Checks and Balance newsletter: The enduring game of political ads in America

As John Prideaux mentioned in last week’s edition of this newsletter, I had a few days off in Pennsylvania. And you know what that means: I got to watch a ton of political ads. If you live anywhere but a swing state, you’re lucky to catch an occasional campaign ad on some cable news network. But if, like me, you sit in a hotel room in Pittsburgh when the local newscasts are on and flip from station to station to catch the ad breaks, you can watch such advertising pretty much continuously, at least until your wife’s patience runs out. The two main presidential campaigns and the political action committees that support them have already spent more in Pennsylvania—$350m as of September 1st—than they did during the entire campaign of 2020, when Pennsylvania was also up for grabs, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported while I was in town.