The time of the season

In less than a month, voters will be going to the polls for the Pennsylvania primary, and the pre-vote TV ads are showing up full force. A few observations about some of the early offerings:

– Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, who is running for governor, has an ad in which he talks about growing up in a home that is shown on the screen. Later he says that he still lives in the same neighborhood, a few miles away. Now, is it just me, or is that the biggest neighborhood known to man? I'm thinking that if you have to drive several miles away, you're NOT in the same neighborhood.

– Does anyone know what party Mark Critz belongs to? It's really hard to tell based on the advertisements being run by the former Murtha aide who is running for the late, legendary congressman’s old seat. The answer to my original question: Critz is a Democrat. He just doesn't seem to be very proud of it.

– Finally, has anybody seen the hatchet-job advertisement Sen. Arlen Specter has rolled out to target his Democratic primary opponent, Congressman Joe Sestak? No touchy-feely stuff from Arlen. He's going straight to the brass knuckles. The Specter ad starts by attacking Sestak’s military record, then goes on to chastise him for missing a lot of votes in the House. Here's the deal. To have any chance at unseating a guy like Specter, who has been in the Senate since the Iron Age and has a big old campaign war chest, a challenger has to spend countless hours raising money and actually campaigning. The big-money politics of our time demands it. If any challenger in Sestak's position played by Specter's rules, he would have little or no chance of unseating an incumbent. Oh, yeah, I get it now.