“Both parties recognize this—and that is why the discourse of politics is negative ads and hostility.”
Not negative enough on our side. Lee Atwater understood you have to play by THEIR RULES, so he made sure that “Willie Horton” was a household name. The media BLASTED him for it (and later the Dems took him out), but he was able to get a pathetic candidate into the White House. But with the non-stop media attacks, our side was tricked into never going to that level again.
We have our “Willie Horton” in the guy who killed the Ukrainian babe. Will we use it? Probably most people even here would be afraid to...but remember the point about Willie Horton had NOTHING to do with Willie Horton being a bad guy, or being a black guy, it was TOTALLY directed at The Loser for not keeping him where he belonged, which was in jail.
President Trump’s brilliant “Kamala cares about they/them” ads were examples of powerful negative ads because they combined all of the Democrat horrors in just a few words.
The Democrats love of criminals and hatred of law abiding citizens is just one of their evils.
Unfortunately the Democrat Party owns a long list of other Satanic policies.
Outstanding campaign ads figure out a way to combine all of them in simple concepts.