Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, the front runner for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Missouri, released a web ad that links Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), his likely general election opponent,  to Hillary Clinton and her latest gaffes condemning Middle America.

The one minute and 15 second ad, which has had more than 40,000 views since it was published on YouTube Monday, begins with Clinton’s recent ill advised remarks made in India bashing Americans who voted for Trump.

“If you look at the map of the United States, there’s all that red in the middle where Trump won. I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, ‘Make America Great Again,’ was looking backwards,” Clinton says.

“You didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs. You don’t want, you know, to see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are. Whatever your problem is … working for a woman now, you don’t like it. Whatever the reason was, he stirred that up,” the failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee adds.

From there, the ad shows McCaskill, as leader of the Missouri delegation to the Democratic National Convention, nominating “the first woman president in the United States of America, Hillary Clinton,” and notes that she was the first member of Congress to endorse her in 2016.

Clinton’s comments in India revived memories of her disastrous “deplorables” comments, made on the campaign trail in September 2016 that helped her lose the November general election to President Trump.

“Last week, McCaskill tried distancing herself from Hillary’s remarks,” HotAir reported:

“Those are kind of fighting words for me, because I’m partial to Missouri voters … I don’t think that’s the way you should talk about any voter, especially ones in my state.” Reportedly, she told another outlet that “you’re killing me” by asking about Hillary’s remarks.

McCaskill is one of 10 incumbent Democratic senators running for re-election in a state Donald Trump won in 2016. Trump easily won Missouri by 19 points, a 57 percent to 38 percent margin.

The two term Democratic senator from Missouri has not yet gone quite as far in distancing herself from Clinton as another incumbent Demcratic senator in a state Trump won in 2016 did as Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) did recently, as Breitbart News reported last week:

During an interview on Tuesday’s “News & Views with Joel Heitkamp,” which is broadcast on Fargo-Moorhead’s KFGO, Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) answered a question on when 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will “ride off into the sunset” by stating, “Not soon enough.”

Host Joel Heitkamp, who is Senator Heitkamp’s brother, asked, “[W]hen does Hillary Clinton ride off into the sunset?”

Senator Heitkamp answered, “I don’t know, not soon enough, I guess.”

A recent Axios Poll, conducted by Survey Monkey between March 13 and March 16,reports  shows that McCaskill trails Hawley by eight points, 52 percent to 44 percent. In the accompanying story, Axios reported that McCaskill, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) are three “most vulnerable senators” in 2018.

“Each of their approval ratings is either under 50% or just above it, while Trump’s is well above that in all three states,” Axios  reported.

Another recent poll in Missouri, conducted by Gravis Marketing between March 5 and March 7, shows a statistical tie between McCaskill and Hawley. In that poll, McCaskill leads Hawley by 2 points, 42 percent to 40 percent, which is within the poll’s 3.2 percent margin of error.

The winning formula for Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA), who defeated Rick Saccone in the Pennsylvania-18 special Congressional election last week was to reject House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), praise President Trump, and vow to work with him.

Josh Hawley’s strategy of tying the Democratic incumbent they are trying to unseat to Hillary Clinton, may well turn out to be the winning strategy for Republican candidates in the 2018 midterm elections for the House and Senate.