by Randy Shannon

PDA 12th CD Chapter

Progressive Democrats of America – Economic & Social Justice Team

Most people already know or sense that Pennsylvania has dropped from 8th to 47th in job creation under Corbett. That’s an important issue that Corbett lies about in this campaign mailer.

The real message in this mailer is subliminal. “The effectiveness of subliminal messaging has been demonstrated to prime individual responses and stimulate mild emotional activity.” – Wikipedia

The images of Gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf are several shades darker than the images of President Obama in this Republican mailer. The reality is that Wolf’s skin color is much lighter than Obama’s.

The purpose of this subliminal message is to stimulate voter turnout with an appeal to racial prejudice based on skin color. The Republicans consider this effective now because they have spent the last couple years spreading racist images, jokes, cartoons, references, insinuations, insults, and lies about Obama. They expect many voters to stay home on election day, discouraged by the failure of the government to address so many problems. So the strategy is to use fear and racism to boost the turnout of Republican votes, overcoming their passivity in this election.