Wow: Wow: Here's Obama's first national ad as the nominee. It's "Country I Love" and it reaches directly for the “values” card the Republicans love to play, shreds it into a million little pieces and throws the scraps in their faces.
The not-so-subtle imagery -- pictures of Obama with his mom and her parents, mentions of supporting “welfare to work” and backing our troops -- quite clearly say to white voters, "Don't ever dare try to paint me with your 'out-of-touch, unpatriotic elite who doesn't share our values' brush."
And then there's the group of states where the 60-second ad will run: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia. I'm not convinced that North Carolina and (especially) Georgia are worth the expenditure, but I like seeing Alaska, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota (!) and, yes, Virginia in the mix.
Shall we consider this the campaign's unofficial, opening list of targeted swing states? Methinks so.
Obama and his team just keep on hitting home runs. It makes me wonder why it was so hard for past Democratic nominees to figure out how to run for president.
Editors' Note: The meaning of the second line of this post was changed accidentally in editing. It should say that the messages of the ad were aimed at white voters, but the ad itself sends a signal to the GOP: "Don't ever dare try to paint me with your 'out-of-touch, unpatriotic elite who doesn't share our values' brush."
--Tom Schaller
