no time for nuance in a 30-second attack ad!
Blaska’s political advice sells about as well as zucchini squash at the farmers market these hot and humid dog days of August 2024. And worth what you pay for it, given the Head Groundskeeper’s track record of mismanaging political campaigns at the state and local level. But we repeat this lesson learned the hard way: Democrats will slit your throat if that’s what it takes to win and use your knife to do it. Are we being too subtle?
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin is up with a 30-second spot that says her opponent hates dairy farmers. Taken alone and without an antidote, it is devastating. A farm couple allege that Republican challenger Eric Hovde thinks farmers “largely drive around in a tractor” instead of working hard. Spot ends with one of them pushing a shovel-load of manure at the camera. (We remember when political opponents just threw mud.)
So much for nuance
Give it to the Baldwin campaign, they do their oppo research! But for this one, they had to dig deep. Democrats unearthed an interview conducted 12 years ago in which Hovde, arguing for entitlement reform, was trying to say that modern technology has made all occupations less physically wearing.
“We don’t engage in hard labor like we did,” Hovde said. “We don’t have as many accidents on the job, most of us. Now we’re involved in some type of white-collar profession or even professions that are involved in manual labor, it’s much safer, much more protective. Think of farming, look at the old physical toll that it would take on the body. Now you’re largely driving around a tractor.”
And the tractor is air conditioned, Hovde could have added. Adjustable, padded tractor seat. WiFi. GPS. But never mind.
Tammy’s dairy farmer spot has 836,792 views since 07-23-2024. That’s just on social media. The TV ad buy is airing in this swing state’s media markets. The big picture strategy is to portray Eric Hovde as a millionaire banker out of California, never mind that the Hovdes are an old and honored family here in Dane County. Same strategy employed against wealthy Tim Michels when he ran for governor. It worked.
The entitlement reform Hovde championed in his first try for the Senate in 2012 is anathema in both political parties these days. Just ask Paul Ryan. (Who? Once Speaker of the House. Ran for veep — with Mitt Romney!) Hovde, it appears, has abandoned those policy positions. If he’s a flip flopper, so is Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris … has been doing some Simone Biles-level flip-flopping. So far, she’s switched positions on fracking, guaranteed jobs, border enforcement funding, Medicare for All, defunding the police, and at least parts of the Green New Deal. — Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Tammy’s politics are more aligned with AOC than Joe Manchin, but voters know her as pleasant and unthreatening. Your unmarried auntie, with cats! Never says anything remotely memorable. Wisconsin nice — except, in an election campaign, when the woman is a cold-blooded assassin. She knows how to win.
19 responses to “‘My opponent hates dairy farmers’”
Trump will talk to anyone at anytime. Kamala only talks with written scripts and doesn’t answer questions. Your choice.
At least she is able to read the scripts with accuracy and something resembling sincerity, unlike her boss. I’m dying to see who delivers the “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” speech at the Democrat Convention (where the coronation of Queen Shamala will outshine anything ever seen in Westminster Abbey).
Baldwin The VA Opiod Kingpin!!
Honestly Baldwin is a big winner with the cats. Hovde never should have included his wife in his commercials. She’s got Stepford wife vibes.
Rumor is at least 2 people in Baldwin’s other commercial “Legendary lardasses of Wisconsin” have had the big one and are pushing daises.
How’s that for decreasing social security costs?
“Rumor is at least 2 people in Baldwin’s other commercial ‘Legendary lardasses of Wisconsin’ have had the big one and are pushing daises.”
That ad was an indictment of corpulent WESconsin Lefties; one out of every three are adipose addled endomorphs.
The Gotch
TOTALLY FALSE. TWO PEOPLE DIED DOING “RUST” COMMERCIALS> ALEX BALDWIN: NOT TAMMY BALDWIN. Typical crotch lying post. You should be a speech writer for rump. IDIOT
You must be referring to the stoopid hillbilly zaftig, oleaginous endomorphs who cram their beer bellies into BBQ stained maga t-shirts.
