Exploring the ‘realm of nearly’ on the road to November

In the immediate aftermath of an election, people are naturally inclined to paw through the results seeking lessons about ourselves and messages about our future. These reflections are useful, often instructive and, if nothing else, at least a little cathartic. Following a primary election such as we’ve just completed, they have a particular value, because they set up the game board for the definitive contest now only a few months away.

You find such insights and predictions in stories already today in the Daily Herald and other media, and you’re sure to find them in ever greater depth in the weeks ahead as people who follow such things most closely have time to examine results, consider in more detail what led up to them and reflect on the newly clear strategic implications.

This is important coverage, and I hope you will make use of it as you prepare your thoughts regarding the decisions you will make this November. And, in that process, I hope you also will reflect on what the primary elections have shown us about the role of political messaging and the means of its delivery in the selection of candidates. On that theme, I have some preliminary observations.

One that affects me most profoundly hearkens back to my “Letter to Readers” of a couple of weeks ago in which I complained about the influence and risks of hyperbolic, deliberately misleading fear-mongering that stormed the airwaves and cyberstreams during the peak of this campaign. Political analyst Bill Morris, a former state senator and ex-village president in Grayslake, emphasized the impact of such messaging in remarks to our Marni Pyke Tuesday night after the conclusion of the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

“Most voters,” he said, “are caught up in the fog of negative ads and mailers … It is very absurd and pretty much makes it nearly impossible for Joe and Jane Sixpack to make a decision on these big-money campaigns.”

I keep searching for hope in the space opened by that word “nearly.” It’s found in responsible media, responsible voter organizations and even responsible advocacy groups that strive to provide reliable, contextual information about candidates. That’s where truth and context hide, and it’s the place where serious voters have to look to better understand the distinctions that separate candidates. It is the space where we Joe and Jane Sixpacks must start looking now if we are to avoid the pre-election onslaught to come this October.

It is important to remember that alarmist personal attacks are about winning. They are not about governing. To the extent that they work, it is as much an indictment of the people influenced by them as is the indifference of the people who do not vote at all. Importantly, both groups have a consequential effect on both the winning and the governing.

So, if I have, as an editor, anything to offer by way of assisting your exploration of the realm of “nearly” in the run-up to the campaign for midterm elections, it is that whether you base your vote on impressions you take from hysteria in advertising or don’t pay attention to politics and don’t vote at all, you play an important role in the formation of our government, the issues it pursues and the way it pursues them. You will live with the consequences. So will the rest of the community, state and country.

As political analyst Morris indicated, there are flaws in our system that need to be addressed. In the meantime, the responsibility remains for all of us to be critical analysts and to be attentively, even if not deeply, engaged in where we find the information we base our choices on and in how we analyze it.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World” has been named a Book of the Year by the Chicago Writers Association and is available at eckhartzpress.com.