Do political commercials in the USA prove that democracy does not work?

It has already begun, a nauseating birage of negative campaign adds to show you how dispicable the candidates are, each candidate attempting to unsdermine the character and credibility of his opponents. It is like watching a soft-core version of the old TV series 'The Untouchables' which showed how mobsters and gangsters would do almost anything to win. When I watch these commercials trying to win in a no-holds barred version of 'The Untouchables' I keep thinking why are they so upset by adult or pornographic material being broadcast when the obscenity of these political power hungry and Machevelian characters is nothing more than an obscene charade having nothing to do with democracy, the Republic of the United States or what the United States originally stood for?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness......"

Next time you watch a political commercial, ask yourself how we have gone so far down and away from the noble minds that conceived and created this republic?

Stormy wrote:Anything comical works other than sarcasm...except dating on line. Sarcasm dose not work with politics, but it works with dating on line, and that is comedy. Democracy only works with comedy, it is fundamentally connected to democracy, without it, democracy would not work. It is this freedom to express ourselves truly, other than in politics, that makes democracy, what it is. I guess.

-- Updated April 29th, 2012, 4:20 pm to add the following --

Politics is only a reflection of how comical we really are.

YOU WISH!!! And probably we would be better off. Unfortunately 'they' take it all seriously - big money and power involved. I used to think the best solution to the negative campaigns and the caricature like descriptions of each other was not to vote - Show them what you really think! But somehow unless you can turn off all the news and broadcasts over the air, etc. they will get to you and if you vote will it be because of the positive characteristics of a candidate or because of the negative smear campaign of his opponent?

Someone once described real democracy as mob rule. That may have been true once and may still be a characteristic of democracy - But we are no longer dealing with democracy; We are dealing with a contest of who is best at influence peddling and mind control - Can they manipulate you to vote for the candidate they want you to vote for - What he or she represents is of little importance to them - All they care about is winning the election - Ethics, morality and democracy are irrelevant!

wanabe wrote:As others have noted political advertisements, and advertisements in general do little to prove anything logically or informatively; they cater to emotions.

Advertisements work that is all this proves.

Democracy does work, but it of course requires work of everybody; which many in the USA simply have no desire to do for some reason.

I think that mandatory voting can be worth a try, if it can work in other democracies it may work for USA.

Why should I be required to vote if I don't like any of the candidates? BUT if the ballot contained the right to vote "for none of these" indicating that you are unhappy with any of the candidates offered, I might consider the idea of mandatory voting. However this will probably never happen in the USA. Elections and politics is Big Business in America and power brokers will not want the unknown quantity of disaffected voters voting - It may be harder to manipulate the votes of those forced to vote. Remember my opinion is democracy in a real sense is today an illusion. This is a very Nietzschean world and democracy is a game to be won - not the political process of representative government.

I agree with Scott on this issue. And I still maintain that when you do not vote you are also making a statement.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)

When you do not vote you are telling 'them' that you do not approve of the candidates and/or you are not even pleased with the selection process that anointed people who do not represent your interests and/or the interest of the electorate.

wanabe wrote:Yes it does Scott, silence is compliance. The world operates on action, not thoughts. Again though do as you will.

I can't answer for Scott. But wanabe though you are intelligent I believe you are being naive in thinking that in this age of 'think tanks' and political pundits that are using the election process itself to further the ability to control the electorate, that voting will significantly change the agenda. Whatever you do, vote left, vote right, or don't vote at all it is being fed into a data bank and used, not as it should to satisfy the best wishes of the electorate, but rather to figure a better way to win the election next time. Politics today is nothing more than a game; It is a power struggle of power hungry and Machiavellian characters who believe winning the election is the only goal. I think my next question will be: Do You Have to Sell Your Soul to the Devil before going into politics?

Prismatic wrote:

UniversalAlien wrote:
It has already begun, a nauseating birage of negative campaign adds to show you how dispicable the candidates are, each candidate attempting to unsdermine the character and credibility of his opponents. It is like watching a soft-core version of the old TV series 'The Untouchables' which showed how mobsters and gangsters would do almost anything to win. When I watch these commercials trying to win in a no-holds barred version of 'The Untouchables' I keep thinking why are they so upset by adult or pornographic material being broadcast when the obscenity of these political power hungry and Machevelian characters is nothing more than an obscene charade having nothing to do with democracy, the Republic of the United States or what the United States originally stood for?

