Being a wanna-be wonk who writes a political blog and does a show at a talk radio station whose audience is frighteningly well-informed and follows politics pretty obsessively.
And while they didn’t obsess on the subject, I certainly grew up in household where politics was an occasional subject of discussion. I have been more or less aware of politics and how they work for a long, long time (albeit I didn’t become aware enough to be a conservative until I was 20 or so).
So it’s always a mild culture shock to realize not everyone is the same. In an intellectual sense, I know this, because probably 90% of the people who actually bother to vote at all make up their minds about their decision in the weeks, if not hours, before they go to the polls.
Still, it astounds me how out-of-touch some people are.
No, not the people who don’t follow politics. I’m talking about those of us who do.
I was talking with a business associate the other day. He’s a small businessman – one of the people at whom the Dayton tax hikers are directly aimed. He’s successful at what he does. He makes over $150K a him and his spouse for a couple of thousand dollars a year.
And he asked me what I thought about the campaign. And who the GOP candidate was.
Now, some wonks would roll their eyes – but I know business people who work 70-80 hours a week, and raise families, and try to save a little some mental headspace for themselves; politics doesn’t make the final cut on their schedules, any more than following the NBA or the PGA does on mine.
And so I told him all about Tom Emmer – especially what’s in it for small business people if Emmer wins.
Now, there was little danger the guy was going to vote for Dayton. He remembers Dayton’s disastrous run in the Senate. And he’s gonna vote for Emmer in two weeks, and I suspect his wife will too.
But I walked out of there thinking that it’s a travesty that there is so much as a single small businessperson in this state that has been left in any doubt which candidate is going to help them, and which one is going to screw them blue.
The MNGOP and the Emmer Campaign have some work to do.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.