Wow.
Dan Koh is delusional. The frightening thing is that the there are a lot of brain-washed progressives in Massachusetts who are so far gone that they won’t realize how crazy and hypocritical that ad is.
First of all, to lead with dead-eyed Joe Biden saying Koh’s name because two syllables is probably all they could get him to utter after 34 takes and maybe some AI dubbing, isn’t what I would call a boffo opening. Then to follow with Kamala Harris—why would anyone vote for someone Harris endorses? She picked Knucklehead Tim Walz as her running mate! Next Koh boasts about being a senior White House advisor who was either so dim that he didn’t realize the President was a rutabaga, or so corrupt that he was part of the cover-up of Biden’s dementia. There is no third option. Biden’s term was the most disastrous in American Presidential history: what did Biden fix, with Koh’s expert counsel?
Then he ends by saying “Democrats you trust” endorse him, and there are Biden and Kamala again. I can’t think of many Democrats less trustworthy than those two. Oh, maybe Adam Schiff, Jamaal Bowman, Rep. Omar and a few other scumbags, but it’s close. Harris endorsed Black Lives Matter, and said she wanted redirect public resources away from the police but didn’t support defunding the police, a typical muddled Harris policy position. As a Presidential candidate Harris said she wouldn’t change anything Joe Biden did…you know, like opening the borders and appointing a DEI Cabinet of incompetents, lackeys and dolts. Kamal;a also swore she worked at a mysterious McDonalds that apparently appears for day and then vanishes into the mist, like Brigadoon.
Joe let his addict son use him as an influence peddling prop. He promised to be a moderate and to bring the nation together, then allowed the far Left to run his crippled Presidency. He insisted that he was sharp as a tack while refusing to have his cognition tested after his brain had retired to Boca Raton. True, he “beat Medicare.”
That ad is like something out of an alternate universe.
(And Dan Koh looks like Adam Sandler.)
Ethics Alarms 
Perhaps we are the delusional.
The officials employed in the ad are popular with this voting base. They likely long for Biden, Harris, Walz, et. al. to be in power.
In marketing we would advise clients to speak to your customers where they are in every sense. This ad does that, as ridiculous as we might think it to be.
I have had conversations with many Harris voters. Not one of them (that I know) is impressed with Harris or would extol her in conversations with anyone. They also thought Biden was (is) a fool. They hate Trump, that’s all. But that doesn’t make Harris and Biden positives in their eyes. They are angry at Biden for trying to run again, and disgusted with Harris for her inept campaign. Koh’s ad is aiming only at the dumbest of the dumb. That’s not a winning strategy
The TDS audience is the vast majority of Democrats. While I understand your anecdotal evidence, I would expect the ad agency to have done some homework to appeal to the more extreme (potentially stupid) base.
See this Trafalgar poll (which generally leans rightward): https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/news/trump-approval-0304/
Notice the strongly disapproves are nearly 9.1% higher (44.5-40.8/40.8) than on the strongly approves side. These larger Democratic base folks are seeking a candidate with credibility. Unfortunately, Biden-Harris-Walz-Buttigieg-Newsom are what passes for credible to them. Obama would have been better had they been able to get him.
I find the approval-disapproval polls especially useless, and especially with Trump. There are a million things to dis approve of regarding the President generally. I don’t approve of him in many ways. I strongly disapprove of his social media outbursts, his ad hominem language, his side hustles and his obsession with self-promotion. But what would my “strongly disapprove” vote mean in such a poll?
My point would be to recall people left of center tend to feel more than think. They feel, as many strongly disapprove, they want someone who will undo all things Trump. Trafalgar has done the approve / disapprove polling longitudinally. Trump’s numbers are slowly getting worse. Probably for less than good reasons, but they are what they are.
In my view, this is even more reason for this candidate to lean on allegedly credible Democrats in advertising to get the disapprovers and even undecided to vote him in to do exactly as he says no matter what we might think of the Democrats chosen to appear in the ad or the policies they enacted or espouse.
From another perspective, as someone who has produced thousands of video ads, I’ve seen a lot worse messaging.
Again, how can anyone, regardless of partisan tilt, trust Biden or Harris? And Koh’s description of what he’s “do” makes no sense. How does a member of Congress “lower costs”? Costs of what? At least half of the “corruption” in Congress is by Democrats. If he didn’t do anything about the corruption in Biden’s White House, which was epic, why would anyone believe that claim? What does a first term Congressman do about “Trump’s lies”? “Lies” aren’t even substantive acts. Obama lied about Obamacare…what did anyone do about it? What could anyone do about it? It’s a completely non-substantive ad. What’s the message? Trump sucks? How is that effective as a campaign message? He’s not even running.
Choices have consequences and it won’t take very long to see what the consequences of Dan Koh’s ad choice will be.
Keep this ad in mind as the election results are tallied in November to see if it worked on the targeted audience.
You’d think from those ads Harris and Biden won in 2024. Isn’t there a DSA candidate to take out this guy Koh? Massachusetts is a world unto itself.
I’ll have to take issue with that! Biden’s brain didn’t retire to Boca Raton; he misplaced it on Rehoboth Beach somewhere along the line.
Polls, huh?
Many years ago I participated in a political poll and I found the questions to be very carefully crafted, sometimes difficult to answer. For example, one question asked if the incident with Monica Lewinsky changed my opinion of Bill Clinton. I was stumped because I had considered him pond scum all along, so his antics didn’t surprise me or change my opinion. I answered ‘yes’ because that answer probably registered as an indictment of his behavior, but in truth I had always known that he is classless, unethical, immoral, trailer trash.