One of the great joys of living in suburban DC is that I am privy to the ads not just for the local Maryland races, but also for all of the always thrilling Virginia ones as well. It’s hard to top the lovely Webb-Allen Senate campaign from 2006 in which, by the end, I wanted both men taken out back and shot. That same year was the Steele-Cardin race here in Maryland, one in which I don’t believe I ever actually saw Ben Cardin’s face, but I sure did see a lot of Michael Steele – in both his own ads and in Cardin’s. I’m surprised I didn’t see Steele portrayed in devil horns at any point, but I was busy moving that month (I always seem to be moving in October).
This year is of course the gubernatorial election pitting Republican Bob McDonnell against Democrat Creigh Deeds. McDonnell’s campaign has been okay. He has run a lot of fluff ads featuring his family and suggesting that he will magically cure the local transportation problems by selling state-run liquor stores. As for his opponent, he has run a very focused campaign that has centered on one crucial issue. It’s an issue that keeps Virginians up every night, no doubt, and which might be the most pressing concern for all involved. That’s right, Bob McDonnell wrote a master’s thesis 20 years ago that suggested such shocking things like: it isn’t ideal for the family when the mother works, Griswold v. Connecticut was wrongly decided, and that the removal of religion from public schools was a bad thing for the country.
Horrors I know.
Naturally this has been played up by the not-at-all uber partisan Washington Post. Honestly, Deeds would have been an idiot not to have made some political hay out of this, especially in liberal northern Virginia. Unfortunately, his entire campaign has essentially centered on this one aspect of McDonnell’s public life. I have not seen one single substantive ad from Deeds outlining anything remotely like a positive vision of what he is going to do for Virginia.
Not only has this been the dumbest campaign I have ever witnessed in my life, it doesn’t even make logical sense. Even if McDonnell were the king of all social conservatives, does anyone rationally believe that he’d be able to outlaw contraception and abortion as the governor of Virginia? Somehow I don’t think the Chief Executive of a state that doesn’t even allow it’s governors to run for re-election is quite that powerful.
Finally the Virginia Republican party (ah to have a local state party that has enough money in its coffers to even pay to have a commercial made let alone broadcast it) has decided to have some fun with Deeds’ completely inept campaign, running an to the tune of “Dirty Deeds” by AC/DC.
It might seem like whining to complain about Deeds’ negative campaign, but even Jim Moran thinks it’s getting ridiculous. For the love of humanity, when Jim Moran thinks you’ve gone too negative, it’s time to dial it back a little.
Creeds is probably toast, though it’s a little closer than it should be. Creeds has simply offered the voters nothing. As Jim Geraghty puts it:
Look, if Deeds had prompted the opposition to play “Highway to Hell,” that’s the closest he would have come to generating an actual transportation plan.
