This Hilarious (But Accurate) Ad For A Gary Johnson Vote Is The Best Political Ad Ever
August 26, 2016 by Brandon Morse in News
This article was originally published in RedState.

Libertarian candidate for President, Gary Johnson, is enjoying some of the limelight not usually experienced by third parties during election season.

Admittedly, a lot of that attention comes in the form of people just straight up not liking the Republican or Democrat candidates. In fact, Trump and Clinton’s disapproval ratings are so high that most people voting for them don’t even really want them in office, they’re just voting to keep the other option out.

With that in mind, one group decided to help people move away from the candidates they hate and help get Gary Johnson the vote.

BalancedRebellion.com came up with a system that allows Republicans and Democrats who mutually hate their candidates come together to vote for Johnson, and balance out the scales so that neither party gets the benefit of a lopsided vote. It’s a pretty fun system that pairs you with a Democrat in your area, and makes you feel better about leaving your party to vote for Johnson.

But while the site alone is a pretty good idea, it’s the video promoting the site that sells.

Acting as part promotion for the site, and part campaign ad for Gary Johnson, Balanced Rebellion has “Dead Abe Lincoln” get up as their spokesman and give one of the most hilarious speeches I’ve seen this election season. In it, he reminds you that this year you’ve been screwed, that you don’t have to vote for someone you hate, and that Abe Lincoln himself was third party when he was elected.

“You have to choose between a corrupt president, and a crazy president. Like a two horse race where one horse cheats, and the other one eats Muslims.” said Dead Abe Lincoln.

“There’s Hillary, who’s like a Monopoly player using her get out of jail free card, then a rig an election card, and make millions on political favors card,” he continues. “And Trump, who’s like if your racist uncle got drunk and ran for President, then the nation got drunk and said that guy should nuclear bombs.”

While being funny, it doesn’t just promote the site. It also gives a very good explanation as to why you should vote for Johnson over the other two. So if you’re looking for a good five minute video that will help convince your friends and family to leave the false safety of their mainstream party, this is the video to do it.

Watch below:

Dead Abe Lincoln Says: Vote Gary Johnson
August 26, 2016 by Brian Doherty in News
This article was originally published in Reason.

The Gary Johnson-supporting SuperPAC AlternativePAC has launched a new project, called “Balanced Rebellion.”

Via their site and using Facebook, they link a voter who would like to vote Libertarian from a specific state who says they would feel obligated to vote Hillary Clinton if they had no other choice to another voter who says they’d feel obligated to vote Trump in that situation.

This is intended to solve the problem of the would-be third party voter who fears their vote would enable the candidate they most hate to win. You know, the old “A vote for a third party is a vote for whatever candidate you most hate.”

As Matt Kibbe, who runs the PAC, explained in a phone interview this morning, you will actually be informed of the existence of this specific other voter, but just a first name to protect the other users’ privacy.

The site and idea are explained in a long-form comedic video starring “Dead Abe Lincoln.” The 5-minute ad attacks Trump as your drunk racist Uncle and Clinton as a corrupt pol trying to “make millions on political favors.” If America is Gotham City, then Clinton is the Mob and Trump the Joker. Johnson then is Batman.

Dead Abe then explains some of Gary Johnson’s good qualities, such as being a popular GOP governor in a Democratic state who managed to cut taxes, who wants to end wars, and not spy on you. It tries to stress that even if you don’t believe in all Johnson’s policies, you still might be able to see he’s a better presidential choice than Clinton and Trump.

The video is the creation of the Harmon Brothers, profiled last month in the Washington Post for being the famous makers of rulebreaking longform web-based ads, whose initial rep is based on “turning gross into gold” (they invented the “pooping Unicorn” for the Squatty Potty product).

“Taboo products, if we believe in them, are our specialty,” Jeffrey Harmon, one of the four Mormon brothers who run the agency, told the Post.

Jeffrey Harmon says in an emailed statement via Kibbe that “Early indicators suggest this Balanced Rebellion ad is as viral as the mega viral fiberfix ad we released last week.”

AdWeek on that fiberfix ad, which got 3 million Facebook views in a day with no paid push.

The Harmon Bros. “dead Abe Lincoln” video for Balanced Rebellion:

Match Game: Website Promises Guilt-Free Voting for Gary Johnson
August 26, 2016 by Michelle Hackman in News
This article was originally published in The Wall Street Journal.

For the many voters who aren’t happy with their party’s presidential candidate but really loathe the other team’s, a super PAC promoting Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson proposes a solution: matching disaffected Republicans and Democrats so they can vote for Mr. Johnson without remorse.

The Balanced Rebellion effort aims to pair Democrats who had resigned themselves to voting for Hillary Clinton to stop Donald Trump with Republican voters who were planning to cast ballots for Mr. Trump to block Mrs. Clinton. People can log onto the Balanced Rebellion website and register their choice were Mr. Johnson not an option.

The website then matches members with opposite viewpoints from the same states, so when the two head to the polls for Mr. Johnson, they negate one another. For example, a Florida voter who deeply dislikes Mr. Trump would be paired with a Florida voter who deeply dislikes Mrs. Clinton.

