Thereās this Tom Steyer ad thatās been annoying the hell out of me ever since I got to Iowa. It starts off simply enough. Steyer is sitting in a dinner, wearing that tie he always wears, and talking about how heāll take on Trump.
āWhen he calls himself a billionaire businessman whoās good for the economy, Iāll remind him: Iām an actual billionaire with a B,ā he says, āand heās a fake billionaire with a capital Cāfor con-man, crook, and criminal.ā
This has been bothering me, because how on earth is Tom Steyer spelling ābillionaireā that thereās a c in it, and itās capitalized? This is not how the language works. But the real problem is that I just keep seeing it. To watch TV in Des Moines in the closing days before the Iowa caucuses is to be submerged so deeply in messaging and darkly lit still photos and B-roll that you start to wonder if these spots are interrupting your local news programming, or if it is in fact the other way around. In 30 minutes watching the local ABC affiliate on Wednesday, I caught nine ads from five different candidates, and a bunch more on Good Morning America the next day.
The ads are a lot, but they do synthesize the basic arguments of the primary pretty simply. Maybe the biggest takeaway is this: With one exception, which Iāll get to, theyāre all at least nominally positive. Although the campaign has featured sharp policy differencesāboiling over in fights over Medicare for All, student debt, immigration policy, and, most recently, Social Securityāthese havenāt really made their way onto the airwaves. (Campaigns have been quicker to throw punches online and, at times, on the stump.) Thatās a much different story from 2004 and 2008, the last two caucuses to feature large Democratic fields. To the extent that candidates are jockeying for position, theyāre doing so in a way thatās more passive-aggressive than straight-up aggressive. Think of it as the subtweet primary.
Hereās what I saw on the ABC affiliate in the span of half an hour:
Andrew Yang: Yang isnāt polling very well in Iowa, and in Iowa, if youāre not polling well, youāre likely walking away with nothing because of the caucusesā 15 percent viability threshold. But he has raised a ton of money for a political novice, and heās spending it on a spirited direct-to-camera spot.
The businessman is sitting in an office that looks kind of like the Oval Office, which is something I do not have in my apartment but apparently everyone running for public office does. As orchestral music plays in the background and a clip of robots building cars flashes across the screen, Yang touts his nonprofit work and lack of political experience. āTo defeat Donald Trump, we need someone with the experience of tackling the economic challenges of our time; Iāve done that.ā
Elizabeth Warren: Touting the endorsement of family members seems like low-hanging fruit. (You really donāt want to be in the reverse situation.) One of Warrenās most prominent ads opens with her older brothers John and David sitting on a couch holding what look to be beer cans and promising to vote for her, before turning to other members of her family (including a nephew, who calls her āAunt Betsyā). Thereās no discussion of politics in the spot, but David tells us heās a registered Republican, and thatās really what this ad is gently driving atāWarrenās career has taken her to Harvard and Washington, DC, but sheās at home in the heartland (in her case, Oklahoma), and a bunch of people who look like the kinds of Iowans who are voting for Joe Biden are here to vouch for her.
Bernie Sanders: If Warren is trying to soften her image, Sanders is trying to soften his ideas. In front of a black backdrop, the Vermont senator says that āfor a hundred years, presidents have talked about the need to guarantee health care for all,ā queuing up old footage of Harry Truman (did Harry Truman really sound like that?), John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama pitching the need for universal health care. Sanders, a favorite in the run-up to Iowa, has faced criticism throughout the primary from Biden and Pete Buttigieg (among others) over his proposal to replace the private health insurance system with Medicare for All. In the closing stretch, heās placing his signature idea squarely at the heart of the Democratic Partyās promiseāand invoking his chief rivalās former running mate in the process.
Joe Biden: Okay, this one doesnāt take a lot of parsing. And, if youāre watching it in context, it feels like an implicit rebuttal to the ad that came before it. Calling Trump āa threat to America and the world,ā a female narrator calls Biden āthe strongest candidateā to nominate against him and brings numbers and charts to back it upānational polls and surveys from swing states Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona. āThis is no time to take a risk,ā it continues [cough cough Bernie], and Biden is āthe candidate Trump fears the most.ā This is what passes for negative advertising in the Democratic primary right now, and itās Bidenās closing pitch in a nutshell: The policy fights are just noise. The election is ultimately about one thing: getting him out.
