Thank goodness this election will be over after tomorrow. Well, I’m not sure how “over” it will be, but at least we will be past all the political ads. I’ve noticed a very interesting tactic this election. Almost every political ad I see on television, or hear on the radio, and all the candidate yard signs I see, fail to mention the party the candidate belongs to. Somehow I don’t think this is just an oversight.
It seems that identifying as either a Democrat or Republican is considered risky, as though you are making yourself the personal representative of either Hillary or Trump. In fact, the only political ads which identify a party are those which attempt to paint a local candidate as a supporter of Trump or Hillary, something which supposedly should disqualify you from winning. Even if you have announced that you do not support either of the main candidates, the other party still puts out ads smearing you with the party standard bearers.
I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad strategy. If people don’t know what party you belong to, how are they going to be able to find the candidate on the ballot? If a voter prefers to vote by party, this can be an issue. On the other hand, by not identifying themselves as either Democrat or Republican, it could force the voter to actually do some research to find out what that candidate actually believes and to vote intelligently. Yeah, I know – like that is going to happen. People are still going to go to the poll and go through the ballot only voting for those in their preferred party.
Still, not identifying with a party is a novel change in electioneering. It will be interesting to see if it happens again in the next election cycle, or if this is only symptomatic of this particular election with these two particularly reprehensible candidates. All I can say is that I am grateful that they are not the only choices in this election.
As for me, I happily declare that I am a Libertarian, though I’m not running for office. If I were, I would be proud to advertise that fact.