Spin Cycle
Election Day is seven weeks from today…but with early voting, folks will begin casting ballots in some places later this month. And the email in boxes are jammed with dueling news releases so different from one another, you have to wonder if they’re talking about the same thing.
Witness Saturday afternoon. At 12:18 p.m., the Joni Ernst campaign issued one titled “Joni Ernst Delivers Big Win for Iowa’s Ethanol Industry”. It noted that “President Trump announced he would take action on policy Joni has been pushing relentlessly with the administration for over a year. The administration will take action to allow 10% pumps to utilize the sale of E15, increasing demand for ethanol and corn, and allowing higher sales of E15.” It then included video of the phone call the president made to Ernst, who was with supporters at the time. She put the phone on speaker so everyone could hear.
That was quickly followed at 12:31, just 13 minutes later, by the press arm of the Iowa Democrats, with their “IDP Statement on Sen. Ernst’s Election-Year E15 Ploy”, quoting a party spokesperson as saying, “This is nothing short of an eleventh-hour maneuver by Senator Ernst and her political party to try to save her failing re-election.” It goes on to note, “Just on Thursday, Senator Ernst broke her promise to secure pandemic relief for the biofuels industry by voting for a sham relief package without a cent of targeted relief for Iowa’s ethanol economy, yet including targeted relief for the fossil fuel industry.”
Republicans later refer to Ernst’s “liberal opponent” Theresa Greenfield. “Ms. Greenfield, who lives in one of Iowa’s wealthiest zip codes, prioritized profits over people when she personally signed paperwork to remove mom and pop businesses for a corporate chain,” and that Joni Ernst is a mother, soldier and a leader who has never stopped fighting for Iowa.
Democrats say, “After spending six years undermining our critical ethanol industry, Ernst’s record of siding with her Big Oil donors shows she can’t be trusted to look out for Iowa’s farmers when it matters most.”
Normally I just delete each of those emails as they come in…but thought I’d share this example, especially since it’s the folks in the middle who will decide the election…and it’s exactly the kind of thing that turns those folks off.
