YouTube and 2028

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  The 2028 campaign is starting already.

Adam Wren at Politico:

NOW STREAMING: The 2028 presidential primaries are already unfolding on YouTube.

Amid the rapid decline of cable news, potential candidates and other elected officials are locked in a digital arms race to draw subscribers, boost their reach and build what amounts to their own broadcast networks.

• Potential candidates like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are closing in on audiences that rival or surpass total cable primetime viewers for individual networks.
• Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is racking up millions of views.
• Vivek Ramaswamy, the former 2024 GOP presidential candidate who is running for Ohio governor, dwarfs any other Republican but President Donald Trump on YouTube with more than 813,000 subscribers.
• Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s channel started the year with just 28,000 subscribers, and now has 177,000, having generated nearly 10 million views and accumulated 500,000 hours of viewing time so far this year, according to a spokesperson.
• Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear saw a 448 percent increase in views from last year to this year, a spokesperson tells POLITICO.

Divisive GOP House Primaries

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Bridget Bowman reports at NBC

Former President Donald Trump endorsed the primary challenger taking on House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, R-Va., saying the congressman "turned his back on our incredible movement."

Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Tuesday morning that he is endorsing state Sen. John McGuire, who is challenging Good in a June 18 primary. Trump made a veiled reference to Good's being one of the few members of Congress who endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the presidential primary, writing that Good "was constantly attacking and fighting me until recently."

Good endorsed Trump back in January, but the former president wrote that it was "too late."

"The damage had been done!" Trump added. "I just want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and the person that can most help me do that is Navy Seal and highly respected State Legislator, John McGuire, a true American Hero."

Josh Peck at Texas Public Radio:

Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales defeated a primary challenge from gun YouTuber Brandon Herrera in Tuesday’s runoff election.

The incumbent's March primary opponents forced him into a runoff with Herrera after Gonzales failed to earn support from a majority of voters.

By 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Gonzales had 51.06% of the vote to Herrera's 48.94% — a difference of just over 500 votes.

The Texas 23rd Congressional District, which Gonzales represents, stretches from just east of El Paso to western Bexar County. It includes large swaths of the border and the town of Uvalde, where the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting took place.

Gonzales’ primary challengers went after him for his vote in support of gun control measures in Congress in the aftermath of the school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

The runoff election occurred just days after the Uvalde community marked two years since the shooting.

Gonzales’ gun control vote, along with several other votes on issues like support for gay and interracial marriage, led the Texas GOP to censure Gonzales in 2023.

Herrera, who had never held political office before, has 3.4 million subscribers on YouTube, where he primarily uses and promotes firearms and is known as “The AK Guy.”

Many of his videos are controversial, including one from 2022 where he uses a gun associated with Nazi Germany, goose-steps to a popular Nazi marching song, and refers to the gun as “the original ghetto blaster” and “Hitler’s street sweeper.”

Later in the video, he says he’s “not really a big fan of fascism” and explains that his comments throughout the video are “really f— up jokes.”

Florida Republican congressman and fierce Trump loyalist Matt Gaetz campaigned to support Herrera’s primary challenge to Gonzales.

Gonzales outraised Herrera by four-to-one, receiving more than $4 million from supporters.

The YouTube Gap

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under  way.  Social media platforms are a big part of the story.

Kevin Roose at NYT:

Mr. Biden’s biggest problem is structural. Most of our online political communication takes place on internet platforms that are designed to amplify content that provokes strong emotional reactions, often by reinforcing tribal identities. Mr. Trump’s unfiltered, combative style is a natural fit for the hyperpolarized audiences on Facebook and Twitter, whereas Mr. Biden’s more conciliatory, healer-in-chief approach can render him invisible on platforms where conflict equals clicks.

