We gripe when the news media fails to identify the party affiliation of Democratic officeholders when reporting on their peccadilloes, but this is the first time I’ve seen Name That Party apply to a campaign ad. Indiana’s Congressman from the 2nd CD, Joe Donnelly, launches a hard-hitting ad slamming illegal immigration and the unresponsiveness of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress. It’s an ad we’d typically see from Republicans in this midterm election — but Donnelly isn’t a Republican:

Guess what word never gets uttered in this ad? “Democrat.” Donnelly is the Democratic incumbent in IN-02 who currently holds a 17-point lead over his relatively unknown Republican challenger, Jackie Walorski. Donnelly makes himself the second Hoosier who has created an ad campaign to distance himself from the deeply unpopular Democrats; Brad Ellsworth’s ads never mention that he’s spent the last four years in Washington. Donnelly insists in this ad that “he doesn’t work for them,” meaning … his own party’s leadership, even though Jim Geraghty points out that Donnelly backed their top legislative priority, ObamaCare.,

Maybe if a candidate is too ashamed of his party affiliation, voters in his district should be just as ashamed of voting to have a member of that party in Congress. After all, the surest way to keep their Representative from working for Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama would be to send the Republican to the House instead.