When Tom Bradley first ran for mayor of Los Angeles, he had to contend with white voters’ real apprehension about casting a ballot for a black man.
As Seth Greenfield, a writer who worked on Bradley’s mayoral bid says, that meant addressing that fear directly in campaign ads.
“The last time I ran for mayor, I lost,” Bradley said, straight into the camera. “Maybe some of you worried that I’d favor one group over another. In the first place, I couldn’t win that way; Los Angeles has the smallest black population of any big city in America.” The rest of the commercial went on to say that he wouldn’t want to win by appealing to racial sentiments, and he offered calming words about different groups working together. But the heart of the ad was its first message: I understand your fears, and it would not serve me politically to stoke them.
Greenfield wonders what the campaign ads for the current crop of candidates would look like if the candidates directly addressed voters’ reservations about them.
His advice for the since-withdrawn Edwards: “All three of the Democrats have similar policies, but you need a candidate that can win the south and border states.”
For Clinton, have Charlie Rangel discuss how bloody Washington politics can be. “Politics is a contact sport—maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is And if we Democrats want to do the things this country needs, we damn well better pick a candidate who gives as good as she gets—and more.”
Obama’s campaign should opt for high-ranking elected officials in states that went for Bush talk about Obama’s ability to bridge the partisan divide. His words for Missouri Senator Claire McKaskill: “If Al Gore had won any of our states in 2000, there never would have been a Bush presidency. Instead, Democrats lost the last two presidential elections because our candidates couldn’t compete in our states, and too many others. Any Democrat can win in your deep blue state. But to win the White House, we need someone who can win our states, too. We believe that candidate is Barack Obama.”
Do you think this would this work?