...
YouTube, where progressives have only recently started competing for attention with an extensive network of popular right-wing creators, is particularly thorny territory for a centrist pragmatist like Mr. Biden. The platform’s left-wing commentariat, often referred to as “LeftTube” or “BreadTube,” mostly seems to consist of young Sanders supporters who see Mr. Biden as an establishment phony. Video compilations of Mr. Biden’s verbal gaffes, with titles like “17 Minutes of Joe’s Melting Brain,” have gotten millions of views over all.

Alex Thompson at Politico:

The 2020 presidential campaign’s transition to a mostly digital experience, with the nation on lockdown, has spotlighted a long-term progressive deficit on YouTube that some concerned Democrats compare to the right’s command of talk radio. The country’s leading video platform is also one of its largest search engines (after Google) and a key battlefield in campaigns’ fight to reach new voters and earn free media attention.

While Democratic campaigns and groups spend heavily on advertising on YouTube, they lag in organic content, with dozens of conservative and right-wing figures like Ben Shapiro, Mark Dice and Paul Joseph Watson and more official-sounding channels like Prager University cultivating enormous followings not yet matched by equivalents on the left.

That’s what led Biden to a live-streamed “family town hall” last Sunday night with a trio of YouTube family vloggers who have a combined 3.8 million subscribers. The Biden campaign’s renewed efforts amid the pandemic have come with growing pains: The former vice president awkwardly started off by telling them, “You have really great podcasts,” and the vloggers didn’t post videos about the event on their own channels, restricting Biden to his smaller subscriber base of just 21,500. The Biden campaign told POLITICO that "those who participated are amplifying the event on their own channels" but did not respond when asked for examples.

Still, the Biden’s campaign knows YouTube “is an essential platform for us,” one adviser said.

“‘LeftTube’ has two problems: One is volume and the other is content, neither of which it seems close to solving on its own,” said Stefan Smith, the former online engagement director for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. If the party doesn’t ensure that organic YouTube content is getting attention “in addition to paid digital [advertising], then we are in trouble.”
...
While Facebook has earned more scrutiny for its impact on U.S. politics, American adults report using YouTube more than any other online platform, with 73 percent saying they use it, according to Pew Research Center’s 2018 and 2019 surveys on social media use. It is even more popular with 18 to 29 year olds, with over 90 percent of that cohort saying they use the site — even higher rates than Instagram and Snapchat.

And it’s not just cat videos. Half of YouTube users said the site was “very” or “somewhat” important for helping them understand things happening in the world, according to another Pew survey from 2018, making the site’s potential influence on electoral politics clear.

HRC v. Comedy

From Judicial Watch:

In what appears to be a first for a serious presidential contender, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is going after five comedians who made fun of the former Secretary of State in standup skits at a popular Hollywood comedy club.

A video of the short performance, which is less than three minutes, is posted on the website of the renowned club, Laugh Factory, and the Clinton campaign has tried to censor it. Besides demanding that the video be taken down, the Clinton campaign has demanded the personal contact information of the performers that appear in the recording. This is no laughing matter for club owner Jamie Masada, a comedy guru who opened Laugh Factory more than three decades ago and has been instrumental in launching the careers of many famous comics. “They threatened me,” Masada told Judicial Watch. “I have received complains before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don’t cut the video.”

Practically all of the country’s most acclaimed comedians have performed at the Laugh Factory and undoubtedly they have offended politicians and other well-known personalities with their standup routines. Tim Allen, Jay Leno, Roseanne Bar, Drew Carey, George Carlin, Jim Carrey, Martin Lawrence, Jerry Seinfeld and George Lopez are among the big names that have headlined at the Laugh Factory. The First Amendment right to free speech is a crucial component of the operation, though Masada drew the line a few years ago banning performers—including African Americans—from using the “n-word” in their acts.

The five short performances that Clinton wants eliminated include some profanity and portions could be considered crass, but some of the lines are funny and that’s what the Laugh Factory is all about. The video features the individual acts of five comedians, four men and a woman. The skits make fun of Clinton’s wardrobe, her age, sexual orientation, the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the former First Lady’s relationship with her famous husband. The Laugh Factory has appropriately titled it “Hillary vs. The First Amendment.”

