I was assigned to watch the Democratic Party ads for the 2020 election. Despite the relevance of these ads since the election only recently past, I actually don’t think I saw any of the ads before watching them for this class. While I did follow the election, I was not watching cable TV or other media sources that was running these ads. Unsurprisingly a number of Biden’s ads focused on the current COVID pandemic, specifically talking about flaws in how Trump had been handling the pandemic. What I was surprised about was the number of ads where I felt Biden went negative and used something he said about Trump to elevate his own values or policies. While I recognize it as a valid campaign strategy, to me there just seems to be something a little dirty about going negative in so many ads but a common theme in recent elections. Also while I did not watch the Republican Party ads for this election, I can tell from the thumbnails that Trump went negative on Biden as well.

My favorite ad from the Democratic Party for this election year was the one that detailed Kamala Harris’s backstory to becoming Biden’s running mate. It starts off with a casual call between Biden in Harris where he asks her if she is ready to go to work. She promptly replies that she is “so ready to go to work”. Following that short snippet, the ad dives into Harris’s life story (told by her own voiceover). It details how she always knew she was born to “take action”, and how knowing that her race would cause her to be treated differently by some people her mother motivated her to change what she saw broken in the world. This lead Harris to became a lawyer fighting for an equal justice system, as well as fighting big banks in California as the attorney general during the foreclosure crisis. She says that she “has fought to represent people like her mother, people who politicians overlook or don’t take seriously” and she know that she and Biden are the right people to take on the job of representing all people, especially those who are currently struggling. I thought this ad was impactful because Harris represents many women in general and more specifically women of color who might have felt like holding a position of great power, such as VP of the the US, was wholly unattainable. While at the point when this ad aired, that was only a possibility for Harris, it showed that with hard work and a drive to help others that that dream could be a possibility. We have previously talked about how it is important to have people in the media who we we identify with and recognize as a role model in order to prevent from forming subconscious biases. This ad works to combat possible biases that people many have formed after having male presidents and vice presidents for so many years. This ad, in combination with Biden and Harris winning the election, hopefully shows many young girls that they have a role model this high up in the government and that job could be a possibility for them in the future.

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2020/kamala-harris-vice-president-announcement