This week’s ad analysis comes at a time when both the Republican and Democratic races are tighter than anyone thought they would be. By now it was supposed to be all but decided, the fields whittled down and one candidate poised to put his or her opponents away for good. But much to the pleasure of political junkies everywhere, both races are truly up in the air. So let’s see what delicious new morsels the candidates are sending our way. We’ll start with Barack Obama:
It might seem a little late to be running a one-minute biography ad of the kind most campaigns usually begin with, but the Obama campaign seems to have surmised (probably correctly) that plenty of voters still aren’t all that familiar with him. And for Obama, his identity is his message. Even though some of the images and interviews in this ad have been used in previous spots, there are some subtle alterations in the arguments being made. Obama is now “fighting,” and his organizing work in Chicago is described as “working to rebuild an area torn apart by plant closings.” This situates that part of his history in an economic context, and closer to the ground than it had been described before – he’s “tak[ing] all of the talent and devot[ing] it to making people’s lives better,” as his law professor Laurence Tribe describes it.