It will be nice to head to the polls today and put another campaign season behind us. I was growing tired of the ads telling us how much Senator Tammy Baldwin has raised our taxes alternating with those telling us about how she is fighting to preserve our healthcare, mixed in with ads for the former Democrat who is now a Republican and thinks that makes him like Ronald Reagan.
Governor Walker is making one final campaign swing through the Fox Valley today to trump up (pun intended) last minute support before voters head to the polls. Fortunately, I won’t have to cover another rally for a while and he can focus on running state government again. Yep, after today we can finally take a break from all of the campaign noise.
Wait a minute….I’m being told that this is not election day for the campaigns that I just mentioned. Actually, all of these people saturating the airwaves and criss-crossing the state don’t come up for election for ANOTHER YEAR YET!!
Obviously, I was having a little fun with you there. But what is not fun in the near-constant campaign cycle that we voters have to endure in the modern political process. I’m not sure which strategy candidates are employing now: get people to make up their minds early–because they are not likely to change after that, or bombard the folks as early as possible so they eventually tune out everything and probably don’t even want to vote anymore.
In the past, starting a campaign more than a year before the election was seen as a sign of desperation–especially for an incumbent. Better to save your powder for after Labor Day when people were actually paying attention to elections. But then campaign finance laws came into effect and the need to get more people to give you smaller amounts of money became more important. And to get more people to give requires more time–and thus the never-ending election cycle was born.
We may get to enjoy a brief reprieve the next couple of months, as Christmas advertising pushes political ads to the side. Let’s just hope retailers don’t follow the lead of politicians and start their Holiday ads for 2018 on December 26th of 2017.
