Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, they prove me wrong.
As I wrote here, the ratio of negative to positive campaign ads is seriously skewed to the negative, with less than 4% of the ads I saw on TV being positive (or at least not negative).
Now that the campaign season is down to its last few days before the elections, the level of rhetoric and the demonizing of the opposition has reached deafening levels. Smear campaigns have teetered on the brink of libel and slander. Last ditch efforts to derail opponent's campaigns have also reached a fever pitch.
One of the latest here in New Hampshire has been an effort by the New Hampshire Democrat Party to goad the US Attorney into investigating Republican candidate for New Hampshire's First Congressional District for fiscal improprieties because he amended his financial disclosure form to include a bank account he hadn't disclosed previously. Never mind incumbent Democrat Carol Shea-Porter has had to amend hers over 30 times, 9 times at the insistence of the Federal Election Commission. Isn't that the pot calling the kettle an off-shade of gray?
I would think if there were any issues about the new disclosure that the FEC would have made an issue of it, wouldn't you?
Fact checking some of the various ads on both sides shows the truthfulness quotient has fallen precipitously as we get closer to November 2nd and I have no reason to believe it won't continue its fall into the cellar.
And as bad as it is here in New Hampshire, it's far worse just south of the border in the People's Republic of Taxachusetts, and in California, Illinois, and Colorado. (Some of the 'super-stations' we receive on satellite include KTLA in Los Angeles, WGN in Chicago, and KWGN in Denver.) It's gotten to the point that I can't even watch the news without having to mute the sound every time a political ad airs. We've taken to recording any of the shows we'd normally watch and then zapping through the commercials just so we don't have to watch or listen to the crap pouring out of the TV.
Even listening to music on the radio has become problematic as the ads have intruded there, too, with political hopefuls in four states (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont) airing an increasing number of ads, most of them negative.
The end can't come too soon.
