The problem with fascism is that it is very difficult to campaign against it before it arrives, because you just sound hysterical.
And it is even more difficult to campaign against it after it arrives, because… well… you know. The fascism.
But also, The Ad Council was really great at spending small fortunes on pithy ads. Really terrible at actually organizing community groups in defiance of any of these policies. Like, it was a cornerstone of the Bush Era brand of non-partisan liberalism. It operated under the theory “If we just tell people there’s a problem then they’ll figure out the solution”. And the leadership was so deep in bed with the federal government that messaging failed to do more than echo the views of the prevailing administration.
Incidentally, there’s a reason you need to throw back to a clip from 2002 to talk about censorship in libraries. You’re not going to see a ton of Ad Council work on government censorship OR libraries under the current government.
Trump ran on Stopping the Pedos and Ending the Wars. Not unlike Nixon, in that regard.
Very easy to get up on a pedestal and scream invectives at the Bad People on The Other Side. Any degenerate asshole can do it. You don’t even have to be on the other side. You can, for instance, be a stalking horse for your good friends the Clintons, who just overshoots his role and ends up in the Presidency rather than back on TV as the host of another four seasons of The Apprentice.