The profanity in this flippin’ Senate campaign ad shows us a whole effing lot about how peeved primary voters really are
Swearing like a sailor sums up how many feel about the state of things, but does it actually move voters?
Well, frick, if this doesn’t say something salty about the state of today’s political discourse, I don’t know what does: there’s both a clean and explicit version of Illinois Lt. Gov. and U.S. Senate candidate Juliana Stratton’s (D) first television campaign ad “They said it” because there’s so many doggone f-bombs in it.
In the explicit version of the 30-second ad that Stratton posted online earlier this month, six people including Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) say a curse word directed at President Donald Trump that’s unprintable in a family newsletter but starts with the letter f and rhymes with duck. A censored version with six bleeps will air on TV, the campaign says.
“F**k Trump. Vote Juliana,” people in the ad say. Stratton herself keeps it PG, as does Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who endorsed her and also appears in the ad. “They said it, not me see,” Stratton, a former state lawmaker, says when introduced on camera.
The spot is an attention play at a time when rage powers partisan politics, and it’s just the latest example of the coarsening of our national political conversation that, let’s be honest, starts at the top with a president who could use some soap in his mouth. Fewer than four in ten Illinois residents approve of Trump, per Morning Consult polling, so the attitude Stratton channels in her ad will no doubt resonate widely, but even then, whether or not it will actually move voters seems like a crapshoot.
From “Let’s Go Brandon” to “FDT,” it’s not clear votes are actually moved by profanity. About two-thirds of U.S. adults believe cursing out loud in public is “never” or “rarely acceptable,” according to a Pew Research Center survey released last year, and recents candidates who ran ads with eff-the-president messages haven’t fared well, even when the president they’re attacking is really friggin’ unpopular.
