Democratically: 2020

This week, Karin talks to politcal ad makers Shannon Fitzgerald and Tim Lim of the Hooligans Agency about campaign ads. Campaigns spendvast sums of money on TV, radio and online advertising. But how effective are these ads at actually influencing voters? Why do political ads look so different than ads for products? And what techniques do the makers of these ads use to try and get their point across?

We look at a selection of pro-Biden and pro-Trump ads to unpack the strategy of each, and how effectively they bring this strategy to life.

Karin is joined by friend of the pod and journalist Skylar Baker-Jordan to celebrate Hamilton day, and discuss everything from the Biden campaign's good fundraising quarter to Skylar's perspective as a Kentuckyan on Amy McGrath winning the Kentucky Senate primary. And we assess which states are currently swing states, where the Biden campaign should putting its resources, and which Democratic leaning states we should worry about losing if the race tightens, and which Republican leaning states we might pick up if the race gets even more favourable for Biden.

Plus, we play the Gut Check game, reacting to quotes from the news. 

Stay tuned to the end for a surprise cameo from Karin's daughter seeking chocolate. Like you do.

Karin's interview with the Hardy Report podcast covers a range of issues, from Black Lives Matter to how Joe Biden is a pretty good listener to how Republicans are not operating in good faith. 

Before that, Karin also catches you up on some of the other big news of the week, including President Trump's failure to fill an arena in Tulsa Oklahoma, and the primary election battles between establishment and more progressive candidates in Kentucky and New York. 

You can hear more from the Hardy Report podcast here: https://anchor.fm/thehardyreport

This week, Karin is joined by Friend of the Pod Emma Burnell to talk about all the news that's fit to speak:

Biden's surge in the polls and why Democrats still engage in pants wetting anxiety even when we're ahead.

Trump campaign's push to have 4 instead of the usual 3 Presidential debates - should Biden accept this offer?

The movement to Trump's nomination speech to Jacksonville Florida

Trump's racially inflammatory rally planned for Tulsa, Oklahoma 

Two Supreme Court decisions this week that helped protect vulneerable communitieis - a ruling on LGBT workplace disicrimination and preventing the Trump administration from cancelling the DACA program for Dreamers

And finally, following Amy Klobuchar's wiithdrawal from the VP nomination race and her statement that she thinks the nominee should be a person of colour, we run through a bunch of the VP options in this week's Gut Check Game

This week, Karin is joined by friend of the pod and Mid Atlantic podcast host Roifield Brown to talk about Black Lives Matter. Roifiled shares his personal experience of interacting with the police as a black man in the UK and the US, and they discuss the types of reform that might be effective in solving the problem of police violence.

This week Karin speaks to veteran Democratic campaigner Joe Trippi about his work for Alabama Senator Doug Jones' reelection campaigns, how to effectively run a digital and grassroots campaign in 2020, and of course about the widespread protests against police violence that have broken out around the country. 

We also take a moment to pay homage to some of the lives lost to police violence: remembering not just the deaths but also the lives of 

George Floyd 

Breonna Taylor 

Tamir Rice 

Philando Castille 

Sandra Bland

And many more black American citizens who have been taken from us by the very people who were meant to protect them.

This week, Karin speaks to Jiore Craig, a VP at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and expert on digital campaigning and online public sentiment. Together, they process the series of news events this week in which the President 1) had Twitter apply a fact check warning applied to his tweet spreading false fears about postal voting.  2) Retaliated against the platform by issuing un executive order of questionable legality and unclear impact 3) Then posted a tweet seeming to call for violence against protestors in Minnesota, which was restricted by Twitter under violence prevention rules. 

We explore what the Biden campaign should be doing to get its message out through all this chaos and confusion, and how they can build effective digital infrastructure for the campaign.

This week, Karin takes you through the current state of polling and democratic prospects at every level of the election, including the Presidency, the Senate, the House and state and local races. Friend of the Pod Emma Burnell joins as well to give her take on the races.

This week, Karin is joined by the Washington Post Columnist, political scientist, and author Brian Klaas to talk about how Donald Trump's poor response to COVID has driven a wedge between two key parts of Trump's electoral coalition - older voters now fearful of their health and business voters who just want to reopen business at all costs. They also discuss fears that Trump might reject the outcome of the election, concerns about voter suppression, and what the Federal prosecutors decision to drop charges former National Security Advisoor Mike Flynn had already pled guilty tells us about the politicisation of the Justice Department under Bill Barr. 

And finally, we play the Gut Check Game, reacting to advice for Democrats from various pundits and commentators about how to win the election.

This week, Karin talks to Mark Pack, the President of the UK's Liberal Democrat Party, a writer commentator, communications advisor, and the author of the books Good News: What the Headlines Don't Tell Us and 101 Ways to Win an Election. They discuss the ways in which the media's decisions often misinform or confuse the public, the ways that election coverage is often driven by the wrong things, and what this all means for the race between Biden and Trump. We also play the Gut Check game, in which Mark responds to some headlines from today's US news and tells us what he would be wary of when reading each of the stories described.