Dems Win, but So Does Negative Politics

I must say I'm less than ecstatic about all the Democratic gains around the country. In my state, Minnesota, Democratic sweep of the legislature is tempered by re-electing a Republican Incumbent Governor. A Democratic control of the US House, is tempered by a Senate race still deadlocked in two cliffhanger elections.
I'm saddened by the state of US politics. Today elections are dominated by slick TV ads with less interest in the truth, more in inflaming passions in the electorate. Prejudice took a front seat in several elections with mixed results. Choosing between two evils cause the electorate to seek out a squeaky clean mundane candidate, with no rough edges but also no outstanding attributes. Our leaders tend to be followers. That makes our form of government more prone to power politics than it already is.
MindBlog

When you go into the voting booth, you’re trying to decide whom to accept or whom to reject. Are you judging who the good candidate is or who the less bad candidate is? The effort by each side to coat the opposition in slime has made many of us cynical, giving us the sense that our task is to reject the worst, not select the best. Nobody’s any good, we think, but some are worse than others. Let’s keep those candidates out of office. Our job becomes one of denying, not awarding, office. What that means is that if you want to win an election, you need to find candidates..., who give us no reason to say no, rather than [one] who present[s] a complex set of features, some attractive and some problematic.