There's a Problem With James Talarico's Newest Campaign Ad

A campaign ad is supposed to sell you on a candidate's record, not manufacture the voters willing to vouch for it. That's the problem with what Talarico put out here. If you have to invent or dress up "Republican supporters" to make yourself look palatable to Texas voters, you're not rebranding, you're admitting the real version of you wouldn't sell.

Talarico spent years building a record as a reliably progressive state legislator in Austin. Now he's running statewide for Senate, in Texas, where that record is an anchor, not an asset. So instead of running on it or defending it, the ad tries to launder his image with fake or manufactured crossover appeal. Voters can smell that from a mile away. It's the political equivalent of hiring actors to play satisfied customers.

What makes this worse is the timing. Democrats have spent the last two cycles insisting they've heard the message from red-state voters, that they're moderating, that the party has learned something. Then a Senate candidate gets caught staging the exact kind of manufactured authenticity that convinced nobody the first time. If the appeal to the middle only works on paper and not in real testimonials from real Republicans, that tells you something about how thin the appeal actually is.

Texans don't need a focus-grouped ad to tell them who Talarico is. They can look at his votes. Pretending otherwise, and getting caught doing it, just hands his opponents the cleanest attack line of the race: he won't even level with you about who's actually on his side.