Only this time it’s not the flight crew that bails from the plane but the passengers.  The RNC’s new ad uses the JetBlue incident to show how enthusiastic Democrats are  to have President Obama take his 42% approval rating for a test spin in their districts and states.  They’ve popped the chute and are racing away from Air Force One as fast as possible (via Jim Geraghty):

The beauty of this ad is that it works even if flight attendant Steven Slater turns out to be a jerk after all. And, after all, it’s true; Democrats are running away from the President:

In Indiana, Rep. Joe Donnelly is running a television ad in which he details his generally conservative stance on immigration while images of Obama and Pelosi are shown on screen. “That may not be what the Washington crowd wants, but I don’t work for them,” Donnelly says in the ad. “I work for you.”

Rep. Travis Childers, who represents a district in northern Mississippi where Obama won just 38 percent of the vote in 2008, takes a similar approach in his TV advertising — promoting the fact that he has “voted against every big budget” since winning a special election two years ago.

Even some Democratic candidates who are being heavily touted by the White House appear determined to keep the president at arm’s length. Shortly after Obama played a lead role in helping Sen. Michael Bennet defeat former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff in a Democratic primary fight last Tuesday, Bennet was asked whether he would want the president to campaign with him this fall. “We’ll have to see,” Bennet told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos — a response well short of a ringing endorsement of Obama’s political standing.

One senior Democratic consultant suggested that the distance candidates are seeking to put between themselves and Obama is reflective of the ascendance of economic issues in voters’ minds. “Barack Obama’s economic policy of spending our way out of recession is seen as a failure at best and harmful at worst,” the source said. “That should tell candidates in competitive jurisdictions all they need to know about running with the president.”

Heck, Donnelly won’t even mention his party affiliation in his ads any longer.  And Brad Ellsworth, running for the Senate in the same state, won’t admit to having spent the last four years in the Washington he attacks in his ads.

Looks like they understand the message coming from the electorate in the midterms: refer back to the chorus.