God, please bring the end of the political season soon!

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs

from JoeUser Forums
Dear God, please bring the end of the political season soon.

As my sub-head says, and the old rock n' roll tune said: Signs, Signs, everywhere there's signs...

I'm tired of seeing political signs littering the sides of the roadways, I'm tired of political ads chewing up radio time, TV time and leading to debates on the TV talking head shows and news seemingly every day.

Please just let it all end soon.


Seriously, I love a good political debate and contest as much as the next guy/gal, but I'm tired of it all this year. The signs were up months ago and just keep getting worse. The political ads, even for candidates that can't even rate a spot in the League of Women Voters sponsored debates (e.g., see Josh Rales, candidate for Senate in Maryland, or perhaps Lichtmann, also candidate for senate in Maryland) started running months ago and I'm just tired of seeing all of them.

It wasn't even until the last week or two that the so called and pre-ordained front runners in some of the contests started running their advertisements. Rales was out wasting (yes, I said wasting) his money since he seems to not even be pulling 15% of the poll numbers months ago. I'd never have heard of the guy if not for his advertisements, so I guess he bought a little name recognition, but sadly for him it seems to have done no good with those answering polls and indicating that they are voting in the primary in a week.

Meanwhile the number of signs for candidates continue to spring up and get worse. You drive down the road and there are what seems to be 15 - 20 signs all placed stragetically in front of each other trying to be "the one" that will get your attention, and trying to block the ones that opponents put up seemingly just minutes before.

Will those signs be taking down within days of the primary as required by law? Heh. The campaigns never seem to have the time/money to go back and do that work. Not that I blame people that took a loss and aren't in the mood to be out there doing it, but still, why should I have to suffer the eyesores just because they lost and aren't happy about taking down their campaign materials.

Will the advertisements stop? Well, actually yes, that will likely happen because those cost money and aren't budgetted for over the days that immediately follow the primary. Still, within a few weeks after they'll get back out and be bloodying up each other in the general election. Maybe those campaigns will be more fun, and maybe the workers will be more conscientious about where they put their materials, but I doubt it.
politics
3,509 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
I almost forgot to mention that I'll also be glad to stop bringing home piles of junk mail in the form of political mailings that have been hitting my mailbox. Mailings for candidates I've never heard of, that give little to no real information about the candidates themselves, their positions and platforms and such continue to come streaming into my mail.

If the people that sent the stuff out actually would tell me more than their name and the office they are running for -- important information such as their party affiliation, their credentials, their prior history in office, etc. -- I might be more interested and might even remember some of their names.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
Heh.

The way I figure, the political season is never over, on account of it not being so much a "season" as it is "the day to day running of the country, which our political system expects each of us citizens to be actively involved in".
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
You would hate it down here as we have elections every year!
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
Psst!  You got a feature! 
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
Not to mention the damn recorded phone calls from cadidates. I hate that. I hate election years.
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
Not to mention the damn recorded phone calls from cadidates. I hate that. I hate election years.


I don't get those that often, but if I did I can guarantee that I wouldn't vote for that individual. Robotic/automated calls are about as cold and impersonal as you can get.

I do get a laugh out of the solicitations to become a special supporter/founding member or whatever other funny title a politician wants to give me for donating to their campaign. Apparently they aren't smart enough to notice that I *never* give money to political campaigns. Why should I bother considering that the coffers were long since filled with PAC and other special interest monies??


I did have a talk with my wife though and she's gonna give the poor underdog Democrat Senatorial candidate (Rales) a vote. He doesn't have a chance in hell. The League of Women voters passed him up completely for the Senatorial debate that they sponsored -- they only brought in the two front runners and ignored everyone that was polling under 15% declaring them not viable candidates. The wife is a Democrat so she can vote in that primary while I vote in the GOP side.
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
To me this is like the World Series... and a presidential election year is like the Olympics! I love a good election season, and most of what you complain about is what I love about it! Ok, I could do without the telemarketers and their "surveys" and all, but to me... LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!! ;~D P.S. It seems there is just as many signs and other promotional gear around election time as there is aroudn Superbowl time :~D
Reply #8 from JoeUser Forums Top
this might be the funniest article i've read in months on this site...LMFAO!!!!

want it all to go away? this is from someone who from their beginnings on this blog site ,,,right after the 2004 election have pretty much had a theme of why republicans are and will win every election and are on the right side of every issue. in fact, your blog site featured an article in the very beginning LOOKING FORWARD to the 2006 elections and the crushing of democrats...





Looking ahead to 2006Signs do not look good for DemocratsBy terpfan1980Posted Friday, November 19, 2004 on My worldDiscussion: Politics
i guess you have the "stay the course" position in Iraq and "cut and run" on the elections you were personally looking forward to 2 years ago.
then, the talk was how the republicans were so right and democrats so wrong that they couldn't stop this conservative momentum. now, you just "want it all to go away." again,,,LMFAO!!! thanks for the chuckle this morning,,,take care:)

one question,,,were you that kid on the playground who would "take his ball and go home" when he started losing the game?
Reply #9 from JoeUser Forums Top
Sean Conners, a.k.a. SConn1


Ok, so you can laugh if you want to, but it doesn't change the point of the article here, nor the validity of same.

The general elections are one thing, but the whole run up to the elections has become a complete mess -- literally and figuritively.

For example, as noted in the original article, I can't drive up nor down the street without seeing literally dozens of signs all over the place in just about every piece of public right-of-way that exists. It's one thing for a supporter of a candidate, or group of candidates, to place yard signs in their own yards, but quite another to have signs littering the highways and byways. Radio ads, ok, again I can accept them. Depending on what you are listening to you may not even have to hear them. At least they do go away once the election has happened, or at least they change to being advertisement contests between the major parties rather than between lower level candidates that are beating up on each other in mudslinging campaigns.

Finally, before you or anyone else tries to say my outlook is so negative because the writing appears to be on the wall and it seems that the GOP is gonna get squashed in these coming mid-term elections, understand that I concede no such thing and it does not affect the point of this article either. It may happen, it may not. Certainly the GOP has failed in ways that would mean they deserve to be sent packing, but so has the other side. In fact, so have many of the same idiots who are littering the air-waves, highways, roadsides, news papers, etc.

The point I've tried to make here is that there really isn't a need to waste so many resources, litter so many locations, or do anything to the level that the candidates have to try to get the attention of the voting public.

Again, if given a choice, I would be fairly certain that the people that are making the biggest messes are the ones that I would be least likely to vote for. I don't need to see 100 signs in a row for a candidate to decide to vote for them, and yet quite literally that is what I've seen. I can't even stomach the thought of taking a picture of some of the places where it's that bad, or near that bad, but it is. Signs just barely tacked onto fences, stuck up on little holders that don't last through the wind storms, and in other ways make messes of the countryside.

Want my vote? Want my attention? Do something news worthy and earn my respect that way. Mail me *one* piece of campaign literature that provides biographical information and tells me what your platform is. Don't send me a postcard a day as you just irritate me and fill landfills and paper recycling centers needlessly.