If Wendy Davis Thinks She Can Win an Election by Pointing Out Her Opponent's Disability, She's Wrong
Wendy Davis just released an ad attacking Greg Abbott, her opponent for governor in Texas, which is, to be blunt, bullshit. It's offensive and nasty and it shouldn't exist. She's basically calling Abbott a cripple.
There are a lot of good reasons not to like Greg Abbott. The fact that he's in a wheelchair isn't one of them.
UPDATE: I want to go deeper into this than I originally did because this post has obviously touched a nerve. As a lot of you have pointed out, the ad makes the point that Abbott won a tort reward, but that he supports making it harder for other people to do the same. That is a good and decent point to make. It is not, in my opinion, what the ad is about.
This ad says to me—and to a lot of other people—that Greg Abbott is unfit to serve because he is handicapped. The Davis campaign may not have intentionally attempted to play into people’s historic prejudice against the disabled, but that’s how the ad reads to me. Abbott shouldn’t be off limits to criticism because he’s in a wheelchair. And this may just have been an inartful attempt at a trenchant criticism. But there are ways to make a point and ways not to make a point and this ad is not the way to make that point.
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