That Cancer Ad and Citizens United

This Priorities USA ad with the guy whose wife died of cancer is over the top. I'm sure you know the facts. She died in 2006, and she lost her own job and her own health insurance in addition to her husband's, and her cancer diagnosis wasn't until 2006, not "a short time after" his layoff, as the man says in the ad.

It is certainly true that if Bain hadn't raided the guy's employer, the guy would presumably have kept his job and his insurance, and maybe they'd have gotten her to a doctor sooner. So there is an issue to be brought out here having to do with people losing insurance and fearing even going to the doctor. But this ad makes far too direct a link and just doesn't pass the don't-bullshit-me test.

Be mad at Obama if you want, but it's not an Obama campaign ad. It's a super-PAC ad. So thank the Supreme Court, and thank Citizens United. It has always been the tendency of these legally unaffiliated groups to make the sleazier ads than the campaigns themselves. In the post-CU world, it's going to be even worse, because more money and more groups is going to create a race to the bottom like we've never seen. I hate to think about where this is going to go by November.

I don't even understand how this ad focus-grouped well (yes, it is a verb!). I would expect that everyone in the room would have said, "Come on, you gotta be kidding me!" I'd like to see Obama himself say that that ad was a stretch, although obviously that's never going to happen.

On the broader issue of people's tenuous health care, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul offered up an excellent suggestion this morning on Fox: The people in the ad should have moved to Massachusetts! According to a tweet from a Boston Globe reporter, Saul said:  "If people had been in Massachusetts under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care."

What? So now making people buy insurance is a good thing? Bill Burton ought to grab the clip of her saying that. Romney campaign endorses individual mandate!