Masada told Judicial Watch that, as soon as the video got posted on the Laugh Factory website, he received a phone call from a “prominent” person inside Clinton’s campaign. “He said the video was disgusting and asked who put me up to this,” Masada said. The Clinton staffer, who Masada did not want to identify, also demanded to know the names and phone numbers of the comedians that appear in the video. Masada refused and hung up. He insists that the comedy stage is a sanctuary for freedom of speech no matter who is offended. “Just last night we had (Emmy-award winner) Dana Carvey doing Donald Trump and it was hilarious,” Masada said.

Cruz Do-Over

At Mediaite, Tina Nguyen reports:

Unlike many of his colleagues, who gave pre-written speeches and taped them on sets, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) decided to record his response to Obama’s State of the Union Address outside the House Chamber, next to a statue of Texas hero Stephen Austin, using the iPhone of some staffer who forgot to edit the video before posting it on YouTube.

The original video was quickly deleted because it showed Cruz, the former Solicitor General of Texas and champion college debater, successfully improvising an eloquent response, seamlessly hitting a series of prepared talking points criticizing the Obama administration…for about forty seconds.

And then he needed a redo.

Ah, the perils of politicians going without a script.

Watch here

Sun Tzu on Chris Christie

David A. Farenthold writes at The Washington Post that Chris Christie's opponents are increasingly trying to ignite his temper:

Since his first year in office, in 2010, Christie has engaged in at least 14 raised-voice confrontations with regular people, often at town halls. These moments, played and replayed on YouTube, have become a defining characteristic of the governor — as proof that he’s either a tough, no-nonsense leader or a swaggering bully.

Now, as Christie considers whether to run for president, he is increasingly facing questions about whether his hard-nosed act will play among voters who may not be quite so hard-nosed as those in New Jersey. Christie will also have to contend with those, like  [Sandy] Booket, who just want to goad him into a candidacy-killing moment.

Sun Tzu nailed it:

Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
...
If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. 

More Republican Reassessments

CNN reports on Haley Barbour's comments to RGA:

"The ground game is really important, and we have to be, I mean we've got to give our political organizational activity a very serious..." he said, taking a pause and looking for the right word. "Proctology exam. We need to look everywhere."

Speaking at a conference for the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas, Barbour said his party needs to not only adapt to demographic changes but also reform its messaging.
"We can catch up in four years doing this," he said. "This isn't rocket science, but it is hard work that we can't wait and start in 2016."

The party needs a "brutally honest assessment of everything we did," he added. "We need to take everything apart and look at all of it."

Like other Republicans in recent days, Barbour stressed the importance of being more inclusive to Latinos, African-Americans and other minorities. Barbour in particular chided the party for its tone on illegal immigration, saying many illegal workers contribute to the economy and comprise an important part of society.

Karl Rove also writes about doing better with the ground game and appealing to African Americans and Hispanics.  He makes other points as well:

One reason the GOP didn't do better with its pro-growth agenda was that Mr. Romney's character and record were undermined by early, relentless personal attacks that went largely unanswered. In a world of Twitter, YouTube and cable TV, the cliché that "if you're responding, you're losing" is dead. Republican campaigns need to get better at responding, setting the record straight, and bending the argument back toward their narrative.

...
 The GOP must reduce the destructiveness of the presidential primaries. In the first place, activists can withhold support from candidates who make reckless assaults on competitors, which happened too often this time. Also, the Republican National Committee should limit the number of debates and, by showing wisdom in picking debate moderators, limit the media's ability to depict the party as a fringe group.

Another idea: Holding the convention in late August made sense when candidates relied on public financing for the general election. That will never happen again. The Romney campaign had tens of millions it couldn't spend for months until he was officially nominated on Aug. 28. Future conventions should be held as early as late June.

At The Christian Science Monitor, Linda Feldmann notes a disagreement between Romney and Jindal:

Mitt Romney is complaining about “gifts” – but to Democrats, it’s Mr. Romney who’s the gift. And he keeps on giving.  

