Politics

Federal Election Commission

I don't watch the news on TV or listen to it on the radio or on podcasts. I do read, but what I read is almost entirely blog posts. Big newspaper websites either have a paywall or so many ads that it tests my patience waiting for them to load so you can actual start navigating without the screen being redrawn every second. And then it takes real determination to follow the story past all the fluff.

So what I get is other people's reactions to what the media is reporting, and most of it is of a conservative bent.

There is a great deal of complaining about certain members of congress, how they are no good, rotten so and so's. If they are so rotten, how is it they keep getting reelected? How? I'll tell you, it's plain and simple, they run a well financed campaign that tells people exactly what they want to hear. What they tell people might not, shoot, probably will not, have anything to do with what they will try and accomplish once they get elected, but that doesn't matter, because once the election is over most people will go back to their real lives and completely ignore whatever the government is doing, unless it actually bites them. Then they might pay attention, for a moment or two anyway.

It we want to unseat these despicable members of Congress, you have to find someone to run against them, you need a boatload of money to pay for the advertising and you need a message, a message that tells the people what they want to hear, which is kind of a problem because that is exactly what the incumbent is saying. So crafting a message is going to be a bit of a trick. Somehow you have to convey the impression that your message is saying what the people want to hear, but more better, to use the vernacular.

But that's not going to be enough. You are also going to need a network of people out there hobnobbing with the leaders of various groups, like unions and churches, persuading them to vote for your candidate and not the despicable incumbent, and that is going to be tough, because the incumbent will have a history of granting special favors to his/her supporters and those favors buy a certain amount of loyalty.

Another problem that conservatives face is that they tend to be more reclusive than social, so networking, actually going out and meeting with people is going to be more like work than it is for liberals, who seem to thrive getting together in big crowds. Or maybe that's just me.