Over? It hasn't even begun yet!

Posted at 12:27 PM on August 31, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

One of the most enlightening aspects of taking two months off is it allowed me to find out just how little attention many people give to campaigns. I guess I always sort of knew this, especially since in the campaign of 2004, I watched the traffic on our Campaign 2004 site (it was much better before a database change killed all of our pictures, trust me.) absolutely explode after Labor Day.

The Campaign 2006 site went up in January 2005, when Mark Dayton announced he wouldn't run for a second term, forcing a lot of candidates to start their campaigns sooner than they had planned. And it forced political reporters and wags to start talking about the campaign sooner than they had planned.

Here comes another one of those paradoxes of campaigns. The media and the wags -- well, a lot of them anyway -- are sick of the campaign, and are trying to find something new to talk about. The problem is this comes at a time when the general voting population is just starting to be interested in it.

Much energy has been expended on a who is a CPA and who isn't. And who identified herself as a Democrat in a TV ad and who didn't. Reporters and wags care because it's something new to talk about. But the voters -- at least the ones I've been talking to -- don't. They're not at that stage yet.

The folks who really have been gung-ho on the campaign already made up their mind and did so long ago. Blogs, in general, have been firing salvos at one another under the guise of informing the unknowing what the real story is. It's been fun and it's been entertaining, but has it done any good yet other than to try to test-market some talking points?

My guess is the folks who are truly on the fence in this campaign, are only now getting around to exploring the issues and making decisions. So when I hear people cite polls and say the race -- and I'm not talking about any specific race -- is over, well, nonsense.

Labor Day is the "traditional" start of the campaign -- the real campaign -- for a reason. Everything up to now has been a test drive.

Sidebar: Here's a great little Web site that will help you see how the candidates use small techniques to win points. CampaignSecrets.com.

Comments (1)

I am but a humble blogger, but I too have been struggling with this very thing. I've been trying to keep up a good head of steam over the summer, when campaign material is not always abundant. I am curious to see what the next couple months will be like.

Posted by Jeff | August 31, 2006 1:09 PM

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