Finally, good Lieberman ads

I have said many times privately and a couple times publicly that the Lieberman campaign's TV ads have so far been poor in both concept and execution. Lamont's quirky ads have been overly cheesy at times (the "I support this message...so do we" tags begin to sound contrived once you've seen it a few dozen times), but have had been unquestionably better than the Lieberman campaign's duds. The strategy has been to try and shift the focus to Lamont, which will never work in a race between a 3-term incumbent who has been on a national ticket and a challenger who few have ever seen or heard of. The correct strategy should have been to highlight and burnish Lieberman's solid credentials as a progressive and a Democrat.

Finally, the campaign seems to be getting it. They have released two new ads - one featuring an endorsement from Chriss Dodd, and the other featuring Bill Clinton. The newest Lieberman ad features Clinton speaking at the rally for Lieberman:

Bill Clinton: "I'm proud that I helped Joe Lieberman in 1970. I'm proud that we've been friends all these years. Proud of his three terms in the Senate. He has been one of the leaders in the Congress. I want him elected because he understands and cares about health care. I want him elected for economy to national security, for our children and grandchildren. Go out and elect Joe Lieberman. He's earned it; he's been a good Democrat. He's a good man, and he'll do you proud. Thank you and God bless you all!"

The ads do exactly what Lieberman's camp has so far failed to do. They put a Democrats on the screen telling the audience (and the ad's viewers) that Joe Lieberman is a reliable, principled Democrat - and in a way that gets the message across.

The Dodd endorsement ad is no doubt going to be helpful, but it's the Clinton ad which will undoubtedly get the most ink spilled on it. The anti-Lieberman crowd will probably make at least two arguments to downplay the Clinton ad's potential effectiveness:

1. Clinton is not from Connecticut, and an out-of-state politician will not hold much sway over CT Democrats.
2. People will see the ad and instead of focusing on Clinton's obvious support for Lieberman, they'll take a mental trip back to 1998 and remember Lieberman's criticism of Clinton's personal conduct during the Lewinsky scandal.

The first point is easy to argue against. First off, primary voters rarely resent TV ads or campaign appearances by out-of-state politicians who they respect. As long as the ad's viewers don't dislike Clinton, they probably won't dwell on the fact that he's not from Connecticut. Clinton is probably particularly immune from such a connotation, since he was President and therefore in some sense did represent the people of Connecticut (along with all Americans), even though he is not actually a resident of the state.

The second point seems like very wishful thinking on the part of Lieberman's detractors. For one thing, I don't see many people making such an association unless they already dislike Lieberman or have already decided to vote against him. I think that the memory of Lieberman's speech is far, far stronger among Lamont supporters (particularly those in the blogosphere) than it is among the general population of Democrats.

Even if the viewer did make such a connection, I think that most voters are highly unlikely to hold Lieberman's 8-year old criticism against him after Clinton just went and called Lieberman his "friend" that he is "proud of" as a "good Democrat." As I wrote last weekend, Lieberman's role in the Lewinsky scandal is massively and artificially inflated by his detractors, who ignore Lieberman's staunch opposition to impeachment or any other official reprimand of Clinton and instead focus on the one speech that he made where he criticized Clinton's personal conduct - and even at the time, Clinton said that he agreed with the speech and did not find it the least bit disloyal or out of line.

The ad will finally start to rebuild the positive associations between Lieberman and progressives that have held for the vast majority of his political career. Clinton remains perhaps the most recognized and most respected member of the party, and his word that Joe Lieberman is a good loyal Democrat should (and probably will) carry much weight among Democratic voters.

Coupled with the Dodd ad, the Clinton ad hopefully is an indication that the Lieberman campaign has finally figured out the strategy they need to take in order to stop the free-fall in the polls (maybe even throw it in reverse) and remind Connecticut Democrats why it's more than ok to pull the lever for Lieberman.