It’s one thing for parties to have themes. It’s another to watch a candidate mirror the incumbent, point-after-point-after-point. I’ve not followed the California gubernatorial campaign very much, but this Jerry Brown ad makes a not-so-subtle point: do you want change or don’t you?
The ad opens with the line “‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results,” uttered first by Arnie and then by Meg. Titled “Echo”, it will air statewide, according to the HuffPo.
I agree with The New Republic: this is not a “nasty” campaign ad. Shocking, but not nasty. The “banal outsider-business-executive talking points” it features are uttered by both incumbent and wanna-be in “identical or near-identical terms.” Points from TNR:
- Arnie is “very unpopular; the latest Field Poll, in September, gave him a job approval/disapproval rating of 23-68.”
- “[T]he ad shows that Whitman’s efforts to display her campaign as a fresh start towards a “New California” (a term also used by the incumbent) represents the same-old, same-old: A wealthy neophyte promising to run the state as a business and touting his/her wealth as a guarantor of independence.”
- Finally, “the ad virtually forces viewers to compare the risk they would take in electing the inexperienced Whitman to the realities of the Schwarzenneger years.”
I’m still thinking “wow” — on so many levels. Have a watch:
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com