On the day that Rick Santorum was meeting with Mitt Romney to endorse the former Massachusetts Governor, President Barack Obama’s campaign was launching a new ad and staying positive. And it appears to be paying off.
“Go,” a new YouTube video, was released on Monday and has already gained more than 133,000 views—a solid number for a new political video. The effort is part of a major media buy for Obama’s campaign, which is spending $25 million to run the video in TV spots in nine battleground states, including Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, North Carolina, Florida, and Colorado.
The minute-long video takes a similar tone to many of Obama’s recent pitches: that even if things aren’t perfect, this is no time to change direction.
The video has been well received, with more than 1,700 likes versus about 260 dislikes. Of the handful of comments, most were positive (although only nine comments as of Monday night seemed surprisingly, and suspiciously, low considering the number of people who had watched it).
On Facebook, where the video was shared almost as soon as it was posted, the results were much more measurable: Almost 10,000 people had liked it, more than 2,600 shared it, and about 2,400 people commented.
“Excellent ad!” EdgeTV wrote on YouTube. “Too many voters have fallen for the disinformation coming from the right and we need to open their eyes.”
“Those who look at the progress we’ve made and can only find fault with it are making the economy worse,” MiddleCMusic added. “Pessimism drives down consumption and people save all their money instead of spending it. Half the solution to a better economy is optimism. This president knows that. He’s not saying it’s perfect – but it’s been improving, and if we work together, we can keep that trend.”
It appeared taking the positive route was working too, at least compared to Romney’s most recent ad, “Silence,” which took a much more negative course.
Of course, it may be hard for Romney to take a more positive path, since his primary goal is for voters to realize their frustrations and the fact that he hasn’t held elected office in a handful of years, something not lost on one voter.
“He only makes attack ads because Romney has NOTHING to propose: economy, defense, education, innovation, transportation, energy,” Mrfreedomdemocracy wrote.
The Romney ad, which has been up for an extra day, only had 60,000 views late Monday.
Photo via YouTube