We have reached the end-point of "negative campaigning".

When I was younger, campaigning was a mix of positive and negative. Alongside the attack ads, candidates would also advertise the positive aspects of their own platform, showing the optimism of what they would achieve. Over the decades, as they discovered the attack ads on their opponents were more "effective" to getting themselves elected, campaigns went increasingly negative. Today we're basically 100% attack ads with no advertising the benefits of their own policies.

But as I say, we've reached the end-point. The theory of an attack ad is that your protection is the path to avoid the horror you demonstrate is the other guy. In the current moment, this strategy has gone radically into reverse. Running attack ads is now hurting national-level democrats. Why? Their attacks have been demonstrated to be manufactured. An attack has to be based on what the other guy actually did. The classic example is the "very fine people" attack. More and more people have gotten off their ass and actually watched Trump's comments that day many years ago. Everyone who realizes that this attack is an egregious lie is now motivated to vote for the person attacked by those attacking him.

The Democrats are having greater and greater trouble with this. The only strategy either party knows is negative campaigning at this point. They have forgotten the skills for positive campaigns. But with the amount of demonstrable lies the Democrats have used with which to attack Trump, their attacks are now increasing Trump's popularity by the day.

The dynamic has become, Democrats attack Trump -> Trump's poll numbers go up. Democrats own energy is helping Trump. The best they can do is to shut up. But given the collapse of society around us, that isn't an option either, because they are the party in power.

For the moment this works only with regards to Trump, but the more the Democrat localities continue to dissolve, this dynamic will enter the more local races as well.

If the Republicans were a true opposition party, they'd have a field day. But Republicans are equally blind to their own failure: namely they fight like hell to gain and use power over the state apparatus which their marketing claims they are against empowering. The Republican base genuinely wants to CUT government. Republican base aren't so interested in having Republican government vs Democratic government. The base wants parts of government eliminated entirely. No government there to be run by anyone. The hypocrisy of the Republicans working to take power over precisely the government their base wants to eliminate neuters their attempts at resistance to Democratic dominance of government. As evil as the Democrats are, at least their lies align with each other. They say they want more government, and they continue to campaign for more government.

Our society is burning down around us.