The New York Times revealed yesterday that a group called Frontier Media has paid TikTok “influencers” to post pro-James Talarico content on social media. Talarico is the Democratic challenger for an open Texas U.S. Senate seat deemed crucial to his party’s chanced of taking the Senate in November. But Talarico’s campaign told the Times regarding the discovery,
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…so I guess they are as innocent as little lambs. You will recall paying for celebrity endorsements was part of Kamala’s “we go high” campaign strategy. Just for the record since I’m sure you don’t need to be told, this is lying. Such conduct falsely represents to the public that a trusted individual has independently concluded that a candidate deserves to be elected, while the payers do not reveal their influence and the payees don’t reveal their incentives.
This latest cheating to elect Talarico has surfaced nearly a month after an employee for a pro-Talarico PAC was caught on video explaining that the group was “paying people for their votes” through a “paid relational program.” The undercover video resulted in the employee’s firing (for getting caught).
Two related notes:
- Lest you be overly impressed that the Times reported this story (“SEE?” I can imagine banned commenter and loyal Times bias-denier “A Friend” bellowing in his bunker), the paper buried the lead as best it could. The headline was “On Texas TikTok, it’s all about Talarico,” and there was no mention of the pay-offs until 18 screens into the article.
- The Times piece also revealed that despite TikTok’s emergence as a social media power (and that young voters increasingly use it as a primary source of news), Republicans lag absurdly behind Democrats in using the videos as a marketing tool. Morons. Being slow to embrace technological and web innovations is how the party managed to lose the 2012 Presidential election. For these mid-terms Democrats have handed them so much ammunition that the GOP should be lapping them in the polls. “The Stupid Party” sobriquet remains as accurate as ever.
If Talarico wins in Texas this country is Texas toast.
Why is Texas always on the verge of going completely Democrat, and then, the election gets held and, it doesn’t?
Because, while the big cities lean Blue, the rest of the state is decidely Red and Republican always under perform in pollster analytics.
jvb
Are Republicans slow to use it or are they not allowed to use it? I don’t use it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if its TOS are less friendly to Repubicans than YouTube’s.
The Democrat strategy of appealing to younger voters is going to be effective for them and ruinous for the country. Conservatives have got to get their shit together and blast a smart message 24/7 on all media outlets. Otherwise, blue wave hell hole.
Younger voters still don’t vote much, and the polls consistently over-estimate their impact. Plus losing the House is not a tragedy: a party holding all three—the White House, the Senate and the House— is never that way for long, and losing the House in a mid-term is more the norm than an exception. The concerning thing is that so many Americans are too stupid to see where their interests and those of the nation lie, and so ignorant that they buy the “Why doesn’t the GOP fix the results of the inflation Democrats inflicted on them?” message.
Exactly.
My wife and I get invites to participate in polls all the time, whether by phone or text or email. We respond to zero of them. I think many Republicans refuse to respond, and it causes slants in the numbers that aren’t real.
We’ll see how things go with our races in Iowa, but traditionally Democrats carry 5 of the 99 counties, and the other 94 are 70% (or more) red…so much so that it totally washes the 5 blue counties out.
Iowa was +15 points red in 2024, so maybe Democrats can reverse that, but I have my doubts. This time next month, all will be revealed.
For reasons unknown to me, Youtube likes to send me Democratic candidate political ads. Maybe it’s just because I live in Maryland, so they assume that I’m a Democrat? Anyway, these ads actively repel me, because ALL they say is “Give Us Money”. If I just gave Kamala that last-minute $20 dollar donation, for which the ads pleaded right up to election day, I could have change the outcome of the election? Actually, I doubt that ANY amount of advertising could have had much influence. People knew Trump, and they knew Harris, and another million dollars spent on ads wasn’t going to change that. “We need your money to get our message out!” “What message is that?” “Vote for me.” “Go away. Leave me alone. I’ll vote against you just for interrupting my video.”