Commentary: Ayoub: Sounds of silence return after costly campaigns

While broadcasters, social media and others who make money during political campaigns back their cash-filled trucks up to the bank, silence is returning. It’s a welcome sound. We may argue over results, laugh at new conspiracy theories and breathe sighs of relief or resignation, but the political advertising avalanche goes quiet this week. 

The 2026 midterms were the most expensive ever. Nearly $12 billion alone was spent on political advertising. Television broadcasters will add over $4 billion to their coffers, about a sixth of local television’s aggregate revenue for the year. Nice work if you can get it. 

Throw in direct mail, arena rentals, transportation and sundry other costs and you have yourself historically high spending to win a seat in Congress or the corner office in a statehouse or the last say in how we run this railroad we call democracy. 

I suppose you get what you pay for, but if the fare we were served in Nebraska is any indication, good information was at a premium among the gazillions ponied up for politics this go-round.

To wit: I learned little new from political advertising about Nebraska’s candidates or the ballot referendums we are supposed to decide this election. Yes, there were a couple of clever turns, including one catchy tune, but in aggregate the ads were an incessant parade of the usual: name-calling, innuendo, guilt by association, oversimplification, bandwagoning, straw men, non sequiturs, false dilemmas and slippery slopes. They starred actual candidates, a few paid actors and some real, earnest Nebraskans looking right into the camera telling us how they were going to vote or yukking it up over some perceived duplicity.

We heard a lot about a little, too. For example, boys in girls locker rooms is now apparently a critical cog in the civic health of the state although no one really showed that was even a thing. Meanwhile, the cost of gas and groceries — a thing indeed — kept climbing.

To be fair, making a cogent argument in 30 seconds is not easy, even with AI and other wizardry now available to creators. The “issues” — fodder for debates, candidate forums and thoughtful interviews (hat tip to those who participated) — are rarely fleshed out in half a minute of air time. 

Nebraska candidates, even with holes in their arguments, were on relatively good behavior compared to some of their office-seeking cousins across the country. Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP candidate for governor in Ohio, ran an ad featuring the estranged mother of his opponent, who said her daughter lied about her childhood and the sexual abuse she suffered as a preteen, rape charges that have been part of the official record for years. When he was rightly taken to the woodshed for a well-earned public whooping, JD Vance came to his defense, the vice president telling Republicans critical of the Ramaswamy ad to “stop whining.” Response to the veep’s backstopping was tepid at best, perhaps because too many remember that Vance also told us immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.

A Michigan Democratic candidate who happens to be Muslim is poised to win a Senate seat there. He has been met with a barrage of racist swill and accusations of terrorism from the president to the HHS secretary to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. No telling what the allegations would have been if he were a Lutheran or a Catholic. Right?

Malice has always been a political campaign bottom-feeder, but its abject cruelty seems to have surfaced, giving many pause in wondering just what are the limits of political discourse? Are there limits? 

Coincidently, new research into empathy — a hen’s tooth in a political campaign — indicates the concept and the practice have fallen into disfavor among a significant portion of the population, including some who think it’s “dangerous.” The assertion is based on the belief that unbridled empathy leads us to make seriously bad moral decisions, that we will find ourselves empathizing with the wrong people for the wrong reasons. You can check out the research here. 

Where that leaves those of us who live in the friendly and dare-I-say empathetic confines of “Nebraska Nice” is an open question. Yes, we get after each other pretty good during an election season but then seem to forgive the diss, the disparagement, the disinformation and even the defamation a political campaign can engender. Or maybe not.

All of which makes one wonder why we do it in the first place? Especially since we have plenty of other things to talk about, discuss, question and, for those up for it, debate. I’m guessing we could probably do everything a lot cheaper too … you know … what with gas and groceries.