Great Ad. Compelling Characters. But No Mass Audience for the Democratic Candidates.

WASHINGTON — It is one of the more compelling ads of the midterm election cycle, a 60-second video featuring eight Democratic women running for House seats, reciting their backgrounds in either the military or intelligence services as the predicate for their first runs for political office. Bruce Springsteen’s anthemic “The Rising” soars in the background.

And it may never be aired on television.

The political action committee that created it, Serve America, led by Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a Marine veteran, is structured in a way that caps donations to individual candidates at $5,000 per election. Since it has already given the maximum allowable contribution to the campaigns and coordinated the ad with each of the candidates featured, paying to promote additional television or digital ads would violate likely campaign finance laws.

“Would I like several million people to see it? Yeah, absolutely,” Moulton said.

Will they? Probably not.

So like an author with a well-reviewed novel, Moulton may have to be content with the praise, if not the audience. None of the eight candidates featured is likely to get a major boost.

“It’s powerful because they are co-opting the old Republican faith, flag and military themes, and it gives them a credential outside of politics, which is attractive,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, who added, “There is an emotional impact of seeing so many of them.”

The only hope for a truly broad audience is a bet that the video goes viral online. While it has had over 1 million views so far on a combination of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, according to Serve America, it has not come close to the audience that one of the women featured in the ad, M.J. Hegar, a Democratic House candidate in Texas, achieved with her own viral ad. That one has been viewed close to 3 million times on YouTube alone.

Political advertising, while still wedded in many ways to traditional television, has evolved, and the internet offers a very low-cost alternative. A number of celebrities, like Springsteen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Garner, Sara Bareilles, Judd Apatow, Jennifer Garner, Amy Schumer, Seth Meyers and Chelsea Handler, have shared the Serve America video on their social networks.

Serve America and the candidates have received at least some contributions from the effort, but there is no way to gauge whether it spurred people to register or vote.

“It’s not targeted to any one particular district or group of people,” Moulton said. “We just want Americans to know that there are amazing leaders running for office and these women are such shining examples of that.”

The only way the ad can actually reach television would be through another group, like the Democratic Party, deciding to sponsor it.

Moulton said the party could do more to support the candidates featured in the ads. “I believe that as Democrats, if we want to start winning again, we need to start leading again,” he said. “These are tough races. Yet these are extraordinary candidates in really tough districts.”

But at least some of the candidates are hardly struggling for campaign funds. Amy McGrath, a former Marine combat aviator and Democratic House candidate in Kentucky, and Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA operative and candidate in Virginia, each raised more than $3.6 million in the last quarter. Another, Chrissy Houlahan, running in Pennsylvania’s redrawn 6th District, is considered a strong favorite, with or without the help.

Veteran political strategists said the video had a collective power, using a patriotic appeal to vote, without any overt partisan pitch. There is also a clear tonal diversion from the harshly negative ads that most voters are seeing in the closing days before the election.

“If Democrats are going to take back the House, if all you do is slam Republicans, that’s probably not going to get you over the line, particularly at a time like this when so viciously negative,” said Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist. “Showing women who are patriots, who are less partisan, and who are clearly motivated by public interest, I just think it’s great and exactly what people want.

“It’s a balm for the soul when everyone else is throwing bombs,” he added.

And it is not an accident that all of the candidates featured in the ad are women, in a year with a record number of women running for office. “Very powerful message that works on multiple levels,” said Stuart Stevens, a Republican political consultant who has worked on dozens of Senate and presidential campaigns. “As much about voting for women as voting for those who have served.”