Midterms 2018: Trump missing from his own campaign advert ahead of congressional elections

Advert features professional white woman who lives in suburbs and highlights falling unemployment rate since 2010

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has announced that it would spend $6 million (£4.7 million) to air a new television advert throughout the US in the run-up to next week’s midterm congressional elections, “making the closing sale to vote” Republican.

But President Trump does not appear in the advert, which appears to be aimed at white, college-educated women.

Recent polls have shown that this group disproportionately view the president negatively, and are also disinclined to vote for Republicans.

The 60-second advert features a professional white woman who appears to live in the suburbs, reflecting on the strength of the economy and fretting that “this could all go away” as she hesitates, then casts a ballot for a Republican.

The advert is striking for its substantive and tonal differences from President Trump’s closing argument in raucous rallies throughout the country, where his incendiary comments about the dangers of immigration and crime are meant to stoke fears that drive his most ardent supporters to the polls to vote for Republicans.

While those messages have been shown to appeal to white voters without college educations, older women and some independents, they fail to resonate with a group of educated women whose votes could be critical in the contest to control Congress.

The advert opens with a woman getting her young daughter ready for school, as her television is tuned to a cable news report showing that the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.8 per cent, its lowest point in 18 years.

The clip is from a report aired on CNN, the network the president frequently denounces as “Fake News,” but you would not know it from this advert. The “CNN” bug that appears in the corner of the screen during newscasts is whited out and blank.

Viewers are next reminded of worse economic times, when joblessness soared as the reverberations of the financial crisis rippled through the economy.

A map of the United States with an illustration of an unemployment line on one side and a giant 9.7 per cent next to an arrow bouncing upward recalls the dark days of January 2010 and suggests that joblessness was rising.

There is no mention of the fact that the rate fell precipitously over the subsequent months and years, ending at 4.7 per cent when President Barack Obama left office.

The advert is punctuated with images that speak to the financial considerations that drive middle-class families’ lives, such as the ability to afford a home - or maybe purchase a bigger one - or pay for a child’s music lessons.

In the beginning, a tidy home is shown with a US flag in front and a “For Sale” sign on the lawn. Later, the woman is seen with her family taking boxes into a larger house marked with a “SOLD” sign.

Throughout the advert, the daughter is seen practising her violin, and at the end, the scene flashes forward several years to show her performing onstage to loud applause.

“Look, we can’t get distracted from the biggest issue, which are jobs and our kids’ future,” the woman hears a man say on the radio as she drives past a sign in her well-manicured neighbourhood that says “Vote Republican”.

In the final section of the advert the woman arrives at her polling place and reflects for a moment on who she should choose before she fills in her ballot by hand.

“This could all go away,” the narrator says, “if we don’t remember what we came from.”

When she makes her choice for the fictional Republican candidate, the woman fills in the bubble for “Tamara Tucker,” rather than the Democratic name below, “William Cody.”

New York Times