You really, really need to read this one from DailyKos Elections:
• VA-07: What a swell guy Dave Brat is! The Republican congressman, who’s in the fight of his political life against Democrat Abigail Spanberger, was visiting a local jail on Wednesday, where he met with a support group of inmates struggling with addiction. But just check out the dude’s empathy!
“You think you’re having a hard time—I got $5 million worth of negative ads going at me. How do you think I’m feeling? Nothing’s easy. For anybody. You think I’m a congressman. ‘Oh, life’s easy. This guy’s off having steaks.’ Baloney! I got a daughter, she’s got to deal with that crap on TV every day. It’s tough. No one out there’s got some easy life.”
Oh yes! Being the target of attack ads is just like losing your freedom, trying to overcome a drug addiction, and worrying about your future after your release. The rest of his remarks were just as clueless: When one prisoner said that halfway houses are often in drug-infested areas, Brat tried to claim the kind of place where he lives isn’t all that nice, saying, “You won’t believe the depression in those hoity-toity neighborhoods.” (Is that so!)
He also complained that when he left his professorship to serve in Congress—a decision he made freely, when he chose to challenge then-Rep. Eric Cantor—his children were no longer entitled to free tuition at his college, whining, “I didn’t have any savings. All went away—oops! So, plans change.”