The anonymous cattiness was triggering. Literally. It made me think about the cat I haven’t been able to shake. More on that in a moment.
Here’s the gist: the new and estimable Puck News has added a DC gossip column. It was reported that a Democratic consultant was peevish – to say the least – about enthusiasm for candidates by actual voters. It seems it is offensive when the small and dim-witted people of America donate to candidates who excite them, like Beto O’Rourke or Jamie Harrison.
The anonymous insider hatcheted both men as losers for competing. Jamie Harrison might not have made it to the Senate, but he destroyed Lindsey Graham, who deserved it. Beto is written off because he is five points behind in August against one of the most maliced, extreme, incompetent and callous governors since Jim Crow.
The Washington DC theory of human behavior is on full display here. According to the political genius interviewed, the money that comes from a collective of individual acts is evidence of waste, not enthusiasm. Its accumulation by inspiring candidates is somehow a loss for less inspiring candidates who carry the imprimaturs of the national party’s preferred stock. The inference is that some type of theft has taken place, though it is hard to fathom who the victim could be. The inability of Washington, DC, Democrats to harness the enthusiasm of voters explains the reason it ranges from probable to possible that an extremist political movement will regain elected majority power in the House of Representatives.
American politics in 2022 is not a business that breeds self-awareness as a virtue. It is certainly allergic to common sense and normalcy, but that is a story for a different day. Let’s talk about the cat.
The July heat in Alabama is jarring if you are a visitor from a high elevation. I was not looking forward to my next encounter, while waiting in the air-conditioned lobby for my teenagers. They were already late, but I had deceived them by moving up the departure time with a bit of legitimate subterfuge.
There was an alcove in the hotel and a heavily tattooed man in his fifties with a Kentucky bandana on his head was watching “The Price is Right.” I joined him and settled immediately into the game. We both had an instant respect for each other knowing we would each make it to the “Showcase Showdown” if fortune would ever be so kind. We talked about eastern Kentucky and Pike County. He was looking forward to Hillbilly Days. I told him I had been in the mid-1990s.
Pikeville was a mining town and the hills and hollows hadn’t yet been filled with grief from opioids thanks to the Sackler family. I was there in the moment right before OxyContin and all the death started.
There must be something about cat ads. I couldn’t really say when was the last time I saw one. Anyway, it’s a Fancy Feast ad and the cat was fantastic – mesmerizing, actually. Both of us couldn’t look away. The cat stopped the conversation cold. I don’t think it was a rabbit hole, but suddenly I felt humbled by a question that seemed profound, particularly since fascism, Orban, Trump and all of the rest of the swirl is swirling.
I wondered who it was that made the ad. I wondered who had paid for it. I wondered who was the first person to come up with the idea, and to whom they talked about it first. I wondered about the cat, but mostly, since I’ve spent a career in politics, I wondered about the targeting.
For whom was the ad? I couldn’t let it go. The possibilities were few, but my curiosity was unabated because each seemed equally improbable, while being similarly imponderable.
Was the purpose of the ad to get a person to change their cat’s food?
This seemed unlikely. Who would do that? Perhaps it is because I am a dog person, but the feeding of pets is more of a devotional than a potluck. Who just changes their cat’s food because of a commercial on “The Price is Right?” Who is the person who sits alone with their cat, looks at it and says, “I’m getting you a new can of food?” I don’t think it’s a large number of people.
Personally, I think it would make a lot more sense to convince people that their cat is hungry, or that bigger cats are happier. That way people would buy more. The bottom line is that people like the TV cat, but when it comes to their own cat they might eat different food.
That leaves only one target for the ad. It must be aimed at people who don’t own a cat, and think that it is a good idea to get one. It seems to suggest that you can chill with this happy singing cat if you feed it the can of food. The question is: do people who are seeing the ad react to it? Are they compelled to act? Does it make them get a cat?
My new friend nodded when I said, “Nice cat.” He agreed, and the “Showcase Showdown” began.
There has never been an attempt to subvert the “Showcase Showdown,” or change the results – to the best of my knowledge – and there wasn’t on that hot Alabama afternoon. My new friend was saying goodbye to his brother and his wife as they pointed their Harley-Davidsons north towards the Blue Grass.
They say the average person will meet 10,000 other human beings during an average lifetime. A few will endure for a lifetime, some for a season, and most for a moment. I’m happy we had our moment together, but it was time to face the heat and head down the road to the Flora-Bama to listen to some live music.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the cat. I thought about the CEO reaching out to the head of marketing to ask, “How are people responding to the cat food? Are they buying more?”
Does the CEO even have cats?
It doesn’t matter because somewhere there is someone who said they tested the ad. They’ll say they have data and if you ask to see it, they are likely to flash a condescending half smile and say something like, “I’m sorry, but it’s cat data. You won’t understand it.”
Advertising is an interesting business, particularly political advertising. The most amazing thing about watching “The Price is Right” in the lobby was that I haven’t seen a cat commercial before I saw five. I don’t have cats, and, like a lot of people, I don’t have cable television, and I don’t watch broadcast channels at all. I saw the ad five times, and I didn’t buy a car or any cat food because it had nothing to do with me, which is like another form of advertising.
