We keep hearing people laughing about the terrible TV ads the Hillary Clinton campaign is running, and particularly the newest one…

If you listen to the Trump folks what you’ll hear is this isn’t an effective ad because it actually underscores Trump’s point that we have to Make America Great Again by bringing back those jobs, being smart about trade and doing the right things for our economy and that as a businessman living under the awful tax and regulatory scheme Washington set up Trump had no choice but to make ties in China and shirts in Bangladesh.

That’s wishful thinking, and whistling past the graveyard. This is an effective ad, for two reasons.

First, nobody is going to think their way through a logical exercise in what the ad actually says. They’re not going to poke holes through Hillary’s narrative. The ad’s message is pretty clear – for all the nationalist stuff Trump says, he doesn’t put his money where his mouth is. He’s just as much a globalist businessman as the next guy, and he doesn’t put Americans to work making his shirts and his ties. Instead, what he is is a hypocrite and a liar and somebody you can neither trust nor believe.

And that message is effective because the mainstream media will amplify it by bashing everything Trump says as a lie. It’s also a crucial message for Hillary to get across because she has zero credibility in her own right. Everybody knows she’s a damn liar, and everybody knows she’s a hypocrite. Those two known negatives, which resonate with Democrat voters just as well as others and make Hillary an absolutely horrid candidate, can only be mitigated one way. She has to make Trump’s credibility just as poisonous as her own.

This ad contributes to that.

And it works like a charm mostly because it has no competition. Trump isn’t on TV. In fact, Green Party lunatic candidate Jill Stein actually has spent more money on television for the general election than Trump has.

And it’s worse than you think. We’re seven weeks out from the election; it’s past the time when campaigns will need to have booked airtime on networks, TV stations and local cable systems, and Hillary’s already booked her airtime – $98 million worth as of Aug. 2. Trump? Nada.

You have to tell your own story to counteract the other guy. You can’t just go do an interview and depend on the media to filter coverage of you in a positive way; the media won’t tell your story. They tell their story. And their story about Trump will be the same as Hillary’s story about Trump.

There is evidence both that Trump is reeling in Hillary’s national polling lead, and that Hillary’s lead in the swing states where she has been clobbering Trump with ads like the one above – unanswered, we should reiterate – has begun to emerge as unsurmountable.

Here’s an ad Trump cut, but we don’t know how much cash he’s putting behind…

NEW: @realDonaldTrump‘s first general election ad. Hits Clinton on “rigged system,” touts Trump on immigration –> pic.twitter.com/oJrKgQIH8o

— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) August 19, 2016

That could well be an effective ad in the right markets, though it’s not going to work on a wide-scale audience since most Americans don’t support wholesale deportations of illegals (there was a moment for hard-line immigration policies, but that moment passed when the chief promoter of those policies became toxic with the American public). It could work in Arizona, for example, or Colorado – places where there are lots of illegals and those illegals are unpopular with voters. Trump gave what was actually a very effective speech in Milwaukee about the negative effect illegal immigrants have on working class Americans’ social mobility and weaved it together with a blistering attack on the Democrats’ betrayal of black Americans while essentially stealing their votes. That is a narrative the Republican Party has lacked the stones to push but it will work if messaged correctly and aggressively enough.

But the media won’t spread the message for him. He’s going to have to spend the money to get it out. So far, that aspect of the campaign is absent. And because it is, persuadable voters will be persuaded by Hillary’s narrative and not Trump’s.

– Has anybody noticed that Hillary’s VP nominee Tim Kaine is a moron?

He’s a boring guy, so the answer is probably not. But Kaine seems to have a penchant for saying some of the most incredibly stupid things imaginable, and he uncorked a couple of beauties this week.

First, there was this…

No, Kaine isn’t saying the entire country should become “unwhite,” or however you want to term it. He’s talking about his church, and social situations where folks can broaden their horizons by experiencing what others experience.

But in a political context, this is a colossally stupid statement. Well more than 60 percent of the country is white and it’s not racist to note that culturally, politically and even, increasingly, economically, white people are going on the defensive. Why on earth would you feed into those worries by putting yourself and your party in the position of saying that it’s a good thing for those people to have to be in the minority? The only way for Trump to win is for the white vote to completely desert the Democrat Party and this is a damn good way to help that to happen.

It’s just a stupid thing to say. Especially when what he could have said was that for himself and his family, going to a predominantly black church and watching the congregation become more diverse has been an experience which enriched his life and gave him faith that people of all different ethnic backgrounds could put those aside and worship in the same way. He could even have said that he hopes others could benefit from similar experiences.

Instead, he talks about how white folks ought to be in the minority. Only morons say things like that when they’re running for office.

But Kaine says all kinds of stupid stuff. For example, there’s his statement supporting the release of the FBI notes of Hillary’s interview with them – why even go there? There was his expression of “disappointment” over Bill Clinton’s past sexual behavior – why even go there? And there was this business of bringing up Benghazi and speaking of Hillary in glowing terms as being above attacking the families of the victims; we already know that’s a lie, and again – why even go there?

Plus, this jackassery…

Vice presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Tuesday that the United States has made it difficult for women to be elected to higher office, and argued that America ranks behind Iraq, Afghanistan and Rwanda in this area.

“It took 144 years before women even got the right to vote in this country,” Kaine said at a campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C. “What were we thinking when we said equality mattered, but no. One hundred and forty four years. It took us that long to say in 1920, to say women get a right to vote. And now we’re 96 years later and we have just nominated a woman. We know we haven’t had a woman president.

“But in Congress right now, we’re doing the best job we have ever done in women in the federal legislature: 19 percent. That’s the best job we’ve ever done,” he said.

The Virginia senator claimed smaller, less wealthy countries actually put the United States to shame when it comes to electing women to higher office.

“Hold on for this, folks. Nineteen percent ranks the United States 75th in the world, below the global average,” he said.

“Iraq is 26 percent. Afghanistan is 28 percent. Number one [is] Rwanda. Sixty-four percent. So for reasons, some of which I understand, some of which I don’t, we have made it hard. We have made it hard for women to be elected to the highest positions in our federal legislature and as president,” he added.

However, with the nomination of Hillary Clinton, that’s all about to change, he said.

He’s not Joe Biden yet. But the day is young. If the rumors about the Democrats’ nominee being half-dead and being kept animated by use of ball bearings and steam are true, this idiot could end up as president. Perhaps it’s just as well, as fools are all we seem to be able to choose from in politics these days.

– For a Today’s Last Thing, how about a Las Vegas hotel demolition?

This happened on Monday. The Riviera, which had been a Vegas fixture for 60 years and the backdrop for the original Ocean’s 11, finally breathed its last. Its demolition paves the way for an expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

And the final couple of towers at the Riviera came down in a blaze of thermite – if not glory…