THE TAKEAWAY The spot follows a more provocative digital ad that the Clinton campaign posted Thursday featuring members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalists heaping praise on Mr. Trump, but the underlying argument is the same. Rather than using a narrator to present its case, the ad relies on Mr. Trump’s own words and on news reports, a more effective means of building its argument that Mr. Trump courts racism. The presence of this ad, placed only in the four states where Mr. Trump’s campaign is advertising — Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina — indicates that the Clinton campaign plans to make its portrayal of Mr. Trump as a bigot and a hero to the “alt-right” a central argument in the fall campaign.

Changing channels …

Cute Kids

Many of the ads from Priorities USA Action, the main “super PAC” supporting Mrs. Clinton, follow a similar formula, playing a clip of some of Mr. Trump’s more caustic and controversial comments for an audience that would find them offensive. The latest spot offers a twist: Schoolchildren of all ages recite the Pledge of Allegiance over audio of Mr. Trump calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and making comments about menstruation. It is not the first time youngsters have been used in such a way: The Clinton campaign ran a 60-second ad in June of children huddled on couches, staring at TV broadcasts of Mr. Trump making similar comments.

Selective Sourcing

The headlines fill the screen like scores of movie review blurbs over a film trailer: “despicable,” “a vile smear,” “trash.” For the entire 30-second spot, the Senate campaign of Gov. Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, responds directly to an attack ad run by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which criticized her handling of the heroin crisis plaguing the state. Left unsaid is the fact that the excerpted headlines are from a single media outlet, The Nashua Telegraph, and two are from the same sentence in the same editorial.

Rigged

From Senator Bernie Sanders to Mr. Trump, one of the main concepts of the 2016 presidential campaign has been the “rigged system.” It holds different meanings for each politician — for Mr. Sanders it was the economy, and for Mr. Trump it’s our electoral process — but the phrase seems to resonate with the base of each party. And it’s no surprise that the phrase is starting to make its way into Senate and down-ballot ads, like this one from Todd Young, a Senate candidate in Indiana. He opens with a familiar plea: “If it seems like Washington’s rigged for the well connected, that’s because it is.”

Numbers

MORE THAN TWO MILLION Political ads that have aired this cycle.

ROUGHLY $1.56 BILLION The amount spent so far on political advertising.