Progressive Organizations Blue America and Americans for America are launching a set of new ad campaigns early Wednesday morning. The first target - Alaska's Craziest Catch, Teabagger Joe Miller.
Hoping to catch a wave of netroots funding to reach Alaska voters with the reality of a possible regressive figure in the U.S. Senate that might scare the bejeezus out of Bering Sea crab skippers who routinely face winter sea ice, mountainous waves and 900-pound crab pots crashing all over the decks, this ad campaign needs support. Real soon.
Here's their first ad, set to start running in Alaska markets Wednesday, September 15th:
Blue America is familiar to readers at Daily Kos. Here's the joint press release issued from both progressive fundraising entities this morning :
JOE MILLER
ALASKA GOP-TEA PARTY SENATE NOMINEE
IS
THE CRAZIEST CATCH
Blue America and AmericansForAmericaPAC.com Kick Off Election Season Video Partnership with
“Deadliest Catch” Parody
Washington, DC & Los Angeles, CA: Blue America PAC and AmericansforAmericaPAC.com, two cutting edge Netroots political action committees, are launching a daily video campaign targeting GOP/Tea Party candidates every day from today through Election Day, November 2.
The videos will be posted nearly every business day, according to organizers, at 9am EST/6am PST at YouTube.com/BlueAmericaPAC and BlueAmerica.CrooksandLiars.com, beginning Wednesday.
Target #1: Joe Miller, the GOP/Tea Party Senate nominee in Alaska, who stunned mainstream Republicans by defeating Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
The PACs’ 1st video – Joe Miller: Alaksa’s Craziest Catch – presents Miller’s radical tea party as part of a parody of the hit Discovery Show The Deadliest Catch.
The script features an announcer similar to The Deadliest Catch, and a fisherman, responding to Joe Miller’s radical policy proposals, shouting distress signals:
– ANNOUNCER: From Barrow to Dutch Harbor, Joe Miller is Alaska’s Craziest Catch
– FISHERMAN: Man overboard!
– ANNOUNCER: Say goodbye to crab pots – and hello to Joe’s crackpot ideas.
– FISHERMAN: Reality overboard!
– ANNOUNCER: Like privatizing Social Security and Medicare...
– FISHERMAN: Grandma overboard!
– ANNOUNCER: And making unemployment illegal
– FISHERMAN: Women & children overboard!
– ANNOUNCER: Joe even wants to reject money for Alaska’s roads and airports.
– FISHERMAN: Alaska overboard!
– ANNOUNCER: Joe Miller. Alaska’s Craziest Catch.
– FISHERMAN: Abandon ship!
Blue America PAC – organized by leading progressive blogs CrooksandLiars.com, Hullabaloo, and DownWithTyranny.com – is raising funds to air the spot on Alaska TV.
“Blue America’s video partnership with AmericansforAmericaPAC.com adds an important communications weapon to our arsenal, along with our blogs and fundraising capabilities,” said Howie Klein, co-founder of Blue America PAC and founder of DownWithTyranny.
The video program will feature the PACs working closely with local and state blogs to maximize their impact, Klein noted. For instance, in the case of The Craziest Catch video, "We've been working with Alaska's very active and committed blogging community to make sure that people all over that mammoth state know exactly who Joe Miller is."
“Likewise, the Blue America/AmericansforAmericaPAC.com partnership, working with the leading Ohio blogs, has already boosted the candidacy of John Boehner’s progressive challenger, Justin Coussoule – and we’re just getting started.”
Brett Di Resta, AmericansforAmericans.com’s co-founder, said of their debut video and its target, Joe Miller: "It's hard to fathom that there would be an Alaskan politician more extreme than Sarah Palin. But after looking at his record, Joe Miller made a believer out of us. Republican primary voters hooked him, but in the general Alaskans should throw back in the water."
The video is the first of many to come, said Dan Manatt, co-organizer of AmericansforAmericaPAC.com and producer of the spots
“Blue America and AmericansForAmericaPAC.com will be rolling out videos like Craziest Catch nearly every single day from today through Election Day. With all these GOP-Tea Party crazies and cronies, it’s a target rich environment for us.”
Manatt said that in addition to Miller, the PACs would be targeting Rand Paul and John Boehner – whom they already pounded with their TV ad mocking Boehner for his golf addiction. That ad, “Priceless,” went viral and was called by Ed Schultz “the best campaign commercial of the year.”
Digby, Howie Klein and John Amato have approached Alaska's progressive blogging community to help raise the funds to pay for these ads. Should we prove able to generate interest and financial backing for ads here like Alaska's Deadliest Catch, there will be more like it. This is part of what is really needed up here to combat the Tea Party Express and other regressive astroturf 527s that helped fuel Joe Miller into the national spotlight by getting out Alaska's nuttiest to vote for Joe in the August primary.
Questions are arising concerning the legality of how some of those 527 funds were spent, but they won't be decided until long after the November election is over.
In spite of Miller's professed beliefthat "So far the Lord has provided the money in this grassroots campaign, this time The Lord is going to provide you," the Alaska bloggers are hoping to cut out the middle man and are appealing directly to YOU to help fund the airtime for these ads that will inform voters on the important issues up here in this national contest.
Please help get the word out in this tremendously cost-effective ad market. One dollar, spent on ads in Alaska has more impact on a statewide contest with national importance than on any other potential campaign market in the country, by a huge margin.