Smokey and the Bran-Dit

Jack Hatch is on the air insanely early with the first ad in next year's gubernatorial race. It's fish in a barrel, poking fun at Terry Branstad's, um, rate of progress:




This ad is running in the right month, but the wrong year.

The odds are that Branstad's speeding incident - yep, we know HE wasn't driving but people tend to do what the boss tells them - is the only thing happening right now that weak voters will remember, even with a prompt like this ad, in a year. There's an abuse of privilege, rules don't apply to me angle that irks Regular People. And the ongoing lawsuit will keep it in the headlines.

This is a general election negative spot. But you have to get to the finals first. Democratic activists will chuckle at this, because they loathe Branstad. But you could just as easily slap five seconds of Tyler Olson on the end of this ad. I see nothing in here that would make a Democratic primary voter choose Hatch over Olson. The race is still at the young guy from Linn, old guy from Polk stage.