Quote of the Day (Roger Ailes, to a Client He Masterminded to Victory)

“Jesus, nobody likes you. Your own mother wouldn't vote for you. Do you even have a mother?”— American television executive and media consultant Roger Ailes (1940-2017), before creating successful ads for his client, eventual 1980 New York Senate race winner Alfonse D’Amato, quoted by Gabriel Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country (2014)

It may be hard for some voters to see, but some candidates, like former Senator D’Amato (nicknamed “Senator Shakedown” by The New Republic), cannot be stomached at any level, no matter what sleazy commercials and social-media posts that will reach an Election Day crescendo may tell you about an opponent.

Roger Ailes might agree with the proposition that a politician can be sold like soap, but I don’t think that does justice to what he and other political consultants have wrought. Now, crud can be sold as if it’s soap—at least, if you make the perfectly logical equation that certain politicians are crud.

So take your responsibility seriously as you cast your ballots on Tuesday. If you’re not careful, you might get 18 years of a politician that even his consultant can’t stand, as New York State did once it elected D’Amato, the sleazy product of Joseph Margiotta's Nassau County political machine.

(The image that accompanies this post about Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group, was taken at the Fox News Headquarters in Times Square, New York, June 14, 2013, by Sgt. Christopher Tobey—before, of course, Ailes lost his job over sexual harassment allegations.)