Can anyone imagine a presidential campaign ad like this running in any swing state today?

[Douglas Carpenter]

[Freddie]

1. Wow. Moving.

You're right, that wouldn't fly today. Shows how far we've sunk as a nation.
I was 7 at the time and I remember my folks voting for Johnson.

[FailureToCommunicate]

2. Powerful!

The spare delta blues guitar adds to the feeling of desperate times.

[Chorophyll]

16. Yes, the guitar was perfect. nt

[Scuba]

3. I love it. We should run it again.

The blues guitar is awesome too.

[reACTIONary]

11. The guitar really made the message. (NT)

[tabasco]

4. Yes. n/t

[Douglas Carpenter]

5. LBJ State of Union War on Poverty

[yends21012]

6. Powerful and moving

Who were the advertisers? They were geniuses.

[TBF]

7. That is amazing -

it should be running in every state.

[ewagner]

8. Jogged my memory....

I remember that commercial!

Yes..it's powerful and it should be played over and over again as a reminder of how far we have come and why we cannot turn back

[Chorophyll]

9. What a profound difference between then and now.

Neither side talks about poverty; certainly not as something that can be fixed. We all know what the Repugs think of the poor. And the Dems only talk about the "middle class" and "working families."

How can we help anyone out if we pretend they don't exist?

[Remember]

12. Yes you are very right

I agree with you. Neither party cares. Republicans and the war industry. Our party has not brought charges against the banks. We need to push the party ours to go back to our roots. One time we was known to be the blue collar party. Those days I hope will come back or the younger generation will neither become delusion ed and not vote or form a third party. I believe this would harm the democratic party more than the republican party. I do not like the future unless the party changes for the middle class.

[reACTIONary]

10. A very moving and convincing message. Even the music...

...makes the message, and even the music would not be used in an ad today.

[Canuckistanian]

13. Advisors would recoil in horror today at such visuals

But I think there SHOULD be ads like this. I'm tired of sanitized, perfect ads with sweeping orchestra music and beautiful landscapes.

Let's show some reality to people who have no clue what real poverty looks like.

[mountain grammy]

14. In today's selfish America, hungry children should "blame themselves!"

[demwing]

19. or get a job scrubbing toilets at school

Isn't it the right of every rich kid to have a nice place to pee?

[Douglas Carpenter]

25. as ludicrous as it sounds. the theme of "personal responsibility" seems to actually include that

[alfredo]

15. Seeing children in poverty gives Republicans a boner.

[nolabear]

17. In the War on Poverty, the GOP has joined the enemy side.

[patrice]

18. Yes!

[loudsue]

20. And yet, more than ever, this kind of ad is necessary now.

They also need to ad: "You say you're 'PRO-LIFE'? Then vote as if you are."

[GTurck]

21. I think....

the narrator was Studs Terkel. He was never a fool and wouldn't have back LBJ just for the noteriety.

[xchrom]

22. du rec. Nt

[azurnoir]

23. I remember that ad and how that war ended

16 years later Reagan and his cronies declared the war on poverty had failed because there were still impoverished in America and that it would be much better to declare war on the impoverished because obviously it was they who were antiAmerican, it worked and is still working today

[mother earth]

24. It really is the 60's all over again, K & R. nt

[bvar22]

26. Can anyone imagine a politician standing up and saying THIS today?

"We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can[font size=3] be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.[/font]

Among these are:

*The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

*The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

*The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

*The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

*The right of every family to a decent home;

*The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

*The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

*The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being." --FDR, SOTU, 1944

Please note that FDR defined the above as Basic Human Rights to be provided and protected by our Government of the People,
and NOT Commodities to be sold to Americans by For Profit corporations.

Not so long ago,
voting For The Democrat
was voting FOR the above values and policies.


--bvar22
a mainstream, center FDR/LBJ Working Class Democrat
I remember!

[drm604]

27. K&R

Powerful ad. Maybe we need to see ads like this today.

Poverty is not a trait of character. It is created anew in each generation, but not by heredity, by circumstances.

This seems to me to be a self-evident truth, but people have been talked and beguiled into believing otherwise.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

28. Notice that most of the children shown are white

One thing the Reaganites did was to cast poverty as strictly an African-American problem, which is untrue, but enough Americans are just racist enough to feel that if a problem is limited to dark-skinned people, then it's not really a problem.

During the Johnson administration, the iconic pictures of poverty were unemployed miners in West Virginia or both white and black sharecroppers in the Deep South. It was just a couple of years after Edward R. Murrow's "Harvest of Shame," an expose of the living conditions of migrant workers.

The politicians and the media told us that America should be ashamed that so many of its people had to live in poverty.

The story of how the War on Poverty was unraveled was told in an American Experience documentary titled "The War on Poverty." However, it has now been pulled from circulation. (Down the memory hole in these more reactionary times?) Basically, it said that the local powers that be were fine with the War on Poverty as long as it was strictly charity, but when poverty workers began organizing poor people to fight against strip mining or demand that slumlords keep their buildings in good repair, that was when reactionary forces started fighting against it.

Then in the 1980s, Reagan was snidely saying, "We fought the War on Poverty and Poverty won."

This became a quote for every right-winger talking about the issue.

[libinnyandia]

29. The people voting for Romney and Ryan probably think most poor people are minorities.

[Douglas Carpenter]

30. another kick for posterity

[Douglas Carpenter]

31. I cannot help but think the "welfare queen" mime has been successfully sold even in Democratic Party

circles. I am actually getting a little bit tired of politician including our own constantly using the term, "middle class" while only granting scant mention of those who can only dream of someday achieving the middle class.