Mike McGavick's campaign blog has a thorough takedown of Maria Cantwell's current ad on the topic of prescription drugs, and I mean thorough. As particularly astute readers may recall, Cantwell's "new" ad recycles footage and themes from her 2000 campaign (for the record, I recall this photo as well from my days on the other side of the 2000 campaign, that vacant grin on the older gentleman and the Fig Newtons being easy to remember).

More importantly, the content of the "new" ad is all fluff. I remember my first thought on seeing this version being, "why is she talking about prescription drugs and middle class famlies? Don't most 'middle class' families have health insurance? What's she going to do, mandate lower co-pays?" If Senator Cantwell is serious about helping middle class families with healthcare costs, perhaps she could talk about lowering the premiums which most families know can be the highest healthcare-related drain on the checkbook.

The real irony is that going into this campaign season Democrats were expected to use such ads to whine about the new Medicare Prescription Drug program. I guess in this case they may have actually read the memo, or this one from a firm of former Clinton staffers as well. I guess, in all fairness, maybe they didn't have enough footage to recycle on that topic to put something together.