Walmart does an ad for Biden

     "Walmart is doing a better job leading on Covid than the US Government."

            Debra Lee, my wife, on seeing the Walmart. commercial.

Walmart does what Trump doesn't want to do. They have a message of patriotic unity on Covid.  That's not Trump's message. But it is Biden's.

For my brothers and sisters

Biden might thank Walmart, publicly. Why not? They are sharing Biden's best message and doing it well, and a lot of Democrats shop at Walmart. Republicans, too.

Please watch the ad. 30 seconds. Click here.

"For my mother, my father, my grandmother, my brothers and sisters, my friends. 

The going back to school, the barbecue, the lake, the beach, my place. 

For my neighbors, my community, my people, my country, my home. 

For him, for her, for them, for you.

 [Text: There are millions of reasons we're now requiring masks. Live Better. Together.]"

For my grandmother

There is music underscoring the various voices, Bitter Sweet Symphony, written by a 1990's pop group, Verve, with an orchestral arrangement of a song originally--remotely--by the Rolling Stones. (Verve is famous. The song is famous. I myself had never heard of either until this commercial.) The orchestral strings have an uplifting "morning in America" feel.

The ad makes a simple message, that we wear masks out of a mix of love of family and community and country. We do it willingly. We do it joyfully. 

Here is what it is not. It doesn't scold. It doesn't position masks as a conflict between safety and liberty. It isn't partisan. 

It doesn't position masks as a giant inconvenience. 

It isn't about race or ethnicity, while being gracefully inclusive. The images portray a variety of Americans: White, Black, Latinix. Young. Old. People playing. People working. Attractive people. Plain people. The generations love and help each other.

For my country

It is a message that could have been given from the White House. It is unfair to have expected Trump to know the virus would spread the way it did in February. At the beginning we didn't know what we were dealing with, not Trump, not Governor Cuomo, not Dr. Fauci. We were feeling our way. But once it became clear that we had a potential national catastrophe with community spread, there was an opportunity for national leadership. There were things we could have done--what South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, most of Western Europe in fact did. This could have been a call to a shared American project, the country coming together in a war. It could have been done for the purpose of unity, not division.

Trump went the other direction. He wanted to be strong and he wanted the worry-wart epidemiologists--and the Democrats who take their word--to be the opponent, so Trump took the other side. He picked a fight with a Democratic governor in Michigan. He tweeted support for mask protesters. There was a division to be had, if the issue was defined as another battle in the culture war rather than a unified stance against the virus. 

Wear masks for you.

Walmart did not intend it, but they made a Biden ad. They presented the Biden message, sentimental, unifying, and patriotic.  We are one country and we get along, the ad says.

Walmart is in good touch with the mind and values of the vast swath of the American people. They could have positioned this as obedience to a burdensome law, i.e. the Trump view. They didn't.

I consider this a validation of the polls we are now seeing. Biden is selling what Walmart is selling.

Can't we all get along?