With the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court and the capture of the GOP by the Tea Party, it looks as though we are going to see an unprecedented number of negative ads in this campaign. I don't believe the Obama folks realize it, but they are going to get "swift-boated" as never before. Outright lies and distortions will be so numerous and widespread they cannot be countered.

Once in office the Tea Party types will prevent any further increase in the debt ceiling even if Wall Street and President Romney beg them to let it pass. The nation will default for the first time in its history and the cost of servicing the debt will increase enormously. Government will have to be cut to the bone, which is their goal, and Social Security and Medicare will be only a shadow of their former selves if they exist at all. It's a recipe for fiscal disaster and it's coming right at us like a train wreck.

Many years ago I would hear some ordinary Americans say they don't vote for someone but rather they vote for the lesser of two evils. In this case, in the here and now, what you are saying 'Prismatic' is probably all too true. But the Democrats who also have much to lose and much money behind them, though admittedly the big money will tend to support Republicans for purely selfish reasons, will not give up without a fight; And with the very large number of people directly or indirectly receiving government money and if they can resist the Republican brainwashing that will go on till the election will still vote Democratic for another selfish reason - SURVIVAL! For most people, even those who may agree with some conservative viewpoints and who do not particularly like liberals, it should become apparent that in hard economic times a drastic slashing of government spending when that government spending, like it or not, is one of the leading financers of the economy, is economic suicide.

Prismatic wrote:There is such poor understanding among voters of how the economy works that it is hard to have confidence that they even understand their own self-interest. One woman at a Tea Party rally carried a sign that said, "Keep your government hands of my Medicare. Don't steal from Medicare to support socialized medicine."

The lies will be coming thicker and faster than ever before. Today Romney said that he would take a lot of credit for the auto industry recovery because he said "let Detroit go bankrupt" and he interprets what happened as a "managed" bankruptcy. What a joke, but there are people who will believe him.

That is my main point. We are not being subjected to the real issues but rather the public is being influenced by deliberate distortions of fact and logic where the Machiavellian philosophy of the ends justifies the means is practiced with contempt for the electorate. There are a few programs on the media which analyze some of the main issues and how they will affect the voting public. But usually there is little speculation on the net result the views of the candidates will yield if they have their way, but of course speculation is only that. The main issue disturbing me however is the deliberately erroneous campaign adds - a mixture of distortions and lies that insult your intelligence. Can you really call attempts at winning elections through lies and distortions of fact democracy?

wanabe wrote:UniversalAlien,

UniversalAlien wrote:Whatever you do, vote left, vote right, or don't vote at all it is being fed into a data bank and used, not as it should to satisfy the best wishes of the electorate, but rather to figure a better way to win the election next time.

If people vote per-issue, not just left or right: then they will have to do what the electorate wants to figure out how to win the election next time. Voting issue by issue constantly changes the political environment and makes it hard for those in power to gain a strangle hold of power. Voting also loosens a strangle hold.

The only way to fix that problem is to either vote and use the system, or to protest the system by doing an activity. Simply abstaining from voting as a form of protest makes others votes more potent nothing more. As far as it's effects on voting one might as well be dead if they abstain. Not doing something, and doing something are radically different.

If all our votes are simply used as a means for reelection for the time being, and not used for the betterment of the citizens. By having all those votes cataloged we know well what the people want, and when the protests are over we know exactly what to do.

Politics has always been a game and voting changes the rules, not voting keeps the rules the same.

I agree and I disagree. Your view is rational and acceptable BUT what I disagree with is your statement: "Simply abstaining from voting as a form of protest makes others votes more potent nothing more. As far as it's effects on voting one might as well be dead if they abstain. Not doing something, and doing something are radically different." I believe that under some, but not necessarily all, circumstances not voting is a definitive statement. Would you suggest voting if you knew the election was rigged and the results were known? Egypt until yesterday was that way as were most of the communist countries and voting was meaningless. What some of us maintain is our current political system {USA} is not yet meaningless but is so much a game that often all you are deciding by voting is who was the better game player, not who is the better candidate and what are the issues. In that case not voting is not an insignificant act and tells the players {candidates and political parties} to clean up their act - we want real candidates of substance supporting issues that matter, not game players.

In conclusion my opinion is if the election has meaning to you and voting has meaning to you, then by all means vote. But just to vote for the purpose of adding your vote to a statistical abstraction to feed the data banks of the game players is meaningless and counter-productive to democracy and only adds in maintaining the status-quo of the Machiavellian game players.

wanabe wrote:

I believe that under some, but not necessarily all, circumstances not voting is a definitive statement.

