Author: craigcrawford

It is like the TV show Glee didn’t shut down after all. Now starring Bernie, Hillary, Donald as rival chorus leaders sabotaging their way to Nationals. Slushies for all!

The same Super Pac that spent $66.5 million ripping Mitt Romney’s face off in 2012 has just begun a similar crusade against Donald Trump with a $6 million television ad buy over the next 3 weeks in Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia — battleground states where recent polls have shown a surprisingly tight race between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Obama’s former big money attack dog, Priorities USA, which is now working for Clinton, is paying for the ads (see below) targeting Trump’s reputation as a sexist pig. Republican primary foes and their super-pac pals tried this approach, but it was too little, too late, and fell on mostly deaf ears among the GOP rank and file.

A broader, more diverse general election audience might see these ads a bit differently. How they test market over the next month will be most telling about whether the Clinton campaign can take down the Donald.

Trump’s Response
Quick to react, the soon-to-be GOP nominee tweeted the reaction he has used before when his treatment of women is at issue: “Amazing that Crooked Hillary can do a hit ad on me concerning women when her husband was the WORST abuser of woman in U.S. political history.” He has also called Hillary an “enabler” of Bill’s womanizing who victimized his accusers, making these next few weeks a test of whether his counter punch against the Clinton pac ads is effective.

USA Today: “Following his win in Indiana a week ago, today’s contest in West Virginia is part of a pocket of states voting this month, such as Oregon, where Bernie Sanders is expected to do well — even after Clinton carried a number of Eastern states in April that put her on a path to clinch the nomination. … West Virginia is representative of Clinton’s strategic challenge in the general election. … She spent much of her West Virginia tour last week apologizing for earlier comments suggesting she wanted to put the coal industry out of business.”

Clinton beat Obama in WV 67% to 26% in 2008.

The GOP is defending 24 Senate seats to the Democrats’ 10 and seven of those seats are in states President Obama won twice — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and New Hampshire. (The Senate is currently composed of 54 Republicans, 44 Democrats, and 2 independents, both of whom caucus with the Democrats.)

What’s the Trump effect? More or less likely the Senate turns blue?