The Unmeasured Angle

I'm in complete agreement with Steve M.  This unaired Sharron Angle ad really is terrible.



And I'm positive Sharron Angle would have won if she had run this ad just after the primary.  Mock it at your own peril, because while it really does have the production values of a 3 AM public access channel, that's entirely the point.  Democrats would have seen the ad and gone after Angle as a rube, which would have been a fatal mistake and sealed the "Angle is one of us and Harry Reid is the smart-ass elitist" thing for good.  Steve's absolutely right, it would have gone viral, the people in the ad would have gotten interviews and press, and we would have seen a bunch of scared and pissed off older Nevadans saying "We need to fire Harry Reid's ass."  Hell, I would have agreed with them.

The only reason we're not talking about Senator-elect Sharron Angle right now is because Angle ran arguably the worst campaigns in the modern history of Senate elections (compared to Harry Reid's second worst campaign in the modern history of the Senate elections), and that she bought into the hype that the political suits sold her.  If she had stuck to her message discipline of attacking Harry Reid instead of going off half-cocked, especially on Nevada's unemployed, undocumented immigrants, and stating she would deny an abortion to a rape victim in the most heartless fashion imaginable, thus allowing Harry Reid to go on offense, she would have won by double digits.

This ad would have absolutely helped her, because the Dems would have fallen into the Palin trap of attacking the messenger, not the message and then completely fallen apart trying to apologize to Nevada seniors about yes, we understand you have concerns about Social Security.  By then it would have been too late.  Instead, Angle sank herself by playing the lunatic card on her own campaign by doing Harry Reid's work for him.  And since Angle was the one who brought up her crazy ideas on Social Security first, they became fair game.

So laugh at this goofy ad all you want, just remember that if Angle had used it properly, she'd be Senator in January.  The next time, we won't get that lucky.

Witness Rand Paul, for example.