The final hours of the 2010 midterms are upon us. As field teams rev up their get-out-the-vote efforts for their candidates, operatives working for both sides have taken the air war in Washington State to new lows, particularly in the Senate contest, which pits Patty Murray against Dino Rossi.
Commercial breaks on many stations are now saturated with advertisements filled with negative imagery and baseless accusations, in many cases paid for with untraceable dollars.
Collectively, these ads amount to a long and loud burst of unintelligible noise. The back and forth has gotten ridiculous. If the ads are to be believed, nobody is for anybody, so we might as well sit out the election because there is no one available who is capable of fixing our broken system. It seems that what’s really broken, however, is not our system of government, but our system of electing people to government.
The ads are just a symptom of the problem. If we want to reclaim our democracy and make candidates and interest groups more accountable, then we have to establish that the Supreme Court was wrong when it decided that corporations are people and money is speech. Those interpretations are the reason that we all have to suffer through a tiring political air war every two years.
Consultants and operatives may enjoy doing battle with each other (especially since they get to pocket fees from cutting ads), but for the rest of us, it’s no fun at all.
It’s going to take a Herculean effort to overrule the Supreme Court decisions that have corrupted our democracy. While I encourage readers of this column to join in the long-term movement to fight for clean elections, I also want to offer a prescription for reclaiming your sanity in these final hours: Tune out the air war.
Instead of reclining on the living room chair, step outside and take a breath of fresh air, or play a board game with family members, or spend time on an arts and craft project. Let the ads serve as excuse to turn off the screen for a while.
And when the television is on, keep the remote handy, and take advantage of the Mute button. It’ll at least drown out the sound.
Direct mail pieces, the consultant’s other favorite medium, aren’t much better at providing clarity or insight than attack ads that comprise the air war.
So what’s a busy voter to do? Here are some ideas.
1. Read the voter’s pamphlet. At least look at the arguments for and against the measures, and the candidate profiles. Going through the entire text of the proposed measures is time-consuming, but the arguments for and against are fairly succinct, and fit on a single page. They’re worth consulting.
2. Identify two friends, one active in Democratic politics, and one active in Republican politics, then call them up and ask them for their “elevator pitch”. Request that they talk about the specific strengths of their candidates (for instance, Patty Murray, Suzan DelBene, and Eric Oemig, or Dino Rossi, Dave Reichert, and Andy Hill).
3. Visit the candidates’ websites. Assess how much they offer in the way of policy directions. Do their stances on the issues just consist of platitudes (like holding the belief that our public schools should be the best they can be) or are there real ideas there?
4. When voting for judicial candidates, visit www.votingforjudges.org to learn about the candidates’ qualifications, fundraising, and ratings from bar associations.
5. Visit the Public Disclosure Commission at www.pdc.wa.gov and StopGreed at www.stopgreed.org/ to get an idea of who is behind this year’s unusually large crop of ballot measures. Most measures are almost exclusively funded by a handful of corporations seeking changes to state law that would help their bottom lines.
6. Seek out voters’ guides prepared by organizations that you trust. For those who identify as progressives, I recommend checking out the Progressive Voters’ Guide, compiled by a coalition of public interest organizations led by Fuse (www.progressivevotersguide.org).
One last idea: If you can spare a little time, go see the candidate you’re leaning towards in the contest you’re most ambivalent about. Most campaigns can be easily contacted by telephone, and can tell you where you can meet their candidate in person before Election Day.
Above all, do not fail to vote, no matter how depressing the air war is.
Andrew Villeneuve, a 2005 Redmond High graduate, is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, a Redmond-based grassroots organization. Villeneuve can be reached at andrew@nwprogressive.org.