This post is about the politics of USA. People abstaining from voting hasn't been working out so well as a form of protest it is well known that the majority of people abstain from voting, the term is political apathy.

Would you suggest voting if you knew the election was rigged and the results were known?

In this specific example it wouldn't matter, but it's imaginary. I would suggest protest, and thats what happened in Egypt; bravo. If a "third world" country can do it, so can USA.

What some of us maintain is our current political system {USA} is not yet meaningless but is so much a game that often all you are deciding by voting is who was the better game player, not who is the better candidate and what are the issues.

That is text book political apathy. Voting for the candidate you like doesn't just mean democrat or republican it means: green, independent, libertarian, peace and freedom, Ron Paul(what ever he is) etc. The meaningfulness of an election depends on the votes ultimately not on peoples attitudes.

Who is gaining from you not voting; the existing government. Who is loosing or abstaining from their rights, you. The only way voter abstinence might work is if just about all people didn't vote. There are candidates of great substance loose the apathy and do some research on them.

I am not completely disagreeing with you. Some of your points are valid. There are definitely times when one should vote and be heard. But I still say this is not always the case and come to the same conclusion:

In conclusion my opinion is if the election has meaning to you and voting has meaning to you, then by all means vote. But just to vote for the purpose of adding your vote to a statistical abstraction to feed the data banks of the game players is meaningless and counter-productive to democracy and only adds in maintaining the status-quo of the Machiavellian game players.

In other words I still believe under some circumstances and in some elections not voting might have meaning. The fact that our republic does give us the option of not voting is also significant and there might be some who would argue that it is almost as important as the right to vote.

As has been mentioned negative campaign adds are not new and go all the way back to the beginning of the republic; BUT to what extent and how negative were they in the past? Obviously during the Civil War era they must have been quite negative because of the extremity of divided opinion at the time. But now the negative campaigning seems to be being generated for its own sake or because some statisticians claim negative adds achieve the objective - to win! And what I am saying is they also achieve another objective - to nauseate and alienate the electorate. Some of these negative campaign adds may get some people to vote the way the manipulators want, but what they should ask themselves is how many voters will vote the opposite way because of the negative add {opposite to what the negative campaign add is attempting to do} OR how many become so alienated by this wallowing in negativity that they do not vote at all - OR in fact is that what these negative generators really want, to get some people not to vote as part of achieving victory in the election???

Mcdoodle wrote:For non-Americans what's bewildering is the lack of control over candidate spending, and the recent development that seemingly unlimited funds can be spent by groups pretending not to endorse a particular candidate, who nevertheless plainly do support one candidate and opppose others, sometimes vehemently. This doesn't reflect on representative democracy in general. Most other developed and many developing countries have greater controls over candidate spending.

Some good points. Whose in charge? And what is the real agenda? The Supreme Court recently ruled on the legality of corporations spending money and influencing elections - they won. Score one for the power of money over the power of people. This is part of the whole point of starting this thread on the forum. Political commercials reflect nothing but who has more money to buy the election. Facts, and the reality and net result of politicians is not important. I still say to them {the politicians} winning is all that matters.

"While money doesn’t talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony"
-Bob Dylan

Max1128 wrote:Negative political ads are an unfortunate part of living in today's democracy. Democracy includes free speech, and that means campaigns can say as much smears as they want. It's kind of abusing democracy for democracy's sake, ironically enough. It only really proves democracy doesn't work if it lets special interest groups take advantage of free speech, and put a candidate in office that will represent them (a select few) instead of the broader interests of the majority of Americans. And with the combination of Super PACs and Wall Street bankers putting a ton of their money on Romney, this seems like an apparent possibility. One could argue that negative ads are just candidates resorting to any means they need to so the right person gets elected. In other words, the ends justify the means. But people who aren't in these special interest groups will most likely keep saying that the rich are using their wealth to get even richer.

If negative ads to prove democracy doesn't work, specifically it'll make democracy turn into a plutocracy, with the wealth being in control as opposed to the people by using their money to influence the elections enough.

Well said! I was just watching a Bill Moyers show where he pointed out that in the recent recall election in Wisconsin where the governor had passed legislation blocking public service unions, millions where funneled in from an unknown political Super PAC in Virginia so as to defeat the recall, and they did. Money has always had a significant influence on politics in the US and elsewhere but in today's extremely polarized political environment it is soon becoming all that talks and all that matters. I again quote those lines from a Bob Dylan song of the 60s or 70s:

"While money doesn’t talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony"
-Bob Dylan

So maybe I should re-phrase the original question to read:

Do political commercials prove democracy does not exist?

