Pro-Israel super PAC targets Bernie Sanders on electability in $600,000 ad buy
Vermont Senator and leading Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders is under fire regarding his ability to beat President Donald Trump in a new, $600,000 ad campaign from a Democratically-aligned pro-Israel political action committee.
The group Democratic Majority For Israel (DMFI) is running television and digital ads, beginning today, that seek to blunt Sanders’ momentum in part by painting him as a candidate who is too far to the political left to win a general election contest against Trump.
The 30-second spot, titled “November,” features a number of people who characterize the 2020 election as “the election of our lifetime” before saying that “Bernie’s not the guy.” It goes on to attack Sanders’ self-applied label of Democratic Socialist and concerns over his medical history in light of a heart attack he suffered on the campaign trail last year.
“Bernie’s a great guy, but he just can’t win,” the ad says.
The advertising push comes as Sanders enters the race for Nevada as something of a national frontrunner, now leading national polling averages and taking his first polling lead in Nevada since September of last year following a near-win in Iowa and a victory in New Hampshire.
The buy isn’t the first foray into anti-Sanders ads for DMFI; the group spent nearly $800,000 on ads attacking the Vermont senator heading into the Iowa caucuses earlier this month.
By Saturday afternoon, another pro-Israel group, J Street, called on DMFI to take down the ads saying in a statement that DMFI “represents a minority of pro-Israel Democrats who seem more concerned with targeting progressives over Israel policy than with confronting the destructive agenda of Donald Trump.”
Watch the ad below. For a full list of all political ads from the 2020 election cycle, visit our Ad Tracker here.
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Updated, 7:00 p.m. — This story was updated to include a portion of a statement from the pro-Israel group J Street.