The conservative group Ending Spending may have premiered the ad that nationalizes the 2014 midterm elections around Obamacare.
The 30-second killer ad was produced by Republican media consultant Larry McCarthy and goes after Jeanne Shaheen, the first-term Democratic Senator from New Hampshire who is likely to face former GOP Senator Scott Brown next year.
The ad begins with footage of Shaheen on the Senate floor echoing President Obama by saying, “if you like your insurance you can keep it.” An overlay graphic points out that Obama was given the “Lie of the Year” award from a fact-checking group for that whopper.
The ad then shifts to a local focus: It notes 20,000 people in New Hampshire have lost their insurance to date and that Obamacare exchanges offer only a single provider on the state’s individual market.
The ad ends with a zinger sign-off: “Next November, if you like your senator, you can keep her. If not, you know what to do.”
“It’s a very powerful ad indeed,” Grace Marie Turner, the head of the Galen Institute, a health-care advocacy group, told me.
Chris Cillizza, the Washington Post’s top political blogger, says “Obamacare’s growing unpopularity makes the ad’s message dangerous for any Democrat.” The latest ABC News poll shows 70 percent of independents oppose Obama on health care. Nearly half of all voters think Obamacare is making the health-care system worse versus only 19 percent who think it will improve matters. Cillizza’s conclusion: “You have a very scary situation for Shaheen — and any other Democrat, which is almost all of them, on the record supporting the ACA. Get used to this ad. You are going to see it thousands of times — in various forms — before 2014 is over.”