Very informative info from Ecurb and edelker, thanks. 'Seems to me' that you are answering the original question: "Do political commercials prove democracy does not work?" And reaching at least close to my conclusion that it is now questionable whether it even exists. How can anyone say they live in a democracy if money can influence and buy an election and not even be required to tell the truth to do so? I don't see how a plutocracy can be called democratic. Or maybe its like that famous classic best selling economic book from 30 or 40 years ago "The Money Game" by Adam Smith, in which he reached the conclusion that what our economic system is is 'socialism of the rich'. That may explain why they influence and buy the election through commercial advertising but what the heck does that have to do with Democracy? One man one vote becomes meaningless. Of course there are those who will say this is a republic not a democracy. A cynic might be more prone to call it a form of racketeering.

Ecurb wrote:

Jinxy wrote:The ads are out there...why would they exist if it was not believed that they were effectively informing people of their own brand of 'truth'?

Of course no candidates would waste money advertising if they didn't think it was effective. Nonetheless, that doesn't prove that even those paying for the ads believe that "the general population would rather get their 'truth' from a 30 second commercial than (heaven forbid) do their own research and learn about each candidate." Why do you assume it does? Among the many reasons a candidate might advertise:

1) To persuade his supporters to vote (half of the registered voters, after all, don't. Mobilizing supporters is the key to victory). 2) To make sure his message is heard by that small percentage of voters who don't get information from other sources. 3) Perhaps the political pros are incorrect; they "believe" ads help, but they really don't. 4) To reinforce opinions voters have formed using other sources of information. 5) To educate the public on some new issue that hasn't been sufficiently covered in the News.

So it is likely that ads are (mildly) effective -- but we cannot conclude that the general population would rather get their truth from ads than from their own research -- or even that candidates "believe" that they would.

An interesting topic on one of those news analysis programs claimed that poles, surveys, or whatever means they use to gauge the effectiveness of campaign ads, showed that the negative campaign ads are effective. Personally I find they are effective in causing two distinct reactions: 1. I can no longer stand watching television or listening to the news on the radio much. 2. I would definitely not vote if it were not for the fact that only one political party represents my interest and therefor feel obligated to vote for that party - but no political commercials were necessary for that.

So if these political pundits are trying to alienates the voters with their annoying and repetitive barrage of campaign ads they are succeeding. Maybe some of them want to do just that?

Now a word for democracy and political commercials. The latest in mind bending and manipulative commercials, and the one that has now forced me to stop watching even the news on TV, is the Romney add where they use Hillary Clinton's campaign against Obama in the primary to show how she dislikes Obama. To me this is a despicable use of one candidates former statements in a different election to manipulate the voting public. At one point in the add Hillary says "Shame on you Barrack Obama". What's missing from the Romney add is the final analysis which should be shame on you Mitt Romney for attempting to manipulate events to suit your power agenda irrespective of the truth - it should be illegal. But then again do politicians of his elk have any sense of shame or is it like i said earlier still the Machiavellian rule - winning is all that matters and might makes right?

-- Updated July 25th, 2012, 1:31 am to add the following --

Been awhile but I return and update my current view. The more I watch the commercial warfare between the major candidates the more I think that the best candidate may yet win; And why do I say that? The continuous negative adds will probably take the greater toll in votes on the candidate who has the most negative factors in his history but who ever has the greater bankroll does have an advantage this being the Republicans. But when I watch the Obama add showing Romney's finances I am impressed as are many. Never in my lifetime have I seen a campaign setting the political parties back to their perceived state in the past in at least one aspect -- the Republican appearing to represent money and the wealthy with Democrats representing the middle and lower clases. The fact that Romney represents the money class can not be hidden and their rhetoric on trickle down economics will not stand up to the scrutiny of most people even those of limited intelligence. As usual Republicans will attempt to pick up votes from the so-called Christian right and so-called moral majority {which is probably now a moral minority}. Democrats being intelligent enough to stay away from the gun control issue which turned many against them in the past would seem to be the favored party by more than Republicans. But what do i really know? I was surprised at how well the Republicans did in the last election. And oh yes their are rich Democrats in he mix - some of them believing that what is good for the most benefits the most and they too profit from a vibrant middle class.