Yes, I'm serious that you're not serious or just uninformed.
More good news:
...To defeat Lazio, Hillary has to besmirch him. Recent polls have the race tied at 42 percent each - not good news for the first lady. With her universal name recognition, anyone who is not voting for Hillary is, at this point, tending to vote against her. To be undecided at this juncture is really to say that one is not happy with her and wants to explore other alternatives. Thus, a 42-42 tie really means that she is losing, 42 to 58.
But people can vote four ways in an election, as media guru Tony Schwartz points out: for Hillary, against Hillary, for Lazio or against Lazio. The pro-Hillary vote seems to have maxed out at 42 percent. Her job is to build up the anti-Lazio vote to produce the remaining 9 points she needs to win. Thus, her need to go negative.
If Lazio can parry and counterpunch as Hillary throws negatives, he could really, really end up winning this race. So far, he's doing it quite nicely.
Hillary opened the bidding a week ago with her first negative ads, two 15-second commercials that said Lazio opposed the Patients' Bill of Rights and the extension of hate-crime protection to gays.
Few people know much about Lazio, so he had to answer these attacks immediately. He did. More important, he had to answer them in few words and go over to the offensive in the rebuttal ad. He did that, too.
Lazio's rebuttal had to make Hillary pay a price for her running negatives. Gradually, this price needs to build up to the point where she can't throw any more mud without inflicting more damage on herself than she does on her adversary.
Lazio came through perfectly. Guided by his excellent media adviser, Michael Murphy, he replied with just the right mixture of rebuttal and counterpunch.
He began his ad with a hit at the first lady for going negative. "I've been in the Senate campaign for about a month now, and guess what? Hillary Clinton has already started running attack ads designed to fool you about me," the ad begins. Then the rebuttal: short, precise, and sweet, just as it should be. "Her ads are simply untrue. I voted for a Patients' Bill of Rights, and I oppose hate crimes."
But Lazio-Murphy don't leave it there. They use the rest of the time in this 30-second spot for an effective counterpunch: "So why is she doing this?" the ad continues. "Because it's a lot easier for Mrs. Clinton to attack me than to name a single thing she has ever done for New York.
"So, Mrs. Clinton, you can run the negative campaign about tearing people down. I'm going to run a campaign about building New York up."
Beautiful. Notice how he calls her Mrs. Clinton, hanging Bill around Hillary's neck? Note the dig about carpetbagging? See how he mentions New York as often as possible? A great ad....
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