Yes, they could have. But, they didn’t.
When I say that Democrats surrendered on law and order, I mean it in the same way they surrendered on guns(for awhile): essentially adopting the conservative position.
When Republicans say “law and order”, it’s dog whistle talk for “keep them blacks in their place!”, just as when they say “welfare” they mean “black”. You gotta listen to the code, or pay attention to location of speeches (Philadelphia, MS or Liberty U).
So when Martin O’Malley and Bill Clinton cracked down on crime and stuffed the prisons, and lauded their performance in that regard, what was that code for?
Don’t recall it coming up as a presidential election issue in 2000.
Isn’t that a good fear to pander to, though? I mean, if you’re the governor of a state that’s letting out convicted murders on furloughs that then go around killing people, that’s kind of a not a good program.
nm
So you think John Kerry was responsible for the MoveOn ads comparing Bush to Hitler.
The MoveOn ads were the result of a completely-open-to-the-public ad contest, and the comparing Bush to Hitler ads did not win. That doesn’t seem to compare too closely to ads run by a PAC allied with a candidate. Did PACs even have the nominal separation back then they do today?
It’s still pandering.
If it substantially reduces recidivism rates, then yes, it’s a good program, even if the rate does not go to zero. Horton was an exception presented as the rule, and I think you’d agree that’s dishonest to the point of lying.
Clinton regrets his crime bill. To be fair to Bill, he had to accept some measures that went further than he wanted to get it passed.
Did anyone make any political hay out of that event? Not that I can recall.
Kerry had no control over that ad. The Willie Horton ad was orchestrated by people much closer to Bush than MoveOn was to Kerry.
Bush I was indeed more competent than Reagan. His handling of the first Gulf War was masterful in the way he methodically built a coalition and the way he resisted the urge to topple Hussein.
Yes he did. It was run by a PAC. If you think PACs always coordinate their activities with official campaigns, Kerry is responsible for the MoveOn ads.
Or else you are employing a double standard. Which would be unfortunate, but has the advantage of refuting your nonsense as it stands.
Regards,
Shodan
What, in your mind, made it a “MoveOn ad”? :dubious:
The ads never aired. They were entries in a contest. They did not win. Moveon.org did not endorse the ads.
So Kerry is responsible for an ad that never aired that was simply an entry in a contest that didn’t win. About par for Republican critical analysis.
Getting back to the actual question:
The “Willie Horton” ad is probably the single most famous example of a negative Presidential ad in “recent times”–defined her as “in my time as a voter” (I voted for the first time in '78).
Whether it deserves such fame is a separate question. And how effective it actually was is a separate question. (Full disclosure, I voted for Dukakis, who I thought was a very poor candidate, in most ways the weakest Dem of my voting career, INCLUDING 1980 Carter. My sense then, and now, is that Dukakis had no chance of winning with or without the ad.)
Other than that one commercial, I don’t remember 1988 being a hotbed of negative campaigning–certainly not more so than any other year of “recent times.” If having the most famous (justifiably or not) negative campaign ad makes an election the most negative of all, then maybe '88 is the right choice. That’s not a definition I’d choose, though.
LBJ’s Daisy ad, suggesting that Goldwater wanted to launch the nukes and get us all destroyed, is often mentioned in this context, even though it only ran once.
It was also a campaign about how often Bush liked to pledge allegiance and how much he loved the flag and what Dukakis and his ACLU friends wanted to do to it.
That, Boston Harbor, Willie Horton, and the tank. So the entire campaign was pretty much negative.
Now Dukakis certainly had weaknesses as a candidate in terms of his personality, but it seems to me that this is not what Bush’s campaign was about. George Bush himself is not exactly a charismatic guy himself. It was basically two geeks going head to head.
But 1988 seems to be the first campaign in which the main thrust of the Republican message was “Democrats aren’t real Americans.”
Yes, but try convincing voters, *“The program led to a stabbing and rape, but it’s worth it because the program reduces recidivism!” * It wouldn’t win votes.
I think the argument was that the furlough program shouldn’t have been applied to lifers, since a) they’re dangerous to the public, b) have an increased incentive not to return to prison, and c) in the absence of the program, their recidivism rate as it applies to the non-incarcerated public would be zero, since they’d never be let out.
Furthermore, the only reason the program did apply to lifers is because Dukakis vetoed the bill that would have blocked lifers from the program. I’ve never voted for a Republican for president, and this strikes me as a valid argument.
I know very well why the ad was effective. The discussion is about it being irresponsible too.
I’d put it back to Reagan in 1984. [Jeane Kirkpatrick’s keynote speech to the convention](But 1988 seems to be the first campaign in which the main thrust of the Republican message was “Democrats aren’t real Americans.”) was pretty much nothing but accusing Democrats of being traitors, cowards, and gay-lovers, and the applause was thunderous.