Yesterday, Hillary Clinton’s campaign released two ads and announced it would begin a five-week, $2 million ad buy in Iowa and New Hampshire. The media saw these ads as another poor attempt by the Clinton campaign to correct recent poll numbers that have the former-Secretary’s favorability under water.
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski said the ads only add to Hillary Clinton’s authenticity problem. While Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin said, “If you’re cautious and everything about your campaign is focus-grouped and polled, you’re not being yourself.”
AP’s Julie Pace said about the ads:
JULIE PACE: It’s interesting because if you look back at the start of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which was just a couple of months ago, the themes that she’s striking in these ads – this is what they said the campaign would be about. AND THEN OBVIOUSLY THE EMAILS AND BERNIE SANDERS GETTING IN AND PUSHING HER A BIT HAS SHIFTED THE FOCUS. So I think this is them trying to get back to what they think the core of this campaign should be, get on the airwaves at a time when the airwaves are not going to be flooded with even Republicans at this point and try to almost, almost RESET in a way, get back to what they want to be talking about.
According to The Washington Post, the Clinton campaign wasn’t supposed to start airing ads until November:
A few weeks ago, the Clinton campaign announced that it had reserved $7.7 million in advertising time for Iowa and New Hampshire, the states that hold the first two contests in the nominating process. At that time, officials said that the ads could begin as early as NOVEMBER and gave no indication that she would start a flight of ads far earlier.
It would seem falling poll numbers have caused the Clinton campaign to launch these ads earlier than planned in an attempt to stop the bleeding. And it should be noted that Clinton’s favorability continues you to fall without one Republican dollar being spent on TV ads to attack Clinton.