I’ve been thinking about commenting on this for several days, and today I just decided to put down a few words about it, real quick. It’s the Ohio governor’s race, of all places — but the ad at the center of it has become a national story, and what happened after the ad is more interesting than the ad itself. Here’s what I think.

A year ago, Vivek Ramaswamy was the Republican future. Trump endorsed him for governor of Ohio, the primary field cleared out, he won the nomination with over eighty percent, and he has lent his own campaign something like thirty-six million dollars to make sure the future arrives on schedule. Ohio is a state Trump carried by eleven points. And this week, Ramaswamy is losing — most fall polls have Dr. Amy Acton, the Democrat, ahead of him, one Fox News poll has it within two points, and the race raters have called it a toss-up since September. The slide started before the ad. The ad is just where it got interesting.