Iowa Democrat Bruce Braley’s Senate campaign has had a rough week, which has only gotten worse after the now-infamous video of Braley at a Texas fundraiser deriding Chuck Grassley as “a farmer from Iowa”.

How bad? Let’s review 6 ways:

1. Everybody’s Piling On

The commentary on Braley’s gaffe has been brutal. The Iowa papers have been all over the story, with heavy coverage in the Des Moines Register and a front page above the fold headline in the Quad City Times, helpfully contrasting Braley with the unveiling of a statue on Capitol Hill of Iowa agriculture legend Norman Borlaug. Even reliable Democratic partisans like Jonathan Chait were commenting that “Bruce Braley must realize that his career in Iowa politics is finished.” Chuck Todd tweeted that this was a “Big unforced error on Braley’s part…not just elitest but un-Iowan to attack another Iowan the way he did.” Popular Republican Governor Terry Branstad ripped Braley’s “arrogance.”

2. Lost On The Farm

The fact that Braley speaks Iowa farmer as a second or third language was driven home by his staff. His press release apologizing for the gaffe only made things worse:

The Braley campaign misspelled a couple of basic Iowa-farm-related words – detasseling and baling – in its press release defending the U.S. Senate candidate’s street cred with farms and farmers.

A sharp-eyed Des Moines Register editor noticed that the news release said: “Bruce grew up in rural Iowa and worked on Iowa farms, detassling corn and bailing hay.”

One suspects that Braley has not surrounded himself with farm-literate staffers. Which is also ironic for a guy who has mocked his Twitter followers’ spelling in the past.

3. Can’t Find Iowa With A Map and Google

Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed noticed that Braley’s Facebook site had a photo of a supposed Iowa farm that was actually a stock photo of a fruit farm from England or maybe India. Caleb Howe saved screenshots before they were deleted from Braley’s site, and noticed other places where the same stock images show up. Kaczynski also noted that Braley’s Facebook page featured a photo of a minimum wage worker that was apparently taken in Mexico:

4. Not Polling So Hot

Rasmussen reported this afternoon a poll taken last week (before the gaffe) showing Braley polling only at 40-41% against three of his potential GOP rivals and 44% against a fourth:

A new statewide telephone survey of Likely Iowa Voters finds Braley with a 41% to 38% lead over businessman Mark Jacobs. He leads State Senator Joni Ernst 40% to 37% and runs four points ahead – 40% to 36% – of former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker. Braley posts a 13-point lead – 44% to 31% – over another GOP contender, conservative talk show host Sam Clovis.

It was only Monday that Nate Silver’s poll model still gave Braley a 75% chance to win this race. Rasmussen’s polling has looked rather volatile and unreliable since the departure of founder Scott Rasmussen last year, and its national job-approval polls have tended to be more favorable than any other pollster for President Obama, so take that as you will; there should be more regular polling in this race as it goes along, especially as the GOP field narrows and the candidates get better known. Quinnipiac also polled the race earlier this month, similarly showing Braley in the low 40s but with more distance over his GOP rivals:

42 – 30 percent over former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker;
42 – 29 percent over State Sen. Joni Ernst;
40 – 31 percent over businessman Mark Jacobs;
42 – 27 percent over radio commentator Sam Clovis

Note the Q poll found Grassley with a stratospheric 62-27 approval rating among Iowans, compared to 55-31 for retiring liberal Democrat Tom Harkin and a ghastly 39-57 for President Obama. So, insulting Grassley is definitely not the winning move here. Braley’s own 35-18 favorability rating in the poll reflects the fact that nearly half the voters hadn’t formed an opinion of him yet, which I’m guessing many will be doing this week.

Neither poll seems to have polled the fifth GOP candidate, car salesman and Navy veteran Scott Schaben. There’s more to be said about the GOP field – Jacobs has polled of late as the frontrunner, while Ernst has put on a big p.r. push this week, with a viral first ad talking about growing up castrating hogs on a farm and endorsements from Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin – but GOP voters will have plenty of time to size them up before the June 3 primary.

5. Gaffe-Tastic!

At the start of this week, Braley was just a name on paper to a lot of people following this race from out of state, and a modestly-known Congressman to Iowans. But now that he’s coming into focus, we can see that the signs have been there for a while that Braley was not the top-flight Senate recruit the Democrats had touted him as, but rather an abrasive lawyer with a gift for gaffe:

-Braley’s trial-lawyer-bully demeanor and obsession with academic credentials are on full display in this hearing where he badgered a Canadian female expert in healthcare economics over where she went to school:

-Last March, he had to delete a tweet that compared an NCAA basketball loss by Iowa State to the Cherokee “Trail of Tears.”

-During the government shutdown last fall, Braley staggered critics with his out-of-touch complaints about the lack of towels in the House gym. Even left-wing radio host Bill Press, on whose show Braley whined about the towel service, was appalled:

“I was speechless,” Press said, telling ABC7 he thought he was asking Braley an easy question that he would answer by saying the gym needed to be shutdown.

“I was angry until he told me that they had to do their own towels,” Press said. “I sort of felt sorry
for them. Poor members of Congress, they’re only getting paid a hundred seventy five thousand dollars a year, and they have to do their own towels.”

“The staff gym, by the way, is closed,” he continued. “The members gym is open. And then they have to do their own towels. I don’t think many people are crying their hearts out about that tonight. Gimme a break.”

6. Wait Until We Get To The Issues

All of this is just revealing Braley’s character. On the issues, Braley is still going to have to answer for being a vocal backer of Obamacare who was telling people on the trail last year that Obamacare was “something people should ‘celebrate.'” And David Freddoso notes that Braley has a history of being completely in the pocket of his trial lawyer donors.

The filing deadline passed in this race on March 11, so Democrats will sink or swim with Bruce Braley. They may find the going rougher than the Missouri in spring flood season.