Single Parent Households Are One Of The GREATEST INDICATORS Of An IDIOT’S Future Poverty And Substandard Education.
The Gotch
Even if the rumor is true, they’ll still vote for her.
No fact check on Tammy’s ad but below is a fact check on Republican policies impacting dairy farmers since 2012.
Wisconsin has seven thousand dairy farms, roughly half the number that it had a decade ago. Why the decrease?
In 2012, Gov. Walker announced a plan to increase Wisconsin’s milk production to thirty billion pounds a year by 2020. The goal was met four years early, but the increase contributed to a collapse in prices. Walker’s tax cuts favored large farms. He also pushed a law to allow foreign corporations to buy more Wisconsin farmland. (The effort failed.)
And there is very little nuance to what the Trump administration did to our dairy farms. Remember Sonny Perdue speaking about Wisconsin dairy farms: “In America, the big get bigger, and the small will go out,” Perdue said. “I don’t think in America for any small business we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.”
In early 2018, Trump launched a series of trade wars, which provoked China, Mexico, Canada, and the European Union into imposing penalties on American dairy products. Mexico, the largest importer of Wisconsin cheese, levied a twenty-five-per-cent tariff on American cheeses. In March 2018, Canada effectively cut off all dairy imports from the United States.
As a result, Wisconsin dairy farmers have been crippled. We lead the country in family-farm bankruptcies. Go Badgers.
There you go again Dave; posting facts. If you’re not careful crotch will start insulting you and your family. Then the moderator steps in. You get banned. Then the death threats from the MAGA people. Before you know it you will be asked for your great-grandfathers finger prints in order to vote. You have been warned.
“We lead the country in family-farm bankruptcies.”
Liar. A simple Google search reveals that Georgia owns that title in both 2019 bankruptcies and 10-year average, followed by California and Florida in the latter according to USDA data. Wisconsin comes in at 16 and 8 farms per every 10,000 respectively—doesn’t feel like a crisis to me.
Do you have research proving that these bankruptcies are the result of Walker’s/Trump’s actions or is that just supposition? If the former, provide it.
I wasn’t aware Scott Walker was running for U.S. Senate.
Lefty’s hemorrhaging the blue collar vote and then stoop to this?
Priceless!
The childless Cat Lady specifically, and despicable Lefty generally legendarily hate-n-debase workers…even when they vote the right way; Mandela Bad News Barnes’ laughably ludicrous commercials come to mind.
It gets worse.
Not only does the Lefty base…um…outweigh the competition in the OBESITY DEPARTMENT, but they lead the league as GIMMEE GIMMEE recipients.
Lefty’s Kitchen Table issues? Oppressor-Oppressed, Jew hate, pronouns-n-bathrooms, myn (sic) who lactate, get pregnant, and menstruate; beyond that and monumental self-loathing, they got nothin’!
The Gotch
Over two dozen high ranking republicans just endorsed Harris. trump/vance ticket is poison.
“Lefty’s Kitchen Table issues? Oppressor-Oppressed, Jew hate, pronouns-n-bathrooms, myn (sic) who lactate, get pregnant, and menstruate; beyond that and monumental self-loathing, they got nothin’!”
Don’t forget allowing men to compete in women’s sports, up to and including beating the sh!t out of them on the world stage. And screaming about mostly intact reproductive rights while cheerleading for medieval misogynists with human rights violations on par with Milosevic.
A childless cat womyn (sic) campaign ad also lied when it claimed that Eric Hovde said “most senior citizens SHOULDN’T VOTE.
Ah Lefty; so MUCH bald-faced lying, so little time!
The Gotch
Rumor has it that Hovde kills any cats in his neighborhood.
Life advice from Tammy Baldwin:
– Be a fat tub of goo
– Be a farmer who eschews labor saving devices
– Be a single mother
– If you experience negative consequences from any of the above, blame climate change
[…] challenger observed that almost all occupations are safer today than a generation ago, Tammy put up a video claiming Eric Hovde said farmers don’t work hard. It’s a flat-out […]