Whitman in Attack

Watching the news this morning for the whole 8am hour, I counted how many advertisements from Whitman and Brown came on TV. For every 1 advertisement funded by Brown's campaign, I saw 3 advertisements from Whitman. They were advertisements blatantly attacking Brown such as this one (that was just recently retracted from the media):

Whitman is (or was...) using Clinton's image, credibility, and familiarity to put a damper on Brown's vote count. This is smart... she is taking a man well-known to California, let alone the rest of the United States, and using his opinion to drive voters in her direction. SMART.

Initially I was thinking, this woman is nuts for spending 119 million of her own money just to convey a message against her opponent rather than praising herself. Isn't that arrogant? Isn't that just wasteful? And distasteful too? Then I thought, wait a second... that's 119 million of her OWN money, money in which she is not going to get reimbursed for by the government after all the campaigning is said and done. This isn't an arrogant tactic done with wasteful distaste. As a matter of fact, this is just a tactic, simple as that. An expensive tactic, yes. However, it is her own money, and is probably chump change for the woman.

And so what if this advertisement was retracted? Was it a complete waste of money, for whatever portion of that 119 million she spent on it? No. It aired for crying out loud. For all the times this ad was viewed on the morning news, or primetime television, or all over Youtube and Yahoo News, the message at hand was delivered by a credible man important to the US. Thus, it is absolutely inevitable that it provoked thought in any audience of the kind of man Brown was or was not to the place he took responsibility for. Who knows if it swayed a vote from here to there, Whitman is on a shameless roll for attacking Brown, on an hourly 3 to 1 ratio this fine morning.

And at this point, Brown's commercials have yet to resonate with me this week.