The 30 second ad that should terrify incumbent Democrats
Your going to see a lot of this - or some variation of it - going into campaign season next year.
The ad, which was produced by GOP media consultant Larry McCarthy, hits all of the high notes. It uses footage of Shaheen using the "if you like your insurance you can keep it" line while noting on screen that President Obama was given the "lie of the year" by PolitiFact for saying the same thing. A narrator points out that 20,000 New Hampshire residents have had their insurance canceled and that the Affordable Care Act offers only a single provider on the state's individual market. The ad ends with this dagger of a line: "Next November, if you like your Senator, you can keep her. If not, you know what to do." Oomph.
(Shaheen, to her credit, is using the Ending Spending ad buy to raise money. "The right-wing Super PACs are desperate to take back the Senate - and they know that to do that they must win in New Hampshire," she wrote in a fundraising appeal sent Tuesday afternoon.)
The Ending Spending ad can be replicated in virtually every single state where an endangered Democratic Senator (or House member) is running. Find footage of said member praising Obamacare, followed by noting the "lie of the year" award and then follow it up with how many people in the state/district had their policies canceled because of the ACA.
The potential ubiquity of the ad is matched by its potential power. Remember that more than six in ten registered voters in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll disapprove of President Obama's handling of health care - including an eye-popping 50 percent who disapprove strongly. (Eighty-eight percent of Republicans and 70 percent of independents disapprove of Obama handling of the health care law.) And, nearly half (47 percent) of voters said that Obamacare is making the health care system worse while just 19 percent said the ACA had made things better.
The best ads are always the simplest. "Morning in America," "Daisy," "Windsurfing" - these were successful largely because of the visual impact the ads made as well as simply stated themes.
Best of all, there's no real way to counter. Obamacare is theirs - they own it. And nothing they say will change that.