Being a liberal state, California rarely gets WTF ads. But I saw this on my TV the other day and did a double take. This is just a strange ad. It's from Neel Kashkari, the Republican challenger to Gov. Jerry Brown. Kashkari is not your typical candidate, as that's his main selling point. He spent a week pretending to be homeless to see how they lived. Now he greenlighted this thing.

The Pitch: Jerry Brown has betrayed kids on education. To represent this, a young boy is drowning in a pool and Kashkari pulls him out.

Who Does This Appeal To: Voters who are deathly afraid of pools, presumably; parents of young children who also have pools; parents who are generally afraid for their children; voters who love terrible and terribly inappropriate metaphors; voters who think filling a 30-45 second commercial with the candidate's qualifications and policy achievements is ridiculous—let's simulate a near household drowning! This is a real ad a lot of people agreed to, people who will be his advisers if he wins office. Not that it wasn't already difficult to beat the popular Brown anyway.