"I don't know and I don't care. Or is it I don't care what I don't know. Whatever..."
Being involved in one or two campaigns this year has been somewhat of an eye opening experience. At first I thought my side might have a messaging problem. After listening quite carefully to the messages, dissecting them, and then putting them back together again, I came up with an iron clad conclusion. There is nothing wrong with the messaging. The transmission is fine - the reception however, is fuzzy.
We are now in the heat of the campaign season. We are barraged with endless, repetitive TV ads, robo-calls, mailers, door knocking, and so on. True messaging gets mixed in with half-truths, quarter-truths and even some out and out lies. It is what Alvin Toffler called "over stimulation". And what happens when we get over stimulated, our brains can't take any more. So we shut down our receivers. In other words, we tune out.
Jeff Johnson, who is running for Governor, has a very simple, yet very true message. "We can do better". In all facets of government, be if federal, state or local, we can do better. Yet, people hear ads put out my the media concerning our below average unemployment rate and the thousands of jobs created. Were there jobs added in the past four years? Yes. Were they the right kind of jobs? In other words, were they high paying, benefited jobs? Were they adequate enough to raise a family and handle the increasing cost of living? In many cases the answer to those questions is "no". This is what is meant by "we can do better".
How do we get through to voters that we are just coasting right now. We are one card away from our house of cards crashing down. Our welfare costs are unsustainable. Our state pension funds are underfunded, causing them to be unsustainable. Our state taxes are too high, causing people and companies to move elsewhere. Many of our expensive government programs are outdated, superfluous, our just plain unneeded. Our roads continue to fall apart while we use scarce transportation dollars for trains very few people ride. And I could go on and on.
The commercials for keeping the status quo are sprinkled with fairy dust and snake oil. The statists are counting on the fact that many voters will not peel back the skin of the onion. The truth is simply this - the soft underbelly of our state reveals that we are in trouble - big, big trouble. I will use the word the Left loves to use - what we are doing is unsustainable. The costs for our colleges and universities continue to grow unchecked and our MNSure Program is an expensive world class disaster.
Can we do better? Absolutely. Should we do better? We have to. Can our messaging convince the sleepy, the bored or the low information voter? I hope so. If we can't, we will have four more years of status quo statists, selling us more and more snake oil, while our underbelly continues to soften.
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