It's Personal Debt, Stupid. I sent the following message via feedback form to one of my Senators, Robert Menendez, who is in a very bitter and dirty campaign for re-election to a full term. He was a replacement for John Corzine, who ran for and became Governor last year. His opponent, Tom McKean, Jr., son of a long-ago governor, is running one of the nastiest campaigns in memory, and may actually prevail in this Blue State because Menendez refuses to talk about what really matters to New Jerseyans, as Democrats overall refuse to talk to the bread-and-butter issues that people care most about. I warned the Democratic National Committee during the last Presidential campaign that if they didn't talk about the huge issue of personal debt, they would lose. They didn't talk about personal debt. They lost. I tried today to warn them again, thru Menendez individually but urging him to talk to other Dems.

Why are you and Democrats generally not speaking to the issues that really concern people, the most important of which in terms of personal impact is PERSONAL DEBT and USURY? Democrats refuse to address the fact that 29% of Americans are falling behind economically, further and further into debt, and 49% just barely get by. Democrats will LOSE THIS ELECTION if they do not focus on what concerns people PERSONALLY. Debt is crushing the life out of people, and Democrats seem not to care! Speak to the Republicans having trapped people in debt thru bankruptcy "reform". Speak to interest rates of 27% and more, which Republicans love. Speak to the non-tax-deductibility of consumer interest. Most voters in NJ and the Nation care far more about the worry they have every single month about covering expenses than they do about the war in Iraq, accusations of corruption or sexual misconduct by members of Congress, or terrorism that is unlikely to affect them personally. DEBT affects them personally. Speak to DEBT and you will win this election, because Republicans are in favor of high interest rates and the inescapable debt for the little guy that such rates produce. If Democrats remain silent, the voter must assume you too favor oppressive personal debt for the little guy. You have very little time to change the thrust of your own campaign and of the Democrats' campaign generally. Do it now! Or Republicans will almost surely retain effective control of both Houses of Congress. Cheers.

I cannot understand why Democrats are so insistent on keeping quiet on debt, usury, and the effective abolition of bankruptcy protection for the little guy. If they don't immediately land hard on these issues, they will lose again. There is too little play in most of the country for any significant turnover in either house of Congress if the poor and middle class voters of the South do not come to understand that the rich who control the Republican Party hate them and want them to be crushed by debt. Conversely, if Democrats can make the poor and middle class of the South and Midwest understand that the worries they have every month when the bills come in are due to deliberate, malicious policies of the Republican Party, Democrats can indeed turn this election around.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:20 PM