For decades, the Democratic party and its fellow travelers have complained they were the victims of vicious, unfounded attacks at the hands of a vast, shadowy, well-funded Republican hate machine. They've seen their candidates compared to terrorists, they've nominated war heroes who are later denounced as cowards, they've been called friends of criminals, enemies of family, flag soilers, and God besmirchers. All the while, sitting idly by, mumbling sheepishly into their elite East Coast lattes: "Man, those Republicans got it goin' on."

With the Foley scandal, the Democrats have a chance to take a whack at one of the sweetest hanging curve balls ever wafted across the slime-caked plate. It's time to give this whole politics-of-personal-destruction thing a ride.

Jack Davis, the self-made millionaire gunning for Tom Reynolds's congressional seat, has released his first ad since Le Affaire Foley, an ever-widening debacle in which upstate representative Reynolds plays a major supporting role as the Man Who Knew Too Much, Did Too Little, and Blamed It All on His Boss.

Pitch. Swing. Whiff. It would seem the target for this ad is people who plan to vote but consume no news. All the information that blurs by in an easy-to-follow flurry of headlines is stuff anyone who's walked past a radio in the last two weeks already knows — that Reynolds falsely claimed not to know about Foley's e-mails, that he urged him to seek reelection, that as RNCC head he took Foley's contributions to fund Republican House races. Terrible stuff, indeed, but a feast of filth we've already savored and digested. Set against Reynolds's jarring and creepy but memorably "emo," straight-talking mea culpa that ran last week, it's a waste of Davis's money. He paid for the same Happy Meal twice.

Hey, David ad people — would it really have been such a hassle to track down a picture of Foley and Reynolds smugly shaking hands and superimpose it over a frolicking young boy? Would it have put you out that much to reenact a smutty IM being sent? Or to soft-focus on a pile of tainted campaign cash or, better yet, the face of a worried mother sending her teenage son off to D.C. for his first summer internship? C'mon fellas, get in the game. There's a lot up for grabs here. It's man time! Well, actually, it's 16-year-old boy time. But anyway, you get the idea.

Davis on Air [The Daily Politics]