Curiously enough, centenarian rightist Juan Ponce Enrile last week raised the hackles of and heckling from fans and acolytes of former strongman Rodrigo Duterte on of all things, policy.

Out of the blue last Saturday, Enrile in a Facebook post argued Duterte’s bloody war on illegal drugs was not a legitimate law enforcement policy.

After characterizing the Duterte fandom as “advocates and supporters of a strong-arm style of government,” he then said “they think that the (Duterte) drug war was a legitimate law enforcement policy. It was not. The antidrug law did not, to my recollection, authorize killing suspected people with impunity.”

Before the day was even out, an irate Duterte fandom was up in arms and even led, Enrile claims, to his brief suspension from Facebook after raging Duterte followers presumably mass reported him.

The Duterte fandom is still ganging up on Enrile as I write this. But it seems the presidential legal adviser is ably parrying his newest critics and detractors.

In any case, their exchanges not only made for rollicking entertainment but also, believe or not, was refreshing in these otherwise arid days when political news coverage is mainly obsessed with who’s winning or losing in the midterms.

For its immediate worth then, the ongoing brawl between Enrile and the Duterte fandom is instructive of how refreshing it sometimes is when raging political issues of the day trump political personalities.

However, it is highly unlikely that lazy focusing on personalities in the tarpaulin-crazy run-up to the midterms — which in the journalism trade is known as horse race coverage — will dramatically change anytime soon.

In fact, it doesn’t help any that the propensity to release dubious after dubious surveys showing who among the senatorial bets are in the winning circle is suspiciously intended to hoodwink the electorate into losing focus on substantive issues.

But aren’t you tired of it all? Aren’t you at the end of your wits when you see the incompetents winning? And aren’t you exhausted from whining and cynically blaming the “bobo” electorate for the mess?”

Hazarding a guess that you really are on the edge on matters electoral, let political experts comfort you that seeing elections as a horse race is actually bad for your sanity.

And, that by looking at elections is about issues, on where politicians stand on raging issues of the day, isn’t a maddening Quixotic undertaking but is in fact saner.

In fact, paying personal keen attention to relevant issues now counts as a revolutionary act against personality aka showbiz aka TikTok politics, which does nothing more than alienate the public from politics.

And that’s not a false claim. Research about media reporting is showing that seeing elections as a horse race “leads to a specific public perception of politics that is dominated by a focus on political actors’ motivations for gaining power rather than their substantive concerns for the common good.”

Which in turn, without anyone being the wiser, leads to frustrations over an uninformed electorate or the phenomenon of the so-called “bobo” voters.

What that means essentially is that a host of media pundits and so-called social media influencers are basically mouthing idiocies if they talk only of personalities instead of scrutinizing issues.

And, this might leave a sting, most of us of the thinking voter class are as guilty as them.

Many of us, in fact, have no right to instinctively call Filipino voters “bobo” if we slacken from our avowed responsibilities to hammer our politicians on what they can actually do about raging substantive issues like jobs, food security, health care, worker’s rights and education.

Issues, which according to a recent survey, are the top concerns of Filipino voters when deciding on whom to vote in the coming midterms.