The super PAC, Alternative PAC, wants to draw in Democrats and Republicans who would like to vote for Mr. Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, but worry their vote for him would merely help the candidate they most disdain win the election.

“This might be the ultimate perfect storm for a Libertarian presidential candidate — with both the Republican and the Democratic nominees at historical negatives,” said Matt Kibbe, the head of alternative PAC. Mr. Kibbe founded the tea party organization Freedom Works in 2004 but departed last year.

To promote the campaign, the group created a comedic video featuring Abraham Lincoln weighing the choices voters face this year and recommending Mr. Johnson.

“You can’t vote third-party ‘cause for Republicans that’s a vote for Hillary and for Democrats it’s a vote for Trump,” the character explains, “so you stick with the candidate you don’t like to stop the one you hate, splitting the nation in two.”

The campaign and accompanying video were produced by internet marketing firm Harmon Brothers, which is paying nearly $330,000 to advertise the “Balanced Rebellion” video on Facebook, a sum that Alternative PAC will report as an in-kind contribution.

Mr. Kibbe said the initial goal of the campaign is to raise Mr. Johnson’s profile just high enough to garner 15% popularity in national polls – the threshold that would permit him to appear at this fall’s presidential debates.

He did not say how the campaign would help Mr. Johnson actually win states in November’s contest, and the website has no way of ensuring that voters truly stick to their third-party plan.

Alternative PAC is particularly hoping to draw in voters under age 30, who polling suggests are especially unsatisfied with their respective parties’ nominees.

The group’s millennial pitch is unmistakable.

“You can really match with someone as disappointed as you are,” it assures watchers. “It’s like Tinder, but not gross, and it can save America.”

In Presidential Tinder, Why Would You Swipe Right for Trump or Clinton?
August 19, 2016 by Brian Doherty in News
This article was originally published in Reason.

A soon-to-be-launched new internet video from the Gary Johnson-supporting AlternativePAC analogizes this year’s presidential election to Tinder.

Republican Donald Trump, it says, is the loudmouth at the end of the bar, pissing everyone off.

Democrat Hillary Clinton is “a nightmare…always reading your emails while hiding her own. Paranoid. Jealous.”

Gary Johnson, however, “climbs mountains,” and is for peace, privacy, and equality. Moreover, his company has never gone bankrupt.

American voters in this Tinder analogy are advised to “not settle” for Trump or Clinton but to “score” with Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party.

This seems of a piece (in its uncoordinated PAC way) with a general attempt on Johnson and Weld’s part to position themselves not as radical libertarians but more as a choice that just seems personally sane and manageable, not exuding the sort of personal characteristics that indeed many of would find revolting face to face. (Marking the female candidate as “jealous” could and doubtless will be read by some as problematic, in the modern lingo, but it seems intended to match the “wants to read your email” point, a serious policy issue.)

The video:

I reported the other day on AlternativePAC chief Matt Kibbe on the value of short internet videos as a superior bang for the buck for the modern electorate.

Matt Kibbe of Johnson-Supporting AlternativePAC Talks About Gawker Report on $30,000 Spent on “Internet Memes”
August 17, 2016 by Brian Doherty in News
This article was originally published in Reason.

Gawker reported yesterday, with a clear intention to make the reader think the whole thing is silly, that AlternativePAC, an uncoordinated PAC supporting the Libertarian Party presidential campaign of Gary Johnson and William Weld, spent $30,000 on “internet web memes.”

The PAC has, as of its last legal filing at the end of June, pulled in $530,100, with $500,000 of it from California tomato magnate Chris Rufer.

Matt Kibbe, who runs the PAC, stresses that what they were paying for with that $30,000 is more like short viral-ready internet videos than “memes” in the common internet sense of poster images with slogans. He defends that tactic for PACs trying to run lean, nimble, and most importantly meaningful campaigns in the modern age of social networking.

“The way social media works is to microtarget audiences and test things,” Kibbe said in a phone interview today. That $30,000 Gawker called attention to will result in “dozens” of such short videos over the next few months, using different imagery and different messages for different audiences, from “disaffected Sanders voters on war to disaffected Cruz voters on rule of law.”

AlternativePAC’s strategy will be to “leverage social media and make sure would-be libertarians in social space know Gary Johnson is on the ballot and understand what libertarianism is about. It doesn’t make any sense to run TV ads to connect to that audience” and it is that audience his PAC wants to reach, Kibbe says. “People who report on media buys” as if it’s still the 20th century and imply that mere “internet memes” are silly or pointless “don’t quite get that,” he says.

While Gawker claimed no such product yet existed, Kibbe directed me to his PACs website, where two of them can be found.

And here they are on YouTube, the first one saying a vote for Trump or Clinton puts blood on the voters’ hands:

The second has no specific policy point to make, but analogizes the major party choices to just two narrow flavors, and points out there is a third choice:

UPDATE: And what can videos on the internet win you? Why, the support of actress Melissa Joan “Sabrina/Clarissa” Hart. (Though not either of these specific AlternativePAC vids.)