The average American is disgusted by nasty, negative campaigning, where character assassination is employed! 🙁
The effect is to discourage citizens from voting, and to make the American people cynical about politics!
But is it possible to run a political campaign and avoid negativism against your opponent? The answer is YES!
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont just won his seventh term in the Senate, and completely avoided nasty, negative campaigning!
Democratic Mayor John Hickenlooper of Denver just won the Governorship of Colorado and completely steered away from negative campaigning, a major feat considering that his major opponent was former Republican and Constitution Party nominee Tom Tancredo, one of the most despicable, divisive, nasty campaigners of all time, making his career on the issue of being an anti immigrant nativist of the most venal kind! Hickenlooper’s other opponent was Republican Tea Party nominee Dan Maes, whose campaign collapsed in the face of Tancredo, therefore weakening the GOP image in the Rocky Mountain state, as both of them ran horrible campaigns of character assassination! 🙁
But the tactic did not work, and Colorado is fortunate in having Governor-elect Hickenlooper, a man of principle and decency!
Another example of a politician who avoided negative campaigning in his Senatorial campaigns was the outstanding former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served as a Democrat for four terms from 1976-2000, and proved to be a man of both principle and intellect, a combination hard to find in the US Senate today!
This country desperately needs a return to civility in both political campaigns, and in the business of running the government on a daily basis, instead of the politics of personal destruction! 🙁