Susana Martinez offered Diane Denish a truce on negative campaigning. Denish declined, link.
There doesn't seem to be much doubt among the "experts" that negative campaigning "works". By "works" they mean the candidate who uses it, is more likely to win.
There is even less doubt, that there is no legitimate agenda served by negative campaigning. Nor that the overwhelming majority of voters would ban them if they could.
How can Denish pretend any respect for voters at all, while announcing her intention to continue to bombard them with negative campaign commercials against their expressed wishes?
I stand corrected;
It has been pointed out to me that the previous paragraph is not fair; Denish did not express any intention to continue to run negative ads, rather, she declined to promise to stop running them. There is a difference; the criticism is fair, and I would like to take this opportunity to point to my error, and correct it.
According to the model of Democracy, the candidate's job is to explain issues to voters in order that they know the truth; the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That, in the hope that voters will conclude from the truth that, the public best interests are served by electing that candidate.
As an example; Susana Martinez' job is to explain to voters, using the truth (at least as she believes it) about the advantages of capital punishment and then electing her as a supporter. Diane Denish's job is to explain to voters, why capital punishment is not in the public best interests, and why it makes sense to elect her as its opponent.
Rather, because she has millions to spend on negative ads,
she will endeavor to win by that route instead.
Anything a candidate says instead of the truth, in order to
get elected, is a perversion of Democracy, and not only
should we disallow it, we should hold them accountable for it,
by denying them our votes.
If we cannot make it clear to candidates that,
the terms of public servitude are the prerogative of the public and not of the public servant,then the terms of politics and public service are not the our prerogative at all.
And, they never will be.
2 comments:
Way to ignore the fact that Martinez and all the Republicans had been attacking Denish in the Republican primary.
Partisan hackery, switching over from Janice Arnold-Jones to Susana Martinez.
Way to ignore the fact that this story began with the offer for a truce.
Rest assured that if Susana Martinez fields an ad that I consider dishonest, I will mention it; as I did with Weh's ad.
In the meantime, consider the following;
"Two wrongs don't make a right." -everybody's mother
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