Warren (again): Warrenās other closing ad offers a preview of how sheād take on Trump, contrasting her upbringing in (in case you forgot) Oklahoma with Trumpās crooked and coddled New York City rise. Trump inherited millions āfrom his dadās real-estate empire,ā while her father worked as a janitor. āHe scammed students at his for-profit school,ā it continues, āand āshe got debts forgiven for students who were scammed.ā This is a glimpse of a different kind of argument than those presented by Steyer or Biden, promising to expose him as a crooked capitalist and flicking at her experience with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Amy Klobuchar: Remember that weird New York Times dual endorsement? The Minnesota senator does. It flashes across the screen in her new ad, in whichāspeaking to you from a living roomāshe dismisses Trump as self-centered (āhis tweets, his golf courses, his egoā) and promises toā¦not be Trump, basically. āI think the job is about you,ā she says, before rattling off her areas of focus: health care, education, national security. Klobuchar is creeping up on the fourth-place spot in Iowa and teetering on the edge of viability (she reportedly turned down a proposed alliance with Joe Biden on caucus night) but is stuck in Washington for the most important week of her campaign, so this fairly straightforward ad will have to do a lot of work.
Bernie (again): Four years ago, when Sanders cut a memorable ad, set to Simon & Garfunkelās āAmerica,ā ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Clinton backer David Brock remarked on the overwhelmingly white makeup of the supporters featured in the ad: āIt seems black lives donāt matter much to Bernie Sanders.ā A kind of gross and trivializing thing to say, for sure, but that spot makes an interesting contrast with Sandersā 2020 reboot. Sandersā feel-good closing spot features a clip from the speech he gave in Queens last October, after returning to the campaign trail in the wake of a heart attack.
āTake a look around you and find someone you donāt know,ā he says. āMaybe somebody who doesnāt look kinda like you. Are you willing to fight for that person as much as youāre willing to fight for yourself?ā The camera follows young canvassers trudging through the snow, Sunrise Movement volunteers, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a little kid giving Bernie a high-five, a packed arena, all trying to convey a sense of momentumāthis is a movement. The speech was in Queens. And whatever might have been true in the past, itās a movement that, more than everāand especially in this adāalso looks like Queens.
Just to cover my bases, I checked out Good Morning America the next morning and caught these:
Biden: If the former vice president is going to win on Monday, itās going to be because he won the argument about what the caucus should be about. This ad starts off a bit more optimistic than the first one but ends up in the same place. āImagine all the progress we can make in the next four years,ā Biden says, over footage of very cold-looking Iowa fields and stock footage of families. āAffordable health care,ā āa world where America leads on climate change,ā and getting assault weapons out of schools. But. āBut first we have to beat Donald Trump.ā At this point, he doesnāt need to tell you who he thinks canāt.
Biden (again): This oneās called āCharacter,ā because thatās what itās about. Itās sort of what Bidenās stump speech would look like if it were a slideshowāstarting off in the Oval Office (āItās said that in here, your character is revealedā) before moving to Scranton (āBut itās in life where your characterās forgedā) and tracing Bidenās career and family (āWho you grew up withā¦who you love, how youāve been tested, and what youāve overcomeā). We see images of Biden with his two boys after their mother died in a car accident; Biden with his wife, Jill; Biden embracing his late son, Beau. Unlike a typical biographical ad, this one makes no effort to explain what any of these things are, or who the people are, because the expectation is that, by now, you know everything about Joe Biden. And thatās the point.
Bernie: Sanders, unlike Biden, presents what happens in November as only the beginning. This spot, which debuted this past November, features Sanders in front of a bookshelf, followed by a succession of famous rich people (Steve Mnuchin, Charles Koch) and stock art. āDonald Trump is the most corrupt president in American history,ā he says, ābut the greed and corruption undermining our democracy is bigger than one man, and so is the solution.ā
Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. Here it is, folks: The one truly negative ad running in Iowa right now. The ad, from a group helmed by longtime Democratic pollster Mark Mellman (the group was founded recently and hasnāt filed a donor disclosure list with the Federal Election Commission), is titled āElectable,ā in honor of the most popular and hardest-to-define word of the 2020 primary. As negative ads go, itās fairly tame. A succession of voters explain why, although they might personally like Sanders, they donāt want him to win the nomination. āMichigan, Pennsylvania, Iowaātheyāre just not gonna vote for a socialist,ā one man says. Another voter says she has āsome concerns about Bernie Sandersā healthā because of the aforementioned heart attack.
Thereās one notable name missing from this list, and itās probably not Pete Buttigiegās fault that I havenāt seen his ads; maybe I should watch the Today Show next time. His latest spot in Iowa sticks with the subtweet theme, though again, itās pretty simple to read between the lines.
āItās time to turn the page from a Washington experience paralyzed by the same old thinking, polarized by the same old fights, to a bold vision for the next generation,ā he says, before nodding to āendless warsā and climate change. This is because the two men in front of him are both old, and work (or worked) in Washington. There are some shots of Des Moinesā nice riverfront park, and some footage of the former South Bend mayor listening intently and hugging people, and the ad ends with him surrounded by a sea of his own signs. Heās trying to hold back a smile, but itās not quite working; heās thinking, perhaps, that āthis is totally going in the ad.ā