The Republicans’ failed presidential nominee has inflamed intraparty tension by blaming his loss on President Obama’s “gifts” to young voters and minorities – health coverage, contraceptive coverage in health insurance, forgiveness of interest on college loans – not any failings of his own as a candidate.

Mr. Romney made the comments Wednesday afternoon on a conference call with fundraisers and donors, a few of whom allowed reporters to listen in. Later in the day, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) of Louisiana, new chairman of the Republican Governors Association (RGA), became “visibly agitated” at a press conference when asked about Romney’s remarks, according to Politico. 

“No, I think that’s absolutely wrong,” said Governor Jindal, a rising Republican star who is Indian-American, speaking at an RGA meeting in Las Vegas. “Two points on that: One, we have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent. We need to go after every single vote.”

“And, secondly,” Jindal continued, “we need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American dream, which is to be in the middle class, which is to be able to give their children an opportunity to be able to get a great education. … So, I absolutely reject that notion, that description. I think that’s absolutely wrong.”

The Cancer Ad and American Crossroads

Jon Healey writes at The Los Angeles Times:

Sometimes the presidential campaign feels like it's scripted by George Orwell.

This week, Republican Mitt Romney released an ad accusing President Obama of "taking the work out of welfare" because of a proposal to let states experiment with more ways to move people from the dole to private payrolls. Romney might as well put out an ad saying "I was for federalism before I was against it."

But that particularly cynical distortion seems like the biblical truth in comparison to a new commercial by the pro-Obama "super PAC" Priorities USA Action. Called "Understands," it all but accuses Romney of killing the spouse of a former steelworker who had the misfortune of working for a manufacturer (GST Steel) purchased by Bain Capital.

...

There are so many things wrong with that ad, it's hard to know where to begin. My colleague Matea Gold, the Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times are among those who've found gaping holes in the ad's story line; for starters, Soptic's wife Ilyona "Ranae" Soptic obtained health insurance from her own employer after her husband's plant closed. Oh, and yes, Romney was on leave from Bain, running the Salt Lake City Olympics, at the time GST went bankrupt.

But like LBJ's Daisy spot, which only ran once as a paid commercial on broadcast television, the cancer ad seems to be a play for reverb.  At The New York Times, Jeremy W. Peters and Michael D. Shear write:

According to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, there are no instances of the ad ever running as a paid commercial. Kantar uses technology to track the appearance and frequency of political ads across the country. And so far their data show that the commercial has never been shown on broadcast television or national cable.

Bill Burton, one of the founders of Priorities USA Action, acknowledged that the ad had indeed never been broadcast. But all that free media attention has helped it chalk up nearly half-a-million views online, according to YouTube.

More important for Mr. Burton and his super PAC, however, may be where the ad is being watched. Of the top five states where people are watching the ad, one is California — often in the top because of the size of the state. A reliably Democratic state in presidential elections, California is not a focus of either the Romney or Obama campaign.

But the other four are: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

According to Mr. Burton, who said the ad will eventually run on television, it has been watched by 48,979 people in Florida; 28,473 people in Pennsylvania; 23,739 people in Ohio and 22,887 people in Virginia. 

American Crossroads is weighing in:

 

Huntsman Pulls Out, Revises Website

Jon Huntsman has withdrawn from the race and endorsed Mitt Romney. Hours before the formal statement, Michael Shear reported at The New York Times:

But Mr. Huntsman’s campaign, which struggled to raise money for expensive television ads, put many of his harshest attacks against Mr. Romney into clever and biting online videos that he posted to his campaign’s Web site and a corresponding YouTube channel.

Those videos (and a few television commercials) are now mostly gone, quickly yanked from public view as Mr. Huntsman prepares for an 11 a.m. endorsement of Mr. Romney.

...

A spokesman for the campaign, who asked not to be identified, said only that “we’ve removed a substantial amount of content from the Web, as campaigns often do when they end.”

