If you watch the Lincoln Lads carefully, they will show you how to spin pixels, press access and credulity into gold.
Are you ready?
First, after the debacle of 2020, when all their promises of electoral conquest turned to shit and scandal nearly took their fledgling advertising business down, the Lincoln Lads almost certainly took a hard, dispassionate look at their business model -- because make no mistake, thiers is a for-profit business -- and came to a clear and unsparing understanding of what they're good at, what they're not good at and what credulous Liberals will pay them for.
And with a little imagination, and decades of experience of sitting through such come-to-Jesus corporate retreats, you can practically put yourself in that room. And it breaks down like so.
However successful they were in the past at firing up bigots and imbeciles to vote for Republican monsters and con men, that strategy simply does not work outside of the GOP ecosystem. Without those tens of millions of reprogrammable Republican meatbags already primed and ready to Own The Libs for Freedumb by decades of conditioning by Fox News/Hate Radio...none of Rick Wilson's or Steve Schmidt's shitty, vicious GOP ads would've amounted to anything. And in 2020, when they tried running those kinds of ads against the same people they had spent their professional lives getting elected, they learned that the hard way. From Brother Charlie Pierce:
The Lincoln Project Didn't Move 10 Votes in This Election
Never Trump conservatives are about as relevant to the actual election results this year as are the Whigs or the Free Soil Party.
By the standards they set for themselves, the Lincoln Lads efforts were a complete and very public failure (a fact which, your host will once again heroically refrain from reminding you, nobody but a few mouthy grouches like your host predicted and was willing to write about, and for which those mouthy grouches took all kindsa shit from our "allies".)
So if the Lincoln Lads suck petrified bronto balls when it comes to getting Democrats elected, why did so many credulous Liberals give them so damn much money? And what actual, tangible product coming off the Lincoln Lad's assembly line is worth continuing to lavishly fund them?
That brings us to the second bullet-point on the white board of our imaginary, Lincoln Lad's post-2020 emergency re-visioning meeting.
The answer is...porn.
Political porn.
As one of those mouthy grouches put it. Repeatedly:
Lincoln Project turned out to be a VERY profitable Liberal political porn site, but by every electoral metric it was a failure. Their main senatorial targets -- Graham and Collins -- both won handily. And Trump's 2020 vote total was +10M higher than 2016, not lower.
— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico) November 24, 2020
It turned out, having looked at all the after-action reports, that the Lincoln Lads actual skill was producing 60 and 90 second videos calling Trump a shithead and calling Republican voters morons.
So...porn. Porn, produced by recently-former Republican mercenaries, using language and attack vectors ripped off wholesale from the critiques and analysis and writing and speaking Liberal had already been doing for decades.
So how did these recently-former Republican mercenaries rake in nearly $100M almost overnight using language purloined directly from the dirty hippies who had been slandered and dismissed as alarmist crackpot for decades by the same Beltway media that was now pulling out every chair for the Lincoln Lads and the Bulwark crew?
That's also an easy answer. And the third bullet point on our imaginary white-board.
They had allies and cronies in the media.
One of the duties of professional Republican slander mongers is cultivating reliable media contacts -- a duty made easier when you also have some control over the spending of tens of millions of political advertising dollars.
The Lincoln Lad's meteoric rise was only possible because their friends on
cable teevee were willing to sell them hard. And how were they
packaged and sold? As the answer to every Liberal prayer. While
Democrats were "comprehensively awful" at politics, these guys "knew how to
fight!" They won elections! And did I mention they were fighters!
Who fought! And that Democrats suck!
Day after day, week after week in what amounted to tens of millions of dollars in free publicity for their fledgling ad agency, cable teevee sold the Lincoln Lads to Liberals as their one and only chance at salvation. Sold them as relentlessly as dick pills and reverse mortgages.
But remember that the entire cycle of the Lincoln Lads producing ads calling the Republican base morons and Trump or Graham or Collins stupid of feckless of cowardly...
...and then having those ad taken up and repeated breathlessly as "news" by their friends in the media ...
-
They're good at producing political porn calling Trump a fraud and
MAGA voters stupid.
-
They're good at convincing credulous Liberals that this political porn
serves some ineffable but virtuous higher civic purpose even though it
doesn't. A higher civic purpose that is worth
funding.
- They're good at using their contacts in the media to cover their political porn as "news", thus increasing their public profile and getting more credulous Liberal to believe that they are funding a noble cause and not just shelling out hard-earned cash to buy the political equivalent of Hustler or Juggs.
‘See you all in Court’: Trump threatens to sue Fox News
Trump hits back at Fox News and Lincoln Project after brutal ad
Trump Threatens to Sue Fox News Over Anti-MAGA Ad
‘Go for it b****!’: The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson launches fiery video at Trump after legal threat.
Donald Trump Threatens To Sue Fox News Over Ad That Calls His Supporters 'Suckers'
Trump loses cool after brutal attack ad airs on Fox News
Trump pitches a fit over the Lincoln Project's latest ad.
Trump threatens Fox News with a LAWSUIT for allowing the 'perverts and lowlifes' at the Lincoln Project to run ads that criticize him on their network
Lincoln Project Ad That Triggered Trump To Sue: "You Know Who The Sucker Is? It's You"
‘SUCKER’: Watch the Brutal Lincoln Project Ad That Made Trump So Angry He’s Threatening to Sue Fox News
Watch the New Lincoln Project Ad running on FOX 'News' that [yadda yadda yadda]
Former President Donald Trump threatened to sue Fox News on a Truth Social post Thursday over a newly released Lincoln Project ad.
VIRAL: Trump Is Raging At Fox News For Running An Ad By The Lincoln Project ‘Perverts’ Taunting The Former President About Who May Be Snitching On Him
Trump Rages at Fox News For Running New Lincoln Project Ad
3 comments:
The last advertisement by Lincoln Project called the magahatters suckers for giving money to Trump. The ad is circulated now, when it is recently proven that the Republicans are losing critical revenue from small online donors, who are magahatters giving money to Trump.
R
Thank you DG. I will ask - perhaps in the wrong venue - if you have a link, or directions to, a comprehensive archive of all TLP's ads and brags.
I'm asking because, recently on another liberal site, a poster challenged my assertion that TLP bragged they'd unseat Collins and Graham - and I'm ashamed to admit my google-fu wasn't up to the task of finding backup for that assertion.
Again, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. Thanks for all you and BG do - mean it.
You know that right wing love for the constitution and free speech and all.
Trump is the clear guiding dimming light of speech.
I mean, we all watched The Trump display his deeply held concerns over American Journalist Sawed into tidy sizes to pack for transportation back to Saudi Arabia to give their King. Who Trump learned how speech should be dealt with.
Where is Jack Reacher when you need him?
Never go back............
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