"Not On Your Side" (An election post-mortem question)

[regnaD kciN]

I'm from Washington state. As you may recall, we had a tight Senate election up here, and one which saw the Democratic incumbent, Patty Murray, pull out a tight victory in a swing state, in a year when the momentum was running strongly in the Republicans' favor.

As usual, the Murray campaign ran both positive and negative ads. The negative ads highlighted Dino Rossi's ties to big finance and/or attempts to offshore local jobs. Each ad ended with the tagline "Dino Rossi - he's not on your side."

As I was thinking about it today, it struck me that this was almost the perfect ad slogan, against Rossi specifically or against the Republicans in general. It crystallized the whole faux-populism of the G.O.P., reminding voters, in a pithy, easily-remembered fashion, that, if there is indeed a battle between thes embattled "little guys" and the big powers controlling the nation, the Republicans, despite their rhetoric, have been long working for those big powers against average Americans.

It seems to me that "they're not on your side," in whatever form best fits the given race, is an extremely effective catch-phrase. I'm just curious: was this only used by the Murray campaign, or did other Democratic campaigns this year try using the phrase, too. If so, how successful was it? I'm wondering if it could work nationally, or if its effectiveness was only a peculiarity of this state.