But what was notable about Mr. Huntsman’s actions was the speed with which his operation moved.

It was also notable for the impact it very quickly had on news Web sites and blogs. Because many sites — including The New York Times — regularly embed videos hosted by campaigns directly on their Web sites, the Huntsman videos on those sites vanished, too.

That could provide an object lesson for news organizations hoping to create a permanent record of the back-and-forth of a campaign. If they want the videos to last, they must host them on their own servers.

But just in case, there’s always the other party — in this case, the Democrats — who will be eager to remind the public what was once there.

At 11:33 p.m. Sunday, the Democratic National Committee’s Rapid Response unit sent out a long list of Mr. Huntsman’s most vitriolic comments about Mr. Romney — lest anyone forget.

Perry Says He Wasn't Drunk

Carla Marinucci writes at The San Francisco Chronicle:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, on a fundraising swing in California, spoke at length for the first time Wednesday about his eyebrow-raising address in New Hampshire last week that has gone viral on the Internet, saying it was "a pretty typical speech for me" and denying suggestions that he seemed to be on medication or under the influence of alcohol.

...

The clip, described by some as bizarre and incoherent, shows Perry mugging, joking and playing with the audience as he describes New Hampshire's motto, "Live Free or Die" as "cool" and appears to collapse in giggles over a gift of maple syrup.

Perry shrugged off the criticism and appeared flummoxed by the attention to the address.

"I've probably given 1,000 speeches. There are some that have been probably boring, some that have been animated, some that have been in between," he said.

But "ask the people who were there," he said, "not some political opponent who has put a video up. The people there were responding to the speech ... clapping at all the right places - and there was a standing ovation at the end."

Responding to the suggestions by some political observers that the animated Perry may have been on pain medication for his past back surgery, the governor said: "No. I was just giving a speech."

"I had spine surgery on the first of July, but I ran this morning," he said, adding that he was not taking pain medication or anything else before Friday's event, and in fact was back on his regular running routine.

Asked about "The Daily Show" comedian Jon Stewart's suggestion that Perry looked like he had been drinking, the governor said, "It wasn't that either."

"It's not that I wouldn't love to sit down with Jon and have a glass of wine," he said with a laugh, adding "if he'll buy."

Campaign Videos

Gingrich has"Newt Now."

Perry calls himself "America's Jobs Governor."



Romney goes after Perry:



And Herman Cain's video is a few weeks old, but still worth seeing:

Palin in Nashville

An earlier post here quoted David Plouffe's observation that YouTube and other new media have changed message production and consumption. The latest example is SarahPalin at the Tea Party (below). Ann Althouse has a savvy blog post about the earlier perception that Palin's resignation had turned her into political toast:

I thought she needed to get out of Alaska (in order to run for President). It's innovative the way she's staying in Alaska. As a blogger, operating from my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin, I love that she's working through Facebook and staying rooted in Wasila, Alaska. Fox News is building a TV studio in her house in Wasila. That's so not toast.

As for the tea party movement, more thoughts here:


View Full Clip

The Audacity of YouTube

In The Audacity to Win, his memoir of the 2008 campaign, Obama manager David Plouffe has an important insight about new media. Describing Obama's Philadelphia speech on racial issues, Plouffe says:

As was the case throughout the campaign, most people did not watch the speech on TV. It was delivered on a Tuesday morning, when just about everyone was at work. Instead, people watched it online, most of them on YouTube, either as it was happening or at their leisure later that day or in the days to come. Eventually, tens of millions of voters saw the speech through various outlets.

This marked a fundamental change in political coverage and message consumption, and one that will only continue as technology rolls forward: big moments, political or otherwise, will no longer be remembered by people as times when everyone gathered around TVs to watch a speech, press conference or other event. Increasingly, most of us will recall firing up the computer, searching for a video and watching it at home or at the office — or even on our cell phones.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1932963-2,00.html#ixzz0XL32ePPl