John Kasich, the Republican candidate for Governor of Ohio, has released a new ad telling voters that “the sun will come out again.” So far, the response has been fairly predictable. Republicans think the ad’s going to be effective, whereas Democrats are mocking it for being too “Pollyannaish.” What’s interesting about this latter charge, though, is that it seems to be getting a sympathetic ear from some Republicans. Plunderbund, a progressive political blog, has provided an exhaustive list of screencaps of nasty comments about the ad from commenters on Kasich’s own site.
In response to this, the Ohio Dems have gleefully tweeted: “Kasich Supporters on Kasich (R-Wall St.): New ad not successful!”
I leave it to readers to decide whether this is persuasive. Personally, I tend to think that internet comments are an awfully shaky foundation upon which to build criticism of an ad, given how easily trolls can skew the results. There’s also no real description of how prevalent these sorts of comments are on the blog in question – just a long list of screencaps, which could mean that one in every million Ohio Republicans isn’t a big fan of the ad for all we know. Even so, it’s worth worrying about for Kasich. He’s within the margin of error against Governor Ted Strickland, and that’s not the sort of lead you can afford to squander.