It’s been pretty well covered in the blogosphere already but I can’t resist the Washington Post article on the Bush team’s amazing run of negative campaign ads.
Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush’s campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads — or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.
Pandagon does the math for us (emphasis added):
An interesting thing about that number – if 13,336 is the number of negative ads Kerry has run and it’s 27% of his total, then Bush has run about as many negative ads (49,050) as Kerry has ads total (49,392). By any standard, that’s just ridiculous.
And it’s only Memorial Day. What’s the picture going to look like in September?