It's 2004 all over again.
The Guv's campaign announced today -- via their website, earned media and online ads -- that we'll all be treated to a second round of 30-minute, "behind the scenes" reality television shows featuring none other than Mitch Daniels at his real-est.
He's really real, you know. So. Incredibly. Real. The kind of real that would be just like me and you if me and you had millions of dollars in the bank, a fancy house in a gated Carmel community and no clue how working Hoosier families make ends meet.
Back on point: The first episode of MitchTV, according to the teaser, will boast never-before-seen footage from election night in 2004.
Mitch Daniels and Harry Gonso chest-bump in the hotel lobby! Becky Skillman starts a conga line down Washington Street! Body shots for everyone!
In all seriousness, it's kind of amazing that the Guv thinks he can run the exact same campaign as before without anyone noticing that he's spent the last three years pushing unpopular policies and presiding over an ever-worsening economy.
Hello?
We're out here, and we're not stupid.
Still, if you've got nothing to do this weekend, tune in and watch political history in the attempted remaking. It probably won't be as entertaining as the Indianapolis 500, but you might find yourself just as mad as Danica when that half-hour is up.
Some of the polices may be unpopular to you but I tend to agree with most ( But not all ) that he has done.
Toll Road - Yes
DST - Yes
And it took some State Democrats to help pass some of those unpopular policies.
State Gov as a whole could try to spend and tax less - but that swings to both sides of the isle.
How popular or smart is Thompsons idea for a gas tax holiday ? That did not seem to go over very for Hillary or McCain ?
Jen ... did you see the editorial in the Detroit News praising our governor and castigating Michigan's governor by comparison? According to most objective analysis, Indiana is faring far better than its Midwest neighbors.
And the wordsmith in me must call you out for your "exact same" redudancy. :)
Like the new site.
And you can call me out for the dropped "n" in redundancy.
The Guv's running a redundant campaign. Why can't I write redundant things?
He isn't running in Michigan. He's running in Indiana. And he's not all that popular here, no matter how you spin it.
I don't know if running five months of light-hearted fluff will work for him this time.
I guess we'll know for sure if and when he goes negative.
God, I love it when you snark back.
I wouldn't call it fluff when one ad -- yeah, the one with that music -- clearly touts his many accomplishments.
The Gov will take the high road until JLT forces him to do otherwise, as she did with your man Schellinger.
And the "J" in LT hardly stands for juggernaut. I'm still searching for some substance among her many promises.
I really love the "no new taxes" accomplishment, given that a day before he started with that talking point, his 1 percent sales tax increase went into effect. And then there's the cigarette tax hike. Oh, and the property tax crisis he caused with his 2005 budget. But I'll give you that that one wasn't entirely his doing.
My guess is he'll wait about eight weeks, see whether the positive fluff has any effect and then go negative because people aren't buying the new, improved version of the same old Guv whose record they already know. Wanna take bets?
This race is a referendum on Daniels. If he can't rebuild his shattered image with goodness and light, he'll have to destroy Thompson.
So you are saying he will have to do what Peterson did last year. Fluffy ads touting his accomplishments then when people don't buy it he goes negative against an under funded opponent ?
You know that JUST MIGHT WORK !
:)
I will take the bet - Daniels wins 55 / 45
The bet was when Daniels goes negative.
And the difference between Peterson and Daniels is that Peterson started out that race with really high personal and job approval numbers. He got caught up in the property tax crisis, and crime became an issue, all of which created the perfect storm for a no-name like Ballard to win.
Daniels is starting out this race with a job approval rating that's below 50 percent in most polls, and he's not all that well liked personally.
He has to bring those numbers up somehow, and if he can't do it by staying positive, he's going to have to go negative.
He'll have the money to do it, and you can bet he won't wait until the very end of the race. If he figures out that he can't redefine himself, he'll spend a the last month or two defining Thompson in the way he wants her to be seen.
Even that may not be enough for him to pull this off in what's expected to be a big Democratic year. Remember all those new voters who came out for the presidential primary? A lot of them will go to the polls in November, too.
Jen,
You might not be stupid... but it was stupid to kill TDW just to save a few dollars on monthly hosting fees. You had thousands of interesting posts that showed up on all kinds of Google searches and brought traffic to the site. And TDW had a fair amount of branding among those of us who follow Indiana news and politics.
I used to check out the site every day... I've only been to this one a couple times... and judging from the comments, other traffic has died off too.
Maybe you can borrow a page from the governor's "bringing Indiana back" and do the same for TDW.
I appreciate your feedback, but it was time for me to move on from TDW. I don't expect this site to pull the same traffic or even the same audience, but I wanted to try something new. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.