It’s all part of the game

Dayton Daily News: It tells you something about the nature of this political year when you see a television ad for a certain candidate right after another ad for the same candidate.

Money is flowing freely in amazing amounts. That’s in part because this is the first election after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the decades-old ban on direct corporate spending in political campaigns. Meanwhile, efforts to enact tough disclosure requirements about the sources of money have failed. And such spending is not even capped.

The whole situation is widely expected to be a major new problem for the Democrats. True, labor unions were also unleashed by the Supreme Court, and they’ve been spending on behalf of Democrats. But Democratic contributors don’t seem as motivated as Republicans this year.

As this month progresses (1) that could change and (2) television viewers could become so inundated with ads that they tune them out, literally or metaphorically.

Some of the ads that Ohio has seen already — which are bunched together at such length that they can seem like a program unto themselves — are striking enough to be embraced as entertainment.

The best way to get through the month may be to greet the ads as part of a game. Think of them as a kind of new fall show, somewhat in the “reality” mode so long as the word “reality” is not applied to what the ads are actually saying.