What does the Ramaswamy campaign have in common with the Ford Pinto?

Both planned for explosions

When my spouse at dinner told me about Vivek Ramaswamy's "mom calls daughter a liar" ad against Amy Acton, my first take was that the campaign bros were so stoked to land Mom and too dense to read their own opposition research to see any problem. Indeed, in a rare show of bipartisanship, people from both sides condemned the ad. Then, after a minute's research, I found the Axios story: the campaign tested the spot, backstory and all, and found it worked on persuadable voters. My initial suspicion of clueless bro stupidity quickly gave way to considering how a campaign planned for a backlash on pedophilia.

The campaign surely tested this spot in a vacuum. No focus group leader showed respondents the ad alongside any record of sexual abuse and neglect. Some participants probably knew the backstory and were unmoved, except the authoritarian personalities and child abusers in the sample, who surely found it persuasive. But many respondents did not know or care about the backstory, and their reactions grounded the campaign's calculations.

Ramaswamy and the Pinto

I came to see Vivek's choice to spend $4 million on this ad knowing about the blowback as akin to Ford Motor Co. choosing to sell its exploding Pinto when retooling production to fix the car cost more than settling the wrongful-death suits. In short, Ford's planning found money in those Pinto explosions. The campaign today calculates that the only voters the ad turns against Vivek are news consumers, who were much less likely to support him anyway, ad or no ad. For a voter who avoids news and learns nothing else, the ad works, sometimes, and nudges those inclined against Acton toward Vivek. But while Ford only calculated and never set out with purpose to explode a Pinto, Vivek is willfully igniting voters' moral outrage, betting that the unignited persuadables outnumber the burned.

Consider instead the possibility that this ad comes from a campaign angered by defeat and preparing for the future.

As clean as this argument is, some points still nagged me. A campaign source told Axios the ad tested well with persuadable voters. But I cannot see how persuadable a mom selling out her daughter via a consultant-drafted teleprompter read with no obvious mother-daughter photos and a stock tent image can be. And there are hardly any persuadables left in the electorate at this point, so where are the votes to gain? No, someone saying the ad persuades at a $4 million level is someone putting distance between the campaign and the ad's true, cruel intent.

Critics describe the ad as the act of a campaign desperate to win, but there are obviously too few persuadable voters left to swing the race and will work only to, maybe, eke out a bit more base turnout. Consider instead another possibility--that this ad comes from a campaign angered by defeat and a MAGA movement preparing for the future. Here is a gathering of toxically masculine fascist bros, furious at losing to an uppity woman who dared spoil their coronation. Yes, the campaign checked and saw this last grab for every ignorant, authoritarian, child-abusing Ohioan would not worsen their loss. But at its foundation this is a lashing out: a misogynist-grounded attempt to humiliate Acton, to reduce her campaign in its closing days and pending administration to a discourse on her childhood sexual abuse and neglect. They are blind to how most people will value her resilience and achievement as an adult, but the attack actually serves a more sinister purpose.

From Trump down to Vivek, MAGA is a twisted world that sees purposefully inflicting pain on any challenger, women above all, as necessary to teach "a lesson." MAGA is now crafting from this pending loss another female villain, an Ohio Pelosi or AOC, a "liar' they create to raise money and foment hatred and dissent. Just look at the glee in J.D. Vance's eyes as he praises the ad, audaciously enjoying a woman put in her place. Calling the attack desperate misses how abhorrent and purposeful it is. This is no panicked flailing to salvage an election, no will to win that overwhelms decorum to regret in later years. It is in truth a perverse and premeditated strategy to save fascist face, a willful act of revenge on the way out the door so as to create a new woman to vilify for the next election cycle. Once Acton is elected, her mother will be trotted out to perform in other ads and press events to make baseless accusations and fundraise throughout Acton's entire administration. MAGA cannot abide a successful woman in office and it profits from vilification.

This ad is only the beginning.