I was assigned to watch ads from the 2016 race (Trump vs Clinton), specifically watching the Republican ads. This is just my personal opinion, but I very much dislike Trump’s campaign style. In almost all of his ads (minus two or three), they are directly attacking his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and her views and policies, without contextualizing what Trump’s policies are going to be. Many of them call Hilary out for what she is doing (regarding immigration, the letters/emails that were leaked, etc), and then Trump moves on to just explaining that his policies will not do what Hilary is doing, but they do not go into detail of what his policies are exactly. I personally do not like the attack campaign style, as in elections I want to learn about both the Democratic and Republican parties opinions, policies, and viewpoints, not just watching the Republican Candidate attack the Democratic Candidate. There also seems to be a fear tactic instilled in almost all of these campaign videos, trying to make the viewer fearful of what our country would be like if Clinton were to take office; Although fear can be effective, I do not see it as a positive way to present your campaign and get people to vote for you.
Although I do not like the majority of the 2016 republican party ads due to the crime, fear, and attacking of the other party, there were one or two that I actually thought were effective strategies by using emotional appeal instead of fear. This is why my “favorite” out of all these ads was the one titled “Motherhood”. This features Ivanka Trump discussing family values, and that no women should have to take a pay cut to be a mother, and that all women should have enough money for childcare and paid maternity leave. I think this emotional appeal not only would pull in women who relate to this, but fathers and children who understand the struggles of trying to make money while raising a family. I think emotional appeal is a better approach to convince an audience to vote for someone rather than instilling fear, which is why the messaging of this ad was my favorite. (the video of this ad is linked below)
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2016/motherhood
I find it interesting how the Trump ad campaigned to “Motherhood” and focused on maternity leave and women caring for their children and ignoring the topic of abortions, which Trump constantly spoke out about.
I am also not a big fan of attack-style ads, yet those made up the bulk of what I watched. I don’t think they add anything to the platforms. It almost becomes a battle of who is the least bad.
I just think that its super gross that the Trump party would use Ivanka as a maternal figure while Trump was knowingly running on an anti-choice platform. It seems super misleading when parties use a specific political issue for “clout” while knowingly bringing an agenda that entirely opposes that view. Similar to how the dems run on a very liberal platform with immigration to secure leftist/minority votes, it feels misleading.