It’s hard to believe it’s 2010 – and that come November, American voters have a lot of decisions to make. Democrats, Republicans and everyone in between has already begun respective tirades against the opposite viewpoints. Flip to MSNBC or Fox News and talking heads will spew their slanted opinions over ticker tape that reads “Decision 2010”. Voters still have a few months left to make sense of all the political noise surrounding this year’s gubernatorial, congressional, local and state elections – but will they be able to wash the mud off the actual facts? With negativity and jabs at opponents far outweighing positive political ads, will the actual issues emerge clearly?

Political mudslinging certainly isn’t a new phenomenon – candidates have been buying ad space to slay their opponents since our country’s inception. And certainly, a little healthy competition serves our country well and motivates voters to hit the polls on election days. The disturbing trend lately – and one that seemed to reach fever pitch during the Obama/McCain race of 2008 – is that candidates are now focusing almost all of their ad dollars on negativity. At the end of a nasty ad, a viewer/voter knows everything about why they should hate the opponent – but nothing about why they should vote for the candidate who bought the ad. This imbalance is frightening, mostly because it blinds and manipulates the viewer.

Of course, in a perfect political climate, voters wouldn’t need negativity to influence their opinions and would give their vote to the candidate they saw best fit for the position – but sadly, we don’t live in a perfect political world. Negativity and mudslinging have become as common in political television and print advertising as the colors red, white and blue. No matter your political opinion though, it’s safe to say that if Saturday Night Live can generate entire two-hour episodes mocking our political atmosphere, today’s politicians and their outlandish accusations and hate campaigns are providing too much fodder.