Our Individual Elections

[OscarGuy]

That's pleasant compared to the backbiting here in Missouri.

It's also rather interesting.

[Sonic Youth]

I guess this has become the election thread?

Any thoughts on this ad put out by an Illinois Democratic candidate?

Doesn't sit well with me.

[OscarGuy]

Your lips to the fates' ears.

[99-1100896887]

To all of you who are American on this board:
We are certainly hoping for a Democratic win in both Congress and Senate. The US will be taken seriously again, and not be a pariah in the world, and a better world it will be. We can only hope there are no Katherine Harrises this time round, and that all voters on the list get to vote, which did not happen last time, I understand.
My family has property for sale in Washington State--a summer home we have had for thirty years, and while the house is close to the Canadian border( and vacation property in Canada is out of sight) we are having unusual trouble drawing Canadians to see it. We KNOW this will change tomorrow , and so the Dems win will be big for us, as more Canadians will feel more inclined to travel south, where Canadians--while welcome enough in the shopping cities near the Canadian border--will be more welcome everywhere, I hope.
My GOP neighbour won't like the news tomorrow. And who knows, we may get rid of criddic 3 at the same time.
We will have to be kind to him for a couple of days while he licks his wounds.

[OscarGuy]

Just shut it, Criddic. Nothing you say is taken seriously around here. These kinds of responses are completely and totally typical of your posting pattern and just continue to prove your "mouthpiece of the Right" label.

[criddic3]

She may not be a very good politician, but I think she handled the 2000 election appropriately. I mean, I know I voted for Bush so I have a bias here, but she followed the law down to allowing a recount and made no fuss about that. The reason Bush won Florida was that their laws did NOT allow for an additional deadline, which is what the U.S. Supreme Court found in their decision. Harris had nothing to do with that. Had the justices sided with the Florida Court and ruled they were within their own law to extend recounts, it could very well have gone the other way. It was out of her hands.

[Big Magilla]

That bitch is the reason George W. won Florida and became president. Good to see she's being called out on her two-faced wicked ways.

[Greg]

After tuesday, I think I'll miss Katherine Harris not running for the Senate any more. You could watch all her hilarious gaffs with the secure knowledge she had no chance to win.

Just this last weekend, she publicly prayed for God to "bring the hearts and minds of our Jewish brothers and sisters into alignment."


Harris' Prayer Call Stirs Concerns

[criddic3]

It's not about believing everything the ads say, but the sentiment they magnify for the people who are on the fence or who might agree but are thinking of not voting. I have seen relatively few ads from other states, which is expected, but c-span does play some of them before/after showing debates or panel discussions. Can't say whether I saw any of Claire's spots.

I think that ads can be effective, even one's that are total bull, because they tap into a mood. Individuals who do not pay any kind of attention to the details of elections or follow any of it before the final weeks will be more swayed by them I think.

When they become controversial, though, it can either be helpful to the candidate, or harmful and create a backlash.

So many races this year are looking like toss-ups that it's not a sure bet that Congress will change hands on Tuesday. The House will likely change, as per conventional wisdom, but even that isn't definite.

[OscarGuy]

Criddic, having seen the ads for both campaigns here in Missouri, something you can't possibly say, Claire's commercials have been 90% true. I'll admit that she's made some leaps of logic in her criticisms of Talent's record but most of them have been spot on.

But like I said, I think ALL commercials should go through an indepdent panel to check for facts.

And I would attest that people DON'T buy into them. The people who believe the commercials are the people who were already set in their way of voting. I don't know many people who let commercials determine their voting decisions.

[criddic3]

Both sides use these kinds of ads. Both sides want to win. We all know that people respond to them, which is why they are made to begin with. Let's not pretend that one side is more guilty of this than the other.

[OscarGuy]

I at least think that campaign commercials should be approved by an independent body and any "facts" be certified before an ad can go out.

Jim Talent's accusing Claire McCaskill's husband of having tax shelters. The accusation is ludicrous. The shelter in question is for a company of which he owns only 9%. That hardly qualifies him as using the tax shelter for his own purposes.

The same argument came up last time Claire ran over 3 years where property taxes on a home she owned weren't paid. Her brother had agreed to take care of all such financial matters relating to said house, which he was living in for the period. As soon as it was brought to her attention, she paid the back taxes. I'm not going to say she shouldn't have made sure they were paid herself and never should have relied on a deadbeat brother to do such but they have consistently mischaracterized the whole affair.

Misrepresentation of ones product or ad is cause for a fine to most ad agencies, yet political commercials aren't held to the same standard. It's ridiculous.

[Mister Tee]

I actually think people throw around the term "Negative ads" a bit promiscuously. There's certainly place in a campaign for negative assessments of one's record. (I rather imagine that, in the campaign of 1932, Democrats mentioned the fact that there was a depression once or twice) And I don't really have objections to negative characterizations of one's opponent's positions on various issues. That's what a campaign is for: to offer viewers a choice.

What's godawful -- and what I think most people think of when the say "negative ads" -- are the utterly irrelevant, hopelessly hoked-up, distorted, often character-assassination-filled spots we see today. Everyone knows that, however bad one's opponent may be, he is not (except for Mark Foley) likely in favor of child molesting or other various capital crimes, with which candidates are associated by tangential votes (or simply smear).

It's pretty much a GOP spin point to say the Daisy ad was the start of this (though it was the first such attempt in a presidential campaign). Actually, the Nixon/Murray Chotiner team are thought to have pioneered the style with their "Pink Lady" campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950, and Roger Ailes/Lee Atwater were the recognized prime maestros of the style (long before Karl Rove came along).

Why they are used, of course, is because people are convinced "they work", though it's always hard to say precisely what causes a campaign to succeed or fail. I've always thought the circumstances of 1988 argued for a GHWBush win regardless of the campaign, but the GOP clearly believes if not for Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance we'd have had Pres. Dukakis.

History shows as many losing as winning campaigns heavily used negative spots. I expect this year to be one of the latter. But, honestly, what else can you expect the GOP to do? Do they have any positive arguments for holding onto power?

[Franz Ferdinand]

Wouldn't that be a wonderful utopia. Negative ad campaigns have been around since at least 1964, with the (in hindsight) hilarious Goldwater-will-start-nuclear-war LBJ commercial. That someone would actually propose reform in that field would be big news, and we couldn't not check to see their history for negative ads they have done. I don't think any politician has a clean record in that department.

[OscarGuy]

I wish some politician, as a part of election reform, would propose legislation that outlawed any commercial that isn't a solid listing of a person's position. Get rid of negative attack ads. If we could find ONE politician who did that in an election and said time and time again they wouldn't do personal attacks AND actually stuck by it, I think we might get someone elected who can do something good.