There’s an old saying that goes “When you find that you’ve dug yourself a hole, stop digging!”
Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis dug herself quite a trench with her “wheelchair ad,” which targets her paraplegic Republican opponent, Attorney General Greg Abbott. The ad is certain to go down in the annals of campaign advertising as an example of what not to.
So noxious is the ad, which hit the airways last week, that conservatives were not the only ones incensed by it. They had help from liberals like Fox News Channel’s resident lefty, Bob Beckel, who condemned the spot last Friday. “This isn’t a Hail Mary. This is a Hail Mary to lose,” said Beckel. “This is like running the other way with the ball.”
This is the kind of thing that you never, ever do, is take advantage of some of your opponents physical or mental … conditions. It’s almost certain to backfire in every direction you could possibly imagine.
Mika Brzezinski joined the attack on this morning’s “Morning Joe”:
Everything from the production of it to the looming voice, to the issues. This is not what her brand is turning out to be. She should be appealing to women and she should be inspiring them and having a positive message, and — yikes, I cringed watching that.
So has Davis stopped digging? On the contrary, she seems to have acquired a backhoe. Today she held a press conference, flanked by all of the people she knows who use wheelchairs!
She defended her controversial ad, calling Abbott a hypocrite.
After receiving justice in the form of millions of dollars from a lawsuit, Greg Abbott has built a career kicking the ladder down behind him and denying to others the very same justice that he both deserved and received. We need to call this what it is — hypocrisy. But there is example after example of it, harming the people that he is supposed to be fighting for.
Cross-posted at The Lid
