Today finally marks the merciful end of three months of "death by attack ad." If it seems like nasty TV political campaign advertising has dramatically escalated this year, it's not your imagination. The Supreme Court (those same mirthful jokesters who installed George W. Bush in 2000) decided last year that corporations could pour unlimited dollars into campaigns without telling the voters who they were supporting, or what they expected for their money. The result is that this 2010 campaign season has given us a 200% increase in negative attack ads. For those who learned arithmetic in public schools, that means the number of ads had tripled. Furthermore, FactCheck.org says that their monitoring of these ads shows that fully 85% of the negative ads are either nothing but manipulative distortion of outright bogus lies. This is what passes for campaign activity in modern America.
I have a confession to make, here. For the first time in my adult life, going back to 1964 when I became old enough to vote (I voted for Goldwater) I deliberately chose not to vote this year. The Democrats deserve to lose, and the Republicans don't deserve to win, and casting a vote for any candidate this year just seemed to me like rewarding bad behavior. The good thing is that I can watch the election results tonight with complete impartiality, knowing that whoever goes down to defeat richly deserves to lose.
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