Amidst a general discussion of this year’s presidential race, political ad guru Bill Hillsman deconstructs four Joe Biden ads and one Trump ad for message and effectiveness. Plus, child advocate Robert Fellmeth rejoins us to continue his crusade against anonymity on Facebook.
Bill Hillsman is a writer and an expert on Independent voters. He is the founder and CEO of North Woods Advertising in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He ran award-winning political advertising campaigns for Senator Paul Wellstone, Governor Jesse Ventura and our own Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign. North Woods Advertising has won numerous awards for creativity in advertising, including an EMMY and multiple POLLIE awards. Mr. Hillsman authored the book “Run The Other Way: Fixing the Two-Party System, One Campaign at a Time”.
“The only route for reelection for Trump right now is this: blame the coronavirus response on anybody and everybody, but the federal government. So, he’s blaming China. He’s going to blame the governors. He’s going to blame mayors. He’s going to blame whoever he can for all of this.”
Bill Hillsman, CEO of North Woods Advertising
Robert Fellmeth has had a long and distinguished career as a public advocate. As a graduate student in the late sixties, he became the original Nader’s Raider, investigating the Federal Trade Commission. One of the first books he wrote while working with Ralph was “The Politics of Land: A Report on Land Use in California”. He then went on to work as an attorney in Ralph’s office, the Center for the Study of Responsive Law. In 1980, he founded The Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego Law School and also founded the Children’s Advocacy Institute, an organization that specializes in reforming the child protection and foster care systems and improving outcomes for youth aging out of foster care.
“The first amendment isn’t just the right to belch. It isn’t just the speaker. The audience has rights too. The audience needs to know, ideally, who is talking. If they don’t know who is talking they can’t decide easily whether they want to listen or not, watch or not.”
Robert Fellmeth, Founder of the Children’s Advocacy Institute
Robert Fellmeth’s letter to Facebook
“When you ask [people] what they’re most concerned about about politicians, corruption’s right up there. This is a regime so corrupt it’s really staggering.”
Ralph Nader
Deconstructing Biden’s Ads