Inside the merch shop for the most vulnerable Democrat in America
Inside the merch shop for the most vulnerable Democrat in America
Plus: The Harris campaign’s new ad uses a Billie Eilish song and an unusual call to action
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
The Harris campaign’s new ad uses a Billie Eilish song and an unusual call to action
Inside the merch shop for the most vulnerable Democrat in America
Scroll to the end and see: what it might look like if Dick Cheney were ever nominated for a Video Music Award 🏆
The Harris campaign’s new ad uses a Billie Eilish song and an unusual call to action
Vice President Kamala Harris is using Billie Eilish’s 2018 song “When The Party’s Over” for a new ad about abortion policy.
Titled “Monster,” the ad is narrated by Hadley Duvall, a young woman from Kentucky who was raped by her stepfather when she was young and became pregnant at the age of 12. “I just felt like I was alone on a planet with a monster,” Duvall says in the ad. “I was a child, I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant at all, but I had options. Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest. Donald Trump did this.”
Duvall told her story previously in a 2023 campaign ad for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat who won in a state that had been won in 2020 by former President Donald Trump, and it’s clear the Harris campaign believes Duval’s message is effective at moving voters. Duval spoke at the Democratic National Convention and attended the Harris campaign’s digital “Unite America” event Wednesday with Oprah Winfrey where she received a standing ovation.
The ad is the second from Harris to use music from a pop star, following her launch video set to Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” and it came a day after Eilish and her brother endorsed Harris. The ad began airing Wednesday nationally on Good Morning America and during the WNBA playoffs, according to Deadline, while in swing states, it will air on networks including Bravo, HGTV, and Investigation Discovery.
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The ad’s end card isn’t the typical Harris-Walz campaign logo you’ll see in most other Harris campaign ads. Instead, it shows the logo for I Will Vote, the Democratic National Committee’s voter registration initiative. The ad’s call to action is to register at iwillvote dot com, not the standard closing in most official campaign ads that simply promotes the candidate.
From its soundtrack to the ad buy strategy and choice of narrator and story, this ad is aimed especially at reaching young female voters. Voting rates tend to be low for younger age groups, though, so the ad’s focus is less on being a pure persuasion play than it is a get-out-the-vote tool. Many of the voters who will be moved by this ad would vote for Harris anyways, but if they’re young and don’t have a long personal history of voting, it might take an extra nudge or two to get them to the polls.
Inside the merch shop for the most vulnerable Democrat in America
One of the most robust campaign merchandise operations of the election cycle is in one of the least-populous states.