Grassley and I, Confused

I was watching the news the other night when I saw a Democraic TV ad against Renee Schulte accusing her of wanting to privatize Social Security. Trouble is, Schulte is a candidate for Iowa House District 37. Not sure the Legislature has much clout when it comes to federal entitlements.

I forgot about it, until I was reading O. Kay Henderson's fine blog at Radio Iowa. She has an account of U.S. Sen Charles Grassley describing a scenario similar to my own during his morning media conference call:

"I was sitting here in my living room watching some commercials about state legislative races and I observed one that was a negative ad against somebody by the name of Schulte where the Democrat was accusing this Republican candidate of being for privatizing Social Security and something else dealing with some of Bush's economic programs and we don't need more of that, and I just wonder how much the Democrats running for office know about government -- that state legislative candidates don't have anything to do with Social Security or anything to do with Bush's economic programs, that they're running for the state legislature."

"It reminds me after the 1964 landslide there was a Democratic candidate elected and he didn't know whether he was going to Washington or Des Moines to serve his people and I would just hope that people would keep state legislative issues and state candidate races to state issues not trying to confuse the public -- unless the candidates for the Democrats don't know the difference."

I'm betting the Dems know the difference, and they're just trying to tie up R's with an unpopular issue stance. But betting that dumb voters won't know the difference is lousy politics.

Now word yet from Democrats on the ads.