Another Obama Ad Takes Very Serious Tone

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The Obama campaign has released another long-form ad in which Obama speaks directly to the camera for the entire duration. It’s below. As you probably know, they released a rare two-minute ad a little over a week ago; some said the serious tone was appropriate for the grave economic subject matter covered within, others said it was unwatchably boring. Two observations on the new ad:

(1) The Obama campaign obviously believes that the first ad worked. Their internal polling must show that, at the moment, Americans see Obama as the more steady and presidential of the two candidates. Don’t expect any fireworks from Obama at the debate on Friday.

(2) This is what having $77.5 million on hand will do for you. You can move beyond the standard 30-second format in your advertising.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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