Please hurry, November 3rd

Sometimes I wish I'd stuck with my original plan to go into political science just so I could replace all those ridiculous political ads with something halfway decent.

Ninety-eight percent of tv ads insult our intelligence and, most puzzlingly, seem designed to appeal to those who've already decided to vote for the advertising candidate anyway. For example, if you're a Republican politician and your ad says your opponent is a "crazy wack-job, communist liberal JUST LIKE NANCY PELOSI," well, anyone who that ad appeals to was going to vote for the Republican in the race anyway. And if you're a Democrat and you ad says your opponent only cares about rich people and/or the oil business, you're only attracting people who feel antagonistic toward those groups-- in other words, people who were going to vote for whoever had the "D" beside their name. But almost every ad see (from either party) plays on some variation of a theme like this. Why do ads never seem aimed to attract political independents, the people whose vote an ad could possibly influence? I get that firing up your base is part of the deal, but must every election be promoted as the final battle of good versus evil?

I don't think so.

We have on other troubling aspect of campaigning in Tennessee. Political ads here seem to be a contest of who can appear to be the biggest redneck. One prominent gubernatorial candidate built a whole campaign on the fact he wears cowboy boots. Another guy appears on a tractor in every ad and uses the phrase "Plow Washington" as his campaign slogan. (Never mind the fact that he's a Democrat whose party is in power has presumably done whatever it is that he thinks needs to be plowed). Our likely next governor has an ad in which a thickly accented guy speaks in incomplete sentences (which is just as well because half of his words are incomprehensible anyway) to describe how this candidate helped get a construction project started on his behalf. And these ads are still better than his opponent's.

I love politics, and even I'm sick of these ads. I can't imagine how fatigued the average person out there is.

I voted earlier today (highlight: A 90-ish year-old woman tried to show up after the polls had closed and was turned away. In response she yelled: "Those Damn Republicans!" and walked away). I just wish voting early came with the added benefit of opting out of heaing political ads for the next 5 days.

That would be a change I could believe in.