Stuck in the Muck of Another Midterm Election

Wading into the current election is like swimming in a swamp. It is smelly and nasty, yet we dive in anyway, hoping we will find something nice under the muck.

What should be an important moment for American voters is submerged in a cesspool of negative advertising and vitriolic attacks. There is a sense of disgust at the whole process, and a general malaise that translates into “there is nothing I can do that matters.”

Gary Gershman, J.D., Ph.D.

The last three decades have seen a majority of Americans dissatisfied with Congress but happy with their own representative. Even that sliver of positivity has disappeared as a majority of Americans are now also unhappy with their own representatives. Current polls suggest the lowest midterm congressional approval ratings for a midterm election in modern political history.

So what’s a voter to do? Where does the disillusionment come from?

Voter cynicism is compounded by years of misinformation on TV, radio and especially the Internet, leaving voters either not sure what to believe or willing to believe almost anything. Conspiracy theories are alive and well (in both parties). Twenty eight percent of voters believe in a secret power elite that controls the world (and another 25% aren’t sure.) Twenty percent of Republicans believe Obama is the anti-Christ, and 30% of Americans believe or aren’t sure if the government adds mind-control technology to television broadcasts. A quick check on Websites (e.g. Politifact) sees an astounding amount of false information littering the airwaves, making it very difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. The result is we live in an age of cognitive dissonance – the more information one hears that disproves what they believe the more their initial belief is reinforced, even when it is wrong.

And perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in Florida.
Both candidates, Republican Governor Rick Scott and former Republican Governor, now Democrat, Charlie Crist, are engaged in a brutal, nasty campaign. Both treat each other with the utmost disrespect. Both feed the public with half-truths and blatantly false claims. Scott’s dismal approval ratings and the fact that the race is in a dead heat with as many as 20% of the voters undecided suggest that voters are either thinking long and hard about who they vote for or are just so exasperated they have to figure who not to vote for, making Floridians not want to vote.

But this election does have major implications for both parties at the local and national level – the direction states and the nation will take on a myriad of topics and the 2016 election. Those implications are hard to really see with all the false advertising and information assaulting our senses.

To many voters – none of that matters.

If the Republicans win the Senate will anything really change? Current congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle is fairly inept, leaving room for back benchers to add to Congressional dysfunction. Perhaps that is why more and more Americans want to drain the swamp.

A recent Gallup poll found that over a fifth (22%) of all Americans want to start over, removing and replacing everyone now holding a seat in Congress Maybe it IS time to clean up the swamp – but that can only happen when voters seriously consider the issues and really engage the political process.

As Cassius noted to Brutus: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…” It is time to take a long look, at not only the people in Congress but who put them there, and why. Namely, us.

Gary Gershman, J.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Nova Southeastern University

The views expressed in this guest editorial are that of Gary Gershman, J.D., Ph.D., in NSU’s Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences and are not necessarily those of NSU, its President or Board of Trustees.

###

About the Author: Gary Gershman, J.D., Ph.D., is a professor of legal studies and history and the current chair of the Legal Studies program at NSU’s Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences. He holds a law degree from Villanova School of Law and a masters and Ph.D. in history from

Duke University. He teaches classes in American history, Government, Constitutional law and history, and Genocide and the Holocaust. Gershman has authored two books – one on the Death Penalty (Death Penalty on Trial: A Handbook with Cases, Law and Documents) and one on the Congress (The Legislative Branch of Federal Government: People, Politics and Process.)