Donald Trump is threatening in the polls and the liberal elite has dangerously fumbled in their latest heavy-handed ploy to take him on writes James Dancey.
I was perusing through the YouTube trending bar a couple
days ago and I saw this ‘Save the Day’ video, a campaign by celebrities telling
you not just to vote, but to not vote for Trump. It was 3 minutes of sincere
personages looking you in the eye and appealing to your sense of moral
righteousness. Sounds perfectly fine right? Wrong.
You see Trump runs a narrative that we’ve seen before, that
it’s the big liberal elite and media moguls ganging up against him, and it’s
one that has been bought before. Trump himself is not far from the aristocracy,
although he won’t release his tax returns he likes to flaunt himself as a self-proclaimed
multimillionaire, his father was a property magnate and once upon a time he
received a small loan of a million dollars; hardly a working class hero.
Yet he has grappled the popularity of the people he has been
so distant from in the earlier years of his life, why? It’s a combination,
there’s the obvious brutally honest (and regularly offensive) demeanour he has
which attracts the masses who are fed up of being condescended by men and women
in suits and ties, however, he is regularly propelled by the media’s coverage (despite
nearly all being negative) helps feed his narrative that he is the underdog
(despite by no means being that).
So now we have celebrities, doing what celebrities do best, being
in front of the camera, and telling you not to vote for Trump, because he’s a
misogynist, a racist and an all round disgusting human being. That’s all
correct, and they’re all right, but it’s not going to stop people from voting
him. A slew of celebrity endorsements, from David Beckham to Steven Hawking
didn’t stop people voting leave in the EU referendum. Why?
Celebrities are becoming less idolised in modern society as more
and more people view them as glorified civilians, which in many ways is what they
are. An actor isn’t really qualified to give you political advice, although
most politicians aren’t qualified to give you political advice either, but
no-one listens to politicians, so what are the chances they’re going to listen
to celebrities?
Every time the media report on one of Donald Trump’s awful
slurs or supposed ‘mishaps’ (which are so common nowadays they can hardly be
considered that) they’re just giving him more airtime and attention. I
understand it’s hard to find good news about Hillary Clinton, who spends half
her time being comatose and the other half being jeered over her emails, but
finding ‘bad news’ about Donald Trump is just supporting his beliefs that the
media is after him, and despite all the reports being completely true, he is a
terrible human being, people have already made up their mind on him.
This new Save the Day campaign is not going to change anyone’s
mind about Donald Trump, it’s more likely to change people’s opinion on the
celebrities themselves, why? I don’t know, but Donald Trump’s supporters are
fiercely loyal to him and that’s not going to change anytime soon, if you
really want to sway the undecided voters you should give people reasons to vote
for Hillary, not to vote against Trump, because people aren’t going to buy
that.
The juvenile jest that Mark Ruffalo will do a nude scene at
the end of this film just nails how confused this political advertisement is. The
self-conscious near parody tone is meant to add a humorous edge to the video
but ends up outlining exactly what is wrong with these campaigns, the ‘We’re
famous so you should vote the way that I’m voting’ gimmick that people have
heard enough of, it has reached saturation point and there’s more chance that this
contrived, calculated political move will backfire rather than succeed.
Hillary’s downfall will be the fact that she does terribly
in the swing states; Sanders would’ve destroyed Trump with the impartial voter,
but now the Democrats have shot themselves in the feet; they are calling on a
liberal elite that the electorate is about to rebel against. People want to
hear about policies that are going to enhance their lives, not about why Donald
Trump is a bad person. Donald Trump has stolen so much of the media attention
and coverage that few have ever commanded that he may just win the Presidential
race; well it will be less his win, more the democrats’ loss.
Save the Day will fail, it may even have a negative impact,
you’re not going to convince anyone about Donald Trump, people have seen and
heard enough of him to have an opinion, favourable or unfavourable. You have to
convince people why Hillary is better, not why Donald is worse, it’s the exact
same technique tried by the remain campaign in the EU referendum (and failed),
same technique tried by Owen Smith against Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour
Leadership race (and failed), do the elite not know anything else other than
attack with no defence? Or are there actually no reasons to vote Hillary? Or as
she’s better known in the media: Not Trump. Both are reasonable theories. How I
yearn for Bernie Sanders.
