How Much Contempt Do These Guys Have for the Voters?

By now, everyone knows about the jabs traded back and forth over the size of Donald Trump's Penis.  (Marco Rubio made some innuendos in one campaign speech, and then later in the presidential debates Donald Trump assured the voters that there was nothing wrong with the size of his penis.)
 And everyone agrees it was a low-point in American political history.

....although, not always for the right reasons.

I don't know.  Maybe I've just been reading the wrong articles.  But the articles I've come across have largely decried the incident as a loss of dignity for the American political process.  Much along the lines of "Won't somebody think of all the children watching?" type pieces.

Like, for example, this line from an article in the Chicago Tribune:

So here we are, a penis joke and on the Lord's Day, with kids in the audience.

My concerns are entirely different.  I'm not particularly bothered by the day of the week in which Marcio Rubio made this comment.  Nor am I worried that kids will find out what a penis is a few years ahead of schedule.

What I find more troubling is that this is yet another example of a political culture that focuses on the candidates themselves instead of on the issues.
I've said this a few times before on this blog, but I don't like it when elections become focused on the candidates themselves, because I don't think we should view elections as selecting a man to wisely rule over us as a king.  Instead, we are selecting an executive who can faithfully represent our views on the issues.
When campaigns become less about the issues, and more about the candidates themselves, this is a sign of a broken democracy.

This has always been a worrying trend in American politics, but it has reached a new nadir, with both Trump and Rubio assuming there were votes to be gained or lost over the size of Trump's penis.
As if we, the American people, are supposed to be  concerned over whether or not our presidential candidates have penises big enough for them to rule over us.

And presumably Rubio's and Trump's advisers signed off on this tactic.  And much of the news media is playing alone.  So a sizable part of the political establishment has gone along with this narrative about focusing on the dimensions of  Trump's penis.

And whenever the American voter is being told to focus on something like this, then it is always a clear sign that there's something else that they are being deliberately distracted from.  Like, for example, the attack on the middle class, and how union rights and workers' rights have - been - systematically  -demolished in the last few years.  But don't think about your right to earn a living or your right to unionize.  Instead focus on whether or not Donald Trump has a penis big enough for him to rule us.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on Nazi Propaganda and the Bewildered Herd