General

Schmidt vs. Hackett: General feelings

After the primary vote, I took a hiatus from 2nd district coverage because I didn’t see any way that a Democrat could win the ticket. It is now one weekend before the vote and let’s take a look at where the race is now.

First off, it’s undeniable that there is a lot of energy on the Democratic side of things. Blogs like BringOhioHome and Oh02 have been leading the charge and the crowd of usual suspects cheerleading as well as they could. Major sites like Kos, Atrios and MyDD have also jumped into the fray. This has focused a lot of Democratic national attention on this race. I also see a lot of Hackett yard signs here in southern Warren County. SwingStateProject has a post reporting about $300k in Hackett donations. I don’t see how they can spend this kind of money efficiently to win. They need to be careful not to raise too much awareness that there is an election happening, but more on that later.

On the Hackett advertising. Hackett has done a masterful job of trying to pose as a Republican in district-wide advertising, while at the same time rallying liberal troops with the standard liberal crap. His advertising uses the word Democrat zero times. We are shown Hackett with Bush and Jean Schmidt is posed with Governor 17% approval Taft. Heh. It’s masterful advertising although hypocritical to the core, but that’s politics, and the libs don’t seem to mind being pushed under the carpet when there’s an election at stake.

Despite this story, I haven’t seen any Schmidt ads. Not one. I would expect to hear on WKRC and local Fox affiliates but I got nothing. Also no Schmidt Robocalls. In this household the Schmidt campaign appears to be completely dormant.

All would appear to be going exactly to plan. Jean has the upper hand and has no need to go round for round with Hackett. In a district heavily tilted like this, all that is needed is a big push on the last weekend and on Monday to get your voters to the polls. Get enough of them and the election is over. Rah-rah posts like this one over at Kos are interesting and try to play up a sense of impending disaster in the Hackett campaign. I guess that could be what is happening, but in poker when you have the winning hand, you also try to suck in as many chips into the pot as you can. I suspect a little bit of disinformation is going on. That is if it’s not completely bogus.

Which brings us to the COAST thing. So Their idea is stay home, let Hackett win and then in two years we vote in a ‘real’ conservative. Yeah it’s a nice idea if you are a one-issue voter, but one-issue voting is to put it bluntly, stupid and self-defeating. We have no guarantees that we would get a better conservative next time. But we would be guaranteed a full measure of Democrat gloating and undeserved self-adulation. Simply because we stayed home. Yes schmidt voted for a tax increase, but so did a lot of our Republicans and she is 99% better than any Democrat period. So let’s call this idea a non-starter.

Back to the Schmidt campaign. I expect to see very little TV over the weekend, maybe some robo-calling, but it is July-August, the very height of summer and people are gone. A lot of TV and calling will simply be a waste of time. She should hit WKRC hard monday morning and keep pushing WKRC all day Monday and Tuesday, simply to remind people there is an election, and she is the Republican candidate, pro-life, pro-Bush, etc. And the conservative base will slap their heads, and say oh yeah, need to vote today.

Hackett people have got to get their people to their polls and hope and pray that the Republican base forgets their is an election. Wierdly, the more press they get, the less likely their chances. And they’ve been getting a lot of press lately.

I see no reason to change my prediction of Schmidt in a landslide, in spite of Democratic rah-rah. I’ve posted a lot of links to the lefty sites, since that’s where most of the interesting action and alternate reality exists. For us on the conservative side, it is useful to understand the way they are thinking. I do plan on covering the results Tuesday night, that’s always fun. Stay tuned.

Things I’m watch for.
-Hackett Ads, frequency and location.
-Schmidt Ads, frequency and location.
-Schmidt Radio buys,
-Schmidt robocalls late this weekend and Monday.
-Any polling data from the media. (not rumors, real actual data, you know, with numbers and stuff).

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