Ready The Clown Car: The First Batch of Democrats Are Ready To Announce Their 2020 Bids

Barbasol's response

 

Haha. That's great. I was wondering when some competitor would use Gillette's suicidal marketing campaign to respond, and gain leverage in the marketplace. Just one of the many beautiful things about competition and the free market.

 

Curious what was the gillette ad about - sounds like it really pissed you off.

 

you gotta pay more attention

 

I think single men were bothered by the ad.

 

i'm on board with Kamala Harris...although I must say I'm biased because she spent 20 years as a prosecutor.

 

Although I work in advertising, I don't bother to watch every ad from every brand. So I looked it up on youtube and presume you mean this ad:



I watched it and my take is this.

The message itself seems pretty innocuous - there's nothing wrong with saying guys should act a certain way towards women.

The problem I see with this ad is that it doesn't really tie to their brand or product - just seems like they are pandering to a movement in order to sell razors. So as a consumer, I am like meh. As an advertiser, I think it's off-brand and they don't really have a platform to be preachy about this - it's going to be ineffective - no one needs to be taught morality from a razor company. But I also don't see why it would be controversial - all it's saying is to treat women well which shouldn't be controversial as a message.

 

Any of these liberals running as a 3rd party candidate is basically boosting Trump. Amazing really.

 

@Sweet Lou 4 2 the message of the Gillette ad is “we can be better”. Which is such a benign message. Only a beta would be offended by that.

There’s room for improvement in every part of life. What if Harden had that beta mentality and decided he was good enough at basketball after winning his mvp?

 

I am speaking as a professional in my field nothing more. The message of saying men can strive to a higher ideal is fine - it is benign and yes, only a "beta" would be offended - that said, the very idea of splitting men into "alpha" and "betas" is part of the problem here - and relates to toxic masculinity. People should just be themselves while respecting others - there's nothing about that that is beta or alpha, but for some reason people think that's beta when in fact it's strong to have character and convictions.

The problem as an advertisement though is that Gillette really doesn't have any credibility as a brand to be telling us this.

 

Agreed, though I don't really see anyone (at present) that would draw any real interest from the left. It's probably more likely that with the mistake-in-chief having taken the GOP hostage that any real viable 3rd party run will come from their side.

 

"real interest" is a relative term.

Howard Schultz, Tom Steyer, etc. could draw SOME votes.

The Dems are perfectly setup to beat Trump. He's wildly unpopular with a low approval rating. He barely eeked out a victory the first time. Some portion of Republicans would vote against him if they have a viable candidate OR not show up to vote at all.

Democrats would make a monumental mistake if they did things to give people a reason to vote for Trump or not unify around one candidate.

 

FWIW, if you look at the list of candidates announcing, there really isn't any argument as to how far left the Democratic party has swung. If I were a Democrat, this would concern me...but I think it bodes well for Republicans. Looking like they'll probably solve the 'likability issue (Warren's candidacy looks stillborn before it even got going), but replaced it with a 'way out there' ideology. It will be pretty much impossible for many of these candidates to pivot to the middle were they to win the primary. Which is fine with me, but again, were I a Democrat, I'd be concerned. Just as I was when the Republican Party pivoted way too far to the right some years ago.

Likability did win Obama the election BUT he was pretty careful NOT to put forward any policies that might disqualify him for the moderates. In fact, he didn't put forward really any policies. This group will definitely be putting forward very liberal/socialsit policies, at least many of them. It will form the core of their campaign. Which is why pivoting to the middle won't be possible.

 

To clarify, there's currently no one with the instant cache or name recognition of a Ralph Nader. Though you are correct that a viable third party challenger (from the left) would hurt Dems. Schulz and Steyer? Not household names.

I still think a third party challenge is more likely to arise from the right. Bill Kristol comes to mind.

 

The right won with a crazy platform. Anything can happen.

Anyways, I don’t see Biden or Gabbard as being far left.