Fightin' Russ Feingold Emerges

Russ Feingold released a really slick, hard-hitting ad this morning. It's called "Just Say No" (yuk yuk) and it looks a little something like this:

Yeah, we're going to give it the full Ads of the Damned treatment later on, but this TV spot clearly caused a few staffers at RJ HQ to soil themselves. The Johnson campaign is pretty much dead to rights on this issue, as we noted a month ago. This wasn't a "distortion" by the opposition, this was a hiccup on RJ's part and Feingold took advantage of it.

Last night we noted Johnson's sudden change of mind on drilling in the Great Lakes. Today this makes much more sense. I gather that a sympathetic presence at one of the state's TV stations got an early look at the ad yesterday and tipped RJ's campaign off to the impending air time buy with just enough time to blast out a short preemptive press release.

That clearly did not do the trick, which led Johnson's campaign to release a silly statement that tries to change the subject to jobs in the main text, but only cites sources that have to do with drilling (including a press release the campaign issued less than 24 hours earlier). Well, there was also this little note on Facebook:The campaign's rebuttal is so shoddy that I can only assume that Johnson et al are out filming a response ad as we speak.

We'll get into this topic more later, but suffice it to say that you'll be seeing a lot more of this Russ Feingold on your TV in the months ahead. The Senator has worn many hats in his TV spots over the years: quixotic loose cannon, raconteur, goofball, wonk and a kind of monk (we'll explain later), but this is Fightin' Russ Feingold: he's coming out swinging and he is not one to be fucked with.