The political advertising model is reliant on delivering a “message” through repetition next to the cat ads adjacent to the news. The era of saturation advertising is at its end. The delivery of over-tested banalities, rated as effective or not by a testing methodology that makes chicken entrails look like MRIs, isn’t just ineffective, it’s a candidate killer.
This moment requires the assertion of belief in something that is bigger and better. The over-tested crapola produced by most modern campaigns isn’t just dreck, it’s an amnesiac for the mind and soul. It is an inescapable horror of modern existence, like Christmas decorations in October, and has-been golfers turned Saudi whores and useful idiots in a vile campaign of greed, deception and human rights abuse.
Sometimes I try and imagine what some of the modern Democratic Party’s data consultants would have said to Senator Robert Kennedy on an April night in Indianapolis when he stood in the bed of a truck, in front of an overwhelmingly poor and black crowd. You can listen to it here. It is the greatest extemporaneous speech in American history.
I wonder what the testing would have shown? What slogan would it have commended? What double speak and jargon would it have produced for the moment? What policy would rank above the next?
I suspect none of them would have advised the Harvard-educated son of one of the wealthiest families in the country to quote Aeschylus. Frankly, classical Greek poets haven’t tested well for centuries.
Dr. King was murdered and RFK was about to share the news. He talked about his murdered brother. He said this: “Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair. Against our will, comes wisdom from the awful grace of God.”
Politics is a people business. It is not a data business, though data has its importance. It is a tool. Like a hammer. The tool is not the cause; it is an instrument of the cause.
If all of the tools have built a contraption that turned into a giant cat ad studio, maybe a breath is in order and a lot less testing after that.
We are in an hour that demands the assertion of conviction. The toughness to communicate facts over the lies. The goodwill to not abandon faith and hope in America. The moment demands leaders to get to the front and drive the fundamental choice with belief, not data.
What should the elections of 2022 and 2024 be about? Freedom. It should be about freedom. It should be about prosperity. It should be about peace. It should be about recovery. It should be about renewal.
It should be a thunderous cry in defense of American democracy and the opportunity to build the Just Society that is within reach. It requires reaffirmation in our creed.
All of us are created equally, and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights, which include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The pursuit of happiness is a glorious cause. It belongs to all Americans in 2022 equally. We all share a birthright of freedom. Some are trying to take it away. They must be stopped because we are not the authors of the freedom. We are the trustees and beneficiaries. We are the custodians of the most important ideas that have ever been put to paper by mankind about the organization of society.
The job of each generation is to make it better. The way that is accomplished is by clear and direct confrontation between the ever-present forces that drive the continuing story of America. Freedom is the smart bet.
It is time for Democrats to talk about it loud and proud. The party of patriotism is the party of unity. The people that want to burn the country down for their own power and profit are an appalling lot. It is an easy fight if conviction is the weapon. The era of delusional doublespeak and mealy-mouthed accommodations towards an aggressive extremism should end. It should end now.
The cat ad was nice. It’s not like most political ads in that regard. I’ll never figure out why I’m watching that cat ad just like that cat won’t, I think. I know why I’m seeing those saturation political ads; I just don’t think most of them do anything. It’s all cat business, as they say.
Burning piles of money on saturation television advertising is at least more efficient than Western Union telegraphs when it comes to persuading voters, but not by much. Modern campaigns aren’t fueled by data. They are fueled by conviction. That is going to turn out to be a difference maker for a lot of candidates in 2022. Rejecting orthodoxy is always hard. It sorts out the lions and tigers from the lazy alley cats and pampered house cats.
2022 is a year looking for some Democratic lions. You don’t get that with cat ads.
Years ago, (probably 20), I worked as a camera operator on a picture called “Stuart Little”, about an animated mouse and his interactions with real world cats. We had about a dozen cats each of whom had their owner-trainer who was the only person that could touch them. The cats had each been coerced (bribed) to put their front paws on a tiny piece of carpet in order to get a treat at the sound of a clicker, that way they could be released off camera and they would go to their own mark and face towards the camera that the guy with the clicker stood next to, it worked probably 80% of the time which is over the top good when it comes to herding cats, the very phrase denotes the nearly impossible, those people figured out a way to herd cats, I have no doubt that the cat in your ad came from a like group of working cats. The Democrats need to figure out how to herd cats and get them to go to the voting booth in order to get their treat; a nation we all want to live in that expresses the best in us. If people are able to get cats to do the seemingly impossible then surely it must be possible to turnout the multitudes we need in order to right this listing ship we call our country.
It would be great to see the kind of “not ad” done by folks as a template for democrats. “ Here, fixed it” ads. Democrats need help. They seem to not get they need help. Some, like Fetterman are connecting- but why is Rev. Warnock struggling? Is it polls that mean nothing?
Why are there not ‘gen z ‘ ads?
“Democracy is on the line” isn’t the same as “do you want to be forced into someone else’s religious beliefs?