This cartoon pretty much sums it up!
I am getting a lot of e-mails lately asking me to contribute to political campaigns. The messages are always alarming and always the same. My opponent is outspending me 2:1 and using attack ads agsinst me! Contribute now! Undecided voters could turn the election!
This got me to thinking. Who are these undecided morons, anyway? I know that many people are swayed by foreign influences, and you can tell easily when they say stupid things (and Russian talking points) like, "both parties are the same, so why bother voting?" or "I'm voting for Jill Stein (or not voting at all!) to send a message to the powers that be!" (Guess what? Message never received!). These are folks who either crave attention by claiming to be "undecided" or who are so immature as to think that the candidate they should support should always mirror their own ideas 100%. As I noted before, that candidate never exists, unless you are running for office yourself.
So millions of dollars are spent on "attack ads" to convince these morons to vote. Trump is running one, claiming that Harris, supported (whatever that means) a group that pushed for parole of a child-killer. It is Willie Horton all over again - broad accusations and little in the way of facts. It is an emotional punch to the gut, getting you to bypass the thinking brain. Apparently, "crime" tested well with audiences, so they went with that. And a public prosecutor with decades of actual work experience must have some incident where a killer went free or a trial went South, right? It is only a matter of probability.
But the best they could do was say she supported a group that called for the release of someone, but they don't go into too much detail. But like so many other ads, such as the one claiming Harris was "border czar" (a position she did not hold because it did not exist) it is full of hooey. Republicans are now "mask off" with their lying. JD Vance has admitted the whole "eating cats and dogs" thing was a hoax - a lie - designed to dominate the 24-hour news cycle. And the news biz obliged, telling the lie and mutely reporting the retraction.
This is the nonsense that persuades the "undecided voter" and the only thing that changes their mind is millions more spent on counter-attack ads. Sadly, in the past, Democrats would say they were "above the fray" and "when they go low, we go high" and had their ass handed to them on a platter.
Sadly, I am not sure there is another way. Our forefathers only wanted land-owners to vote. The idea was, if you were smart enough to own land, you were not a total moron. However, even back then, the moron vote could be persuaded. When we lived in Alexandria, we were living in the shadow of General Washington - his plantation a short walk or bike ride from my home. Records of the era show the campaign expenses of Washington as he ran for the house of Burgesses or whatever. 50 casks of rum, 20 of whisky, 100 of beer, 75 of mead. Get the voters drunk, and they will vote for you.
I guess politics hasn't changed much, has it?
