negative ads

adam nagourney offers the following in the nytimes the other day:

Republicans and Democrats began showing at least 30 new campaign advertisements in contested House and Senate districts across the country on Tuesday. Of those, three were positive.

[...]

The result of the dueling accusations has been what both sides described on Tuesday as the most toxic midterm campaign environment in memory. It is a jarring blend of shadowy images, breathless announcers, jagged music and a dizzying array of statistics, counterstatistics and vote citations — all intended to present the members of Congress and their challengers in the worst possible light. Democratic and Republican strategists said they expected over 90 percent of the advertisements to be broadcast by Nov. 7 to be negative.

welcome to yankee-style democracy, where the tools of the trade are lies and slander, the engine is money, and the net outcome is precisely an anti-democratic one. don't be fooled: negative advertising is not a unique-to-this-moment response to the important issues of the day. it is a carefully premeditated tactic with one goal and one goal only: make potential voters so disgusted with the whole political process that they choose not to exercise their right to vote and stay home, thereby ensuring the perpetuation of the status quo.