The high stakes presidential election will likely be decided by young swing state voters, who have historically voted at low rates, and senior citizens voting for Harris across party lines.
The Stop Trump Dictatorship Project, an independent political action committee, will be running opinion-shifting 90 second YouTube ads focused on both groups through election day in five swing states.
In January, Jonathan Greenberg started Progressive Source PAC, a political action committee, and its campaign, the Stop Trump Dictatorship Project, in response to the prospect of a second Trump term that would “bring the death of American democracy and a nightmarish Putin-style dictatorship.” Jonathan Greenberg (also the publisher of the Sonoma Independent) has written about Trump as long or longer than any journalist working today.
The Stop Trump Dictatorship Project offers a unique direct donation system; it may be the first PAC which takes no overhead or commissions. Its YouTube ads are the most cost efficient use of political donations to reach voters tuned out of TV & radio. These ads are also more adaptive. TV and radio placements need to be booked well in advance, while YouTube ads start running the same day they are purchased, and their budgets can be adjusted using the insights of real time data to maximize impact.
In a poll of registered voters 43% of people 18 to 25 still remained undecided just a few weeks before the election.
With fewer and fewer Americans watching the news and cable TV, it is challenging to reach these holdouts. Yet 62% of voters access YouTube daily, and a remarkable 92% access the platform weekly.
Each view on YouTube costs about 2.5 cents and is only charged if at least 30 seconds of the ad is watched. This means every $50 donated will buy over 2,000 views. This is far under the cost of paper mailers or TV and radio advertising.
The Stop Trump Dictatorship videos have already been viewed more than 1.5 million times on YouTube and more than 4 million times on Twitter.
One of the PACs’ videos has struck a chord in Michigan.
Two weeks after its release, the presidential election’s only hip hop political music video ad, by the Detroit Area Artists and Musicians Against Trump, titled, Racist Trump Against the 313, has already been viewed more than 1.2 million times online.
It exposes how Trump would have won the 2020 election had he succeeded in racist lawsuits that would have thrown away all the votes of the four swing state cities with the largest Black populations: Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Milwaukee.
On YouTube, where the video is being run as an ad, it has been watched by more than 250,000 Michiganders, with most of those views coming from Wayne County.
Progressive Source PAC worked with the Detroit Area Artists and Musicians Against Trump (DETAMAT) to produce the video.
DETAMAT Spokesman H. Daniel Mujahid commented “Since the release of our video, Trump and MAGA have doubled down on their racist messages and anti-democratic plans. We stand united with the Latinos, Arab Americans and women as well as African Americans, all fighting for dignity and their fair share of the American Dream. MAGA’s outrageous new statements about Latinos is further proof of the message contained in this song.”
Prior to the start of the Detroit, Michigan ad campaign, Harris and Trump were polling evenly, now, two weeks later Harris is up three points in the state. The PAC is now advertising Racist Trump Against the 313 towards young voters in Atlanta, Georgia, while focusing its four other videos on voters older than 55 in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina.
In the final days of the election, the PAC hopes that older voters in states like Arizona will be swayed by their sense of Patriotism to put country over Party and vote for Harris. All contributions the group receives is committed to running four of its ads through election day.
These ads are:
Trump’s Shameful Disrespect of Veterans and Military
Are You a Patriot or a Hatriot?
Busted! Trump’s Big Lie of a Stolen Election
You can donate to Progressive Source PAC’s Stop Trump Dictatorship Project through ActBlue
