Americans, is Election Day advertising driving you mad?

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Fyrefox

Well-known Member
The Election Day advertising is unrelenting, and it started several months ago! It seems like with every commercial break, we are exposed to at least one, often two with one countering the other played back-to-back.

I’ve never used my remote “mute” button so much in my life! I live in a “swing” state, so my bludgeoning is especially heavy. As Peter Griffin might put it, does this “grind your gears?” Often the political ads use sound bites taken out of context.

My nominee for the most annoying of these ads uses The Dance of the Hours as the sound background, best known in the Allan Sherman parody, “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.”

Will we survive until the election is over? Oh the horror, the horror! 🙀

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(Pictured: Allan Sherman)
 

I don’t watch much TV, but I happened to turn on the local news last evening and they did play one ad. I ignore the ads, but I had heard that over a billion dollars are spent on the ads for the office of president.

That billion dollars could be used for a lot of better things. I doubt if many of the ads sway people’s decision. I can remember me asking my dad what party he belongs to right after I turned 21. He said none and then he told me he votes for the best person that will do the better job.
 
I don't watch enough television to get annoyed by political ads, but about 70% of my emails are currently solicitations for donations to one of the major parties, while I have yet to hear for the other.
 
We record all TV, so fast forward through any and all commercials. Of course, Youtube is another matter, but I can generally keep my senses for that required 5 seconds. That is for all!
 
No. I live in a one party rule state. The dominant party doesn’t care how the opposition votes since they can’t muster enough people to do mount a challenge. And they don’t care about how their people vote since they can be taken for granted and thus their needs ignored. They don’t care. They don’t have to.
 
We go through weeks of this baloney every 4 years. What these ads show is that both candidates are full of crap, and the only thing we can try to do is elect the "lesser of two evils".
 
Maybe it is the stations that I watch, but I'm not seeing the barrage of political ads that I had expected. Maybe they're saving up for a big last minute push, before election day. Back around ballot proposition time the TV viewer is absolutely chocked to death with non-stop ads, half of which aggressively attack the opposition.
 
A lot of states are politically non-diverse and basically bought and paid for by one faction or the other. I say "faction" because the two main US parties are in serious transition and realignment. Now politicians nominally belonging to one party often endorse candidates from the other party that they are more naturally aligned with.

When a state is bought and paid for there just isn't much point in spending and campaigning there. To one faction they're a lost cause while the other faction can just take them for granted. So they only spend just enough to keep the sheep in the corral.
 
I used to get the political phone calls from Senators, local people running for office and Presidential candidates. They stopped over the last five years or more but not too many ads now on our TV. We are not in a swing state.
 
Here in California we get plenty of political news, but California’s leanings are well known, so little or no campaign money is wasted on advertising, which is just fine with me.
 

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