Hillary Clinton has spent $77 million in TV ads since she won the Democratic nomination in June. Trump has spent $5 million during that same period. $77 million vs $5 million. No wonder she’s beating him in virtually all the key battleground states. That’s where all the ads thus far have run.
Fortunately, the Trump campaign this week has started a $10 million TV buy, compared to a $9.2 Clinton campaign buy, so they’re at least comparable for a change. As usual, the ads on both sides will run in the battleground states (those both sides believe are up for grabs this fall.) Trump’s ad will emphasize the difference between the two candidates on improving the American economy, creating jobs, etc. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the latest Trump ad.
Trump is also getting a lot of grief from Democrat operatives and their allies in the mainstream press for something that I think he actually should be getting credit. And that’s for making at least an effort to court African American voters, who are far too often ignored by Republican candidates, and taken for granted by Democrats. Of course in this effort, he sometimes does it clumsily, as he did when he tweeted about the fatal shooting of NBA star Dwayne Wade’s cousin in Chicago over the weekend, using it as an opportunity to communicate the message “just what I have been saying. African Americans will VOTE TRUMP.” Not a very empathetic message.
But this coming Saturday, Trump will be heading to a predominately black church in Detroit, to meet the head of an African American owned and operated Christian television network. What has been the Democrats response to Trump’s outreach to the African American community? Some of the most despicable race-baiting stuff you’ve ever seen. Here’s Hillary’s desperate attempt to tie Donald Trump to the KKK.
Why are the Democrats sinking to such depths in attempting to discredit Trump’s effort to win over African American voters? It’s because they’ve had such a lock on this approximately 12% of American voters, that anything that threatens that grip, is a threat to their stranglehold on power, particularly at the presidential level. They are willing to do and say virtually anything to maintain their monopoly on the black vote in America. And Trump’s recent effort to pursue African American voters may well be too little too late. But I for one am more than happy to see him make the effort.
And where the heck is Hillary? For a presidential candidate, she’s all but been in hiding lately. She’s doing fewer and fewer public events. She hasn’t held a press conference in about 270 days. Is she just hoping to run out the clock (figuring she’s in the lead, so don’t make waves, and let Donald Trump have the attention and thus more opportunities for him to make unforced errors)? Or is Trump correct that she has health problems that she doesn’t want public (like her emails)? Yes, she did go on Jimmy Kimmel recently, and demonstrated that she was strong and healthy enough to open – a pickle jar! Now that was impressive.
Trump has even offered to make more of his health records public, on one condition – that Hillary does the same. My view – both candidates should make full disclosure of all their healthcare records.
One final thing. Most of the polls show that Trump is behind Hillary by about 7% or so. I believe that one of the principal reasons for this is that whereas a Republican presidential candidate usually would be at about 90% of Republican voters at this point in the race, Trump is only getting about 75% of Republican voters. So here’s an appeal to those Republican “Never Trumpers”, (Mitt; all three Bushes, the Georges and Jeb; Bill Kristol and George Will; our Governor; and quite a few other Republicans out there – you know who you are.) Let’s come together on this. Look, Trump wasn’t my first choice, or my second, or my third…, but he’s our nominee. And just ask yourself, do you want to be responsible for a U.S. Supreme Court with a bunch of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s on it? I didn’t think so.
So once again, all together now, let’s make America great again!
