As the midterms enter the final rounds - with November now two weeks away - you get to see some ugly behaviors out of political campaigns as desperation kicks in. Mudslinging, alas, has been with the American electoral process since the earliest days of the Republic. The horrifying thing is how - thanks to the immediacy of modern media - overwhelming and vicious it can get.
If you think there can never be a floor, a low bar that our parties and candidates would never sink below, forget it. There will always a deeper layer of vulgarity certain candidates will always dive into, such as the Republican candidate for governor over in Ohio (via David A. Graham at the Atlantic (paywalled)):
If you don’t live in Ohio, you’ve probably been blissfully free from thinking about Vivek Ramaswamy since the 2024 Republican presidential primary, which he left after arousing the visceral dislike of pretty much all of his rivals, as well as many voters.
Ramaswamy, who’s now running for Ohio governor, is back in the national spotlight this week, once again in extremely unflattering fashion, because of a campaign ad targeting the Democratic candidate Amy Acton. Acton, a first-time candidate, has leaned heavily on her inspiring biography: She has spoken about experiencing homelessness as well as being raped by her stepfather as a child; she later waited tables and delivered newspapers to put herself through medical school, eventually becoming the director of the Ohio Department of Health.
Most recent polls have shown Acton with a small advantage over Ramaswamy, which may be why his campaign resorted to the appalling commercial. The spot features Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, accusing her of being an inveterate liar. “She’s lied her entire life,” Arthur says. “My daughter needs help, and she can’t help you if she needs help herself.”
It is a standard mudslinging tactic to find someone within the opponent's personal orbit - often a family member carrying a grudge - to make personal attacks on how "unreliable" the opponent is, or that they're habitual liars or crooks. The idea is to paint the opponent is as negative a light as possible to discourage even their party faithful in supporting them.
Whether or not it works, such attacks draw a lot of public ire towards the candidate - or the PAC supporting that candidate - for going that negative in the first place. Especially when all the evidence supports the opposing candidate.
The ad immediately drew both outrage and debunkings. “It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at 12 years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point,” Acton’s brother said in a statement. National Review, the conservative magazine, pointed out that court documents provide extensive backup for Acton’s claims, as does contemporary press coverage. She was removed from her mother’s custody at the time; her mother’s husband, Cledith Arthur, whom she accused, left the state after being indicted for sexual assault. He pleaded not guilty and died in 2004.
When even the National Review sides with the Democratic candidate on the fact-checking, the Republican candidate ought to take a step back and apologize. Of course, the Far Right wingnuts never will apologize even when they're clearly losing the fight.
If anyone looks bad in this story, it's the mother: she sided with her second husband when the accusations led to criminal charges, and fled with the guy when he jumped bail.
If anyone looks worse in this story, it's the entire Republican Party. Once proud to campaign on "Family Values" and going after criminals threatening our women and children, they are now happily siding with sexual predators of young girls and following the banner of donald trump carrying his own baggage of sexual assaults and ties to teen sex traffickers. Graham damns the regime for their willingness to aide and abide the worst behaviors among their own party:
For a campaign to cast doubt on a rival’s account of childhood sexual abuse is shocking; to do so despite such evidence is despicable. For years, influential MAGA figures insisted that a conspiracy of pedophiles was running the government and other influential institutions. Now some of them treat pedophilia as no big deal. The Trump administration has tried to downplay the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sexual predator who was at one time a close friend of the president’s and maintained ties to other administration officials as well. Ramaswamy is opting to dismiss allegations of pedophilia and use them to smear an opponent. At an event earlier this year, he said that Acton has no vision “other than to complain about what someone else did to her.”
...The ad has generated widespread condemnation. Even some right-wing influencers who initially spread it, such as Jackie Chea, have had second thoughts: “I have no idea if Amy’s abuse allegations are true, but if they are, then her mother is the monster … I regret framing the post as if Amy was lying about her mother when I can’t be sure about that.” Another, Dan Bostic, wrote, “I’ve never in my life seen someone do something so stupid. It’s hard to even wrap my brain around how someone could possess such horrible political instinct...”
But the ad is another example of how Ramaswamy’s obnoxious personality has turned a race that should have been a safe GOP win into a toss-up. The candidate’s favorability rating is deeply negative. His fellow Republicans continue to dislike him. The outgoing governor, Mike DeWine, whose occasional pangs of conscience make him a profile in near-courage, clearly dreaded endorsing his fellow Republican. And although the national environment is friendly to Democratic candidates this year, no Democrat has won a governor’s race in Ohio since 2006; Donald Trump won the state three times. Acton is a first-time candidate most famous for her association with COVID public-health measures, neither of which is an obvious asset. If Ramaswamy loses, there will be no question about who was responsible.
If Ramaswamy does lose, it will be because he had no other way to win. As much as he and his campaign are saying he's campaigning on the issues, nobody really sees that. On tariffs, on unwanted wars, on the raging economic chaos happening under trump and a Republican-held Congress, he's not reaching the voters... if he's even trying to. All he is running on now is mudslinging Acton.
And this is all Republicans really have anymore. On nearly every major issue concerning American voters, they're siding with Democrats over Republicans. There's nothing the GOP can offer a majority of voters to appease them other than undoing every ideological misstep they've committed under trump's rule, and they can't because their own wingnuts want to drag their party further into the Far Right dogma.
So all they can do is smear and mudsling the Democrats. Not so much to sway undecided voters to their Far Right cause - because the smearing destroys the attacker's reputation among voters more than the opponent getting smeared - but in order to disgust the average voter into not showing up at all. There's solid evidence mudslinging reduces voter interest and turnout, to where the only ones showing up are the extremist blocs - the single-issue angry voter focused on Culture War bullshit.
The only thing the majority of voters should do when the mudslinging happens IS to show up: Defy the wingnut expectations, and vote AGAINST the despicable and vile candidates like Ramaswamy to deny them any victory at all.
Toss the Far Right deeper into their own mud, America. Show up at the ballots. Vote FOR the Democrats they're so desperate to smear.
