gubernatorial candidate Bill Eigel seems to have hired ad people similarly offensive and cringeworthy to Kelly Loeffler’s.

You gotta see it to believe it, Doc.

What the hell, right?

– GOPsmacked

Dear GS,

There is no bottom to that well.

As the redoubtable Charlie Sykes has noted, racism was once a recessive gene in the Republican Party. With the advent of Trumpism, it’s become the dominant one.

Exhibit Umpteen, via Joe Perticone’s Press Pass newsletter at The Bulwark, is the GOP’s mad rush to label Kamala Harris a “DEI hire.” After calling the roll of several House Republicans who led the charge, Perticone highlighted the verbal assault from this media lowlife.

Alec Lace, a podcast host and right wing commentator, brought things even lower. On Fox Business, he could not stop saying “DEI” (the repetitions making clear exactly what he meant by it) and suggested Harris has slept her way to her presumptive spot on the Democratic ticket:

There’s the DEI press secretary telling you that the DEI vice president is the future of the party here. And so the future looks kinda dim for the Democrats here, but this is no shocker, either. Kamala Harris—she’s the original “hawk tuah” girl, that’s the way she got where she is, and the party’s going downhill if it’s in her hands.

(Perticone provided this gloss for those of you keeping score at home: “Neither Fox host on the panel objected to Lace’s crass insults, which referenced a recent viral video in which a woman describes—well, we’ll just call it a sex act.”)

No bottom . . .

But back to the original question: Is Bill Eigel’s Translator spot the most racist campaign ad of the 2024 election cycle?

The Doc’s diagnosis: It’ll do until something even more vile comes along.

Did Adam Schiff’s Ad Strategy Really ‘Rig’ The California Senate Primary?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and poking around Xitter, when I came across this tweet in “semi-recovered lawyer” George Conway’s feed.

@Out5p0ken elaborated in a reply:”Seriously, wtf and let’s all thank her for giving away a House seat and then calling the election rigged and not congratulating Schiff. Deplorable.”

What’s the deal here, Doc. Just sour grapes? Or something more rigorous?

– Katie Didn’t

Dear KD,

Katie Porter is upset because, as Joe Perticone reported in The Bulwark, “[Adam] Schiff’s campaign and his allies have shelled out millions of dollars to boost [Republican candidate Steve] Garvey’s bid and box out the other Democrats” in California’s jungle primary for the seat vacated by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Here’s a representative sample of the knee-buckling $11 million worth of ads the Schiff forces ran teeing up the former pro baseball player for GOP voters.

Post-primary, Porter cried foul, as The Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis noted.

In a tweet that has evoked controversy, Porter complained that her campaign had to withstand “3 to 1 in TV spending and an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election.”

And in a weak-sauce follow-up statement meant to clarify her tweet, Porter explained that “rigged” means “manipulated by dishonest means”—and that billionaires spending money to defeat her constitutes “dishonest means to manipulate an outcome.”

Some of Porter’s supporters protested Schiff’s strategy as “sexist and cynical” in pushing her aside for another male candidate. But that wasn’t the only factor in holding Porter to a disappointing 14% of the primary vote. As Jill Cowan reported in the New York Times, “[i]n the final weeks of the campaign, a cryptocurrency super PAC spent millions on ads attacking Ms. Porter, who has supported more regulations on the industry and has rebuked various corporate leaders in congressional hearings.”

Beyond that, there’s this inconvenient fact, which Maeve Reston pointed out in the Washington Post: “[T]o hold down Garvey’s support, Porter . . . countered with similar tactics — running at least a half-million dollars in ads raising the profile of another long-shot GOP Senate contender, Eric Early.”

Sauce for the gander, anyone?