Big Messaging Mistake in Virginia.

Gillespie ads target criminality of Latinos.  Latino ad targets racism of Gillespie supporters.

That was a mistake.

Gillespie ad: 30 seconds

Non racist whites can ignore or dismiss the appeal to racial resentment in Trump's comments, but it requires mental editing.  Trump's opening announcement saying Mexico doesn't "send their best", and instead send drugs, crime, rapists, "and some, I assume, are good people."  A great many people who voted for Trump did it despite, not because of, his racial appeals.

In Virginia a more disciplined Republican candidate, Ed Gillespie, attacked gangs.  The racial appeal is there, in dog whistle form, but he is more subtle than Trump. The gangs are Hispanic and he showed pictures of tattooed Hispanics, but he didn't attack Hispanics as Hispanics.  

The Democrats ended up giving Gillespie a big boost.

Click Here: 60 seconds.

Still, is the Gillespie ad an attack on Hispanics?

The Latino Victory Fund PAC certainly thought so, and that is what boosted Gillespie.  "We refuse to stand by as Gillespie slanders our families and portrays our community as thugs, criminals, and gang members."  

They responded by what they may have thought was a response in kind.  It wasn't, because they picked the wrong villain.  Their ad has a collage of images reflecting a person who they thought represented southern white racists: a pickup truck with a Confederate flag, a heavyset white male wearing dark glasses, a Gillespie bumper strip.  The driver is roaming city streets attempting to run down Hispanic, black, and Muslim children.

The Latino Victory ad backfired badly. It failed because it attacked a demographic of voters, some of whom are voters that might be Democratic voters.  Of course the actual person depicted in the ad (a man murdering dark skinned children) is not a likely Democratic voter, but the ad put together cultural stereotypes reflecting working class white men: the pickup truck, the heavyset white male, and made him a villain   It was a class issue. That message is out there.   The overall election between Northam and Gillespie is approximately even according to current polls, but look at the polling on college vs. non-college voters.  Non college white are voting almost 3 to 1 for Gillespie.  Working class men know they are considered the enemy.

Quara poll

Democrats did this to themselves.

Privileged racist.  a safe villain.

There are some messaging lessons here for Democrats.  Don't pick a working class man as the villain.  Pick a preppy Nazi.  Americans don't like this young man in the polo shirt.  He represents illegitimate privilege, a racist frat boy at the top of the food chain, a guy on top trying to hold down the less fortunate.  Voters understand the unfairness.

It is suicidal, however, to sweep overweight pickup truck drivers into the tribe of deplorable racists.  A great many of those people are your voters, or could be.  Working class white men in pickup trucks feel resentments, but they are as likely to resent Wall Street predators, bad bosses, crony capitalism, privileged polluters, and that young man in a polo shirt.  Their villains are Democratic villains.  Democrats and their allies shoot themselves in the foot when they draw a wide net finding racists.  Even people with some racial resentments don't like being told they are racist.  They think David Duke, people with Nazi torches, and that young man are the racists.  They define themselves in opposition to them, not with them..

Another lesson for Democrats and the Latino Victory Fund:  most Americans do not identify with gang members with face tattoos.  It is safe to say you dislike criminal gangs, even when they are members of an ethnic group ally.  Your friends and supporters and donors are not criminal gang members.  Those gang members prey upon your own community.  Gillespie wasn't slandering your community as thugs, criminals and gang members."  They took the bait.  They identified themselves with the criminal gangs. 

The correct message would be vigorously to reject criminal gangs as representing you in the slightest.  Your community is a group of hard working law abiding people.