Bad political ads: WTF? Edition

NewDealer says:

I said this is in con post but Jonathan Bernstein thinks this is the ne plus ultra of scam ads:

http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/

“Will it have any effect on actual consumer behavior? I doubt it. But it is worth noting that if it does “work” at all, it’s going to work on the people who respond best to the affect evoked by the ads: in other words, people already primed and ready to hate Obama(care), people already primed and ready to hate the government of the United States, people primed and ready to suspect the very worst of the program. And do note: the way it “works” is by convincing them to go without health insurance.

So basically: if you’re a rich conservative who isn’t very smart about how you give your money, this ad is designed to pick your pocket. If you’re a non-rich conservative, you might get duped into some foolish behavior, but that’s just acceptable collateral damage. For everyone else, it’s an occasion for (to be fair, entirely justified) outrage, I suppose, but basically it’ll come and go without any real effects.”

Jonathan Chait seems to think the ad shows authenticity because of how absolutely weird it is:

“What makes the ads so distinctive, aside from their Ayn Randhead–on-acid gestalt, is that they abandon the predominant appeal conservatives have been making to the young, which centers on financial self-interest. Conservatives have been hammering home the “rate shock” story for months, arguing that young people will have to pay higher insurance premiums to subsidize worse insurance risks and would be better off going uninsured. The story is wildly overblown — it usually ignored tax credits, which drives down the cost of insurance, and likewise assumes that minimizing risk has no value in and of itself — but it does contain a germ of truth.

The rape-clown argument, by contrast, is the product of sheer fantasy. In what world does giving people tax credits to offset the cost of private insurance subject them to the risk of some kind of dystopian federal intrusion? There is actually an answer to this question: in Betsy McCaughey’s world. McCaughey is a prominent fantasist/conservative health-care analyst, known for promoting the most lurid fears of health-care reform, up to and including death panels. McCaughey has most recently been peddling nightmare scenarios that Obamacare will cause doctors to ask intrusive questions about your sex life, which you can see debunked by James Hamblin here.

Within the conservative information cocoon, where the news about Obamacare has been a ceaseless procession of disasters, McCaughey is a sage figure. And, what’s more, the free-floating terror of intrusive government is a closer approximation than some dry appeal to actuarial odds of how conservatives actually feel about Obamacare.”

In another context, I saw someone else wonder if we are now entering the all-troll economy. That context was sensationalized on-line writing and clickbait designed to make people very angry and outraged. Umbrage seems to be the great American emotion now. The right-wing con machine seems to have mastered trolling to a super-genius level. They know how to raise the ire of both liberals and the fears of older conservatives at the same time.Report