The only political mail I acknowledge past the dumpster is the odd election-year letter from my local group of Democratic state representatives saying "hi neighbor" and offering a few policy positions. (I haven't gotten anything similar recently from the local Republican candidates for state rep, even as an officially-undeclared voter, but if I did, I'd skim that too.)

That's what political mailers ought to be, but higher-level races naturally encourage more fuckery (out-of-state funding, PACs running the sort of uninformative hot-garbage ads we all hate) because of the scale of the operation and the stakes involved, especially in something like a US Senate race where our choice (or another purple state's) could seriously affect the entire country.

Edit: I agree with you, as well, that I'm currently *extra-*glad to have effective adblocking. What Adblock Plus doesn't grab, uMatrix stops in its tracks; though it's occasionally a nuisance to have to give the latter the okay for new sites, it beats being bombarded with something loud and flashing. I really only ever see ads that're hosted on the same site (usually on local news articles) unless I've allowed 'em for a particular domain.