You’ve just got to love all of the attack ads that you see on television during election season. It’s really special that candidates and PACs spend millions on commercials that do nothing besides slander and degrade the opposition instead of using that money to, I don’t know, advertise what their actual policies are or expanding voter contact efforts.
Attack ads have been incredibly frustrating for me, especially since I had the privilege of being a field intern for such an honest Congressman in a toss-up race. Mudslinging was absolutely everywhere. It was present in both campaigns’ literature, in ads funded by PACs, in speeches made by the candidates — really everywhere you’d look. There are so many voters whom I’ve met that have become increasingly pessimistic about politics because all you seem to hear are politicians voicing their hatred and disrespect for each other.
People would tell me this too. I know I couldn’t be the only one so bothered by mudslinging, and it was almost reassuring to hear others voicing their concerns. When I would hand literature out to voters, they would see the side that slammed our opponent, and there were numerous complaints. Some even went so far as to completely refuse to vote purely because of this. I would always feel embarrassed because my candidate as a representative and human being was so incredible, yet the slandering somewhat discredits this. This is not to say that our opponent didn’t do the same; in fact our opponent was the first one to produce slanderous literature and had approximately two million dollars more outside spending than us going towards attack ads. It got to the point when there were people in school asking me whether our opponent’s attack ads were true or not (which they for the most part weren’t). I just wish that I could say that our campaign was able to rise above this instead of fighting fire with fire.
Negative political ads have been discouraging voters from hitting the polls and falsely portraying candidates, so why do campaigns and PACs spend millions on them? They do seem to be effective, but at a great cost: imposing overly biased opinions on the public in their own homes, many of whom not knowing any better than to believe them. One of the ads attacking my candidate was deemed so deceitful that it was taken off of the air. The scariest part about that is not knowing who that ad reached before being removed, as it is entirely possible that advertisements like that are what cost us this year’s election.
What can campaigns do about this?
First of all, I would love to see campaigns straight-up refraining from contributing to the overwhelming amount of letters, television commercials, YouTube ads, etc. condemning their opponents that we see so much of during election season. Too much.
Do you know what I haven’t seen enough of? The actual policies supported by said candidates and what they plan on doing if elected. The American voter shouldn’t have to search through excessively biased, slanderous bullshit when trying to make an informed decision. Instead, voting records for previous incumbents running for reelection (and, again, policies and plans for new runners) would go a long way, or at least in my opinion.
An increase in emphasis on voter-to-voter contact would also be nice, whether it be in the form of canvassing or non-robotic phone calls. there is absolutely nothing wrong with citizens doing their best to spread the word about their candidates through their own opinion and giving you as much information as they can hold in their brains.
How do you feel about mudslinging? What do you propose we do about it?
We Are Our Change 