A Series of TV Ads Launched Against McCain—and they're not coming from Hillary or Obama

Submitted by Aaron Jacobs-Smith on Thu, 05/01/2008 - 4:56pm.

With record breaking fundraising comes record breaking spending. A recent NYTimes article cites CMAG figures showing that the Democratic candidates are spending more on TV advertising than in any previous primary, but given that none of these ads cast aspersions in the direction of the Republican nominee, this has led some to worry that McCain is getting a free ride.

After spending nearly $16 million in Pennsylvania, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have already passed the $100 million mark on television advertising in the states that have had primaries so far. The two Democrats' aggressive campaigns against each other have left little in the bank to mount an attack against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Given that the Democratic candidates have maintained their focus on each other—at least when it comes to TV advertising—the DNC, Moveon.org and the SEIU are picking up the slack and have begun running TV spots critical of John McCain.

While McCain is on the bus peddling his newly unveiled healthcare plan, the SEIU has put together an ad featuring healthcare workers' take on the Republican Senator's proposal. (Hint: they don't think much of it.) The ad will air in Ohio and Washington, D.C.

In time for the five-year anniversary of Bush's famous "Mission Accomplished" pronouncement, which has come to symbolize how acutely Bush has misunderestimated the difficultly of waging a war in Iraq, Moveon.org has seized the opportunity to remind us of where McCain stands on Iraq with both a quotation from his "100 years" remark and a picture of his lovely Bush embrace. The ad will first be aired in Iowa and New Mexico. The SEIU reportedly plans to spend $1 million over the course of next month on ads critical of McCain.

Lastly, the DNC has been getting some media attention for the two ads it has launched in the past few weeks. Taking a similar tact as MoveOn.org, the DNC's most recent ad makes use of McCain's "100 years" response to a question about the length of the US troop presence in Iraq. The ad powerfully couples the McCain sound byte with disturbing imagery and facts from Iraq.