The ad will air in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia, per the campaign.
The only changes from the 17 states targeted by the organizing fellows program are the removal of New Jersey, Oregon and Washington, and the addition of Alaska, Indiana, Montana and North Dakota. Those are good changes, as they target "Lean McCain" states instead of lean-to-solid Obama states. Here is the ad:
Here is a transcript of the ad. I have highlighted conservative frames in bold, and progressive frames in underline:
I'm Barack Obama. America is a country of strong families and strong values. My life's been blessed by both. I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. We didn't have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up. Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses. Treating your neighbor as you'd like to be treated. It's what guided me as I worked my way up - taking jobs and loans to make it through college. It's what led me to pass up Wall Street jobs and go to Chicago instead, helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed. That's why I passed laws moving people from welfare to work, cut taxes for working families and extended health care for wounded troops who'd been neglected. I approved this message because I'll never forget those values, and if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as President, it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love."
It is definitely a mixed bag, trying to appeal to a wide range of people. The progressive frames include non-traditional family background, a community approach to governing, valuing service over Wall Street, and implications about increasing health care and opposing trade deals that hurt working families. The conservative frames are equally abundant, with talk of "self-reliance," "heartland," cutting taxes, "welfare," and lots of emphasis on values and country.
I wonder if the ad is too muddled in order to be effective. While both progressives and conservatives will hear frames that they like in the ad, everyone will also hear things that they don't like. Fundamentally the ad is chasing after both types of voters instead of trying to persuade them. Overall, it might end up leaving a mixed impression.
The real test, of course, will be swing state polling in three to four weeks. This ad campaign, combined with the organizing fellows campaign, means that Obama is now targeting virtually every state that can realistically be described as "swing." If Obama's already statistically significant lead increases by mid-July, then the campaign will have been effective. If not, then this ad simply will not have been good enough.
