I lamented to Leon yesterday about some of the campaign's tone, wherein candidates' messages are sometimes overly simplistic and resort to fear mongering.  Certainly we have to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the pack and part of that is showing the downsides of the other ideas floating around, and appealing to emotion is perfectly natural and not inherently a bad thing–you're trying to persuade people. 

That's why I make comments about job-killing, budget-busting Voodoo Economics, for example, or that anybody who claims to be fiscally conservative ought to support single-payer.  Of course I'm trying to create frames so things I support look better in contrast to what's being offered by “the other side.”

Yet it seems there's a fine line between disagreement, differentiation, etc, and just plain cynical manipulation of our lizard brains and insults to our intelligence.  Brian Dubie's attack on Peter Shumlin's early release plan was apparently supposed to make me fearful for my son's safety, but it just made me angry.

Similarly, I'm a bit annoyed by the “sky it falling” stuff surrounding Vermont Yankee.  Primarily I direct this at people I fundamentally agree with: those who support decomissioning VY and looking ahead to our safe energy future.

Two of my fellow candidates in Franklin-2, Lynn Dickinson and Ron Allard, want to keep VY running another 20 years.  Does it mean that they, along with Dubie, are in the pocket of Big Energy or hate Vermont's environment or are stupid?  I don't think so.  They have different ideas about what Vermont needs to be competitive and secure in economic, fiscal and energy terms.

There are not easy answers to some of our biggest problems, and people need to be willing to consider a variety of alternatives, able to look at complex and nuanced relationships between issues, and ready to put aside idelogical dogma.  Education is an easy target for our more conservative candidates, VY is an easy target for the more liberal.  Both deserve serious discussion instead of rhetorical clubs.

It's interesting to me that education and VY advocates both will harp on the job losses for their cause.  Some have raised the specter of losing over 600 jobs if we go the consolidation route to save money in our educational system.  Others have raised a similar concern over the 600+ jobs that would be lost if VY were to shut down as planned in 2012.  Everybody should acknowledge that these job losses are significant: if Franklin C0unty saw 600 people become unemployed our rate would jump from 5.7% to 5.9%.

Personally, I'm not convinced VY is safe.  I'm not convinced its operators have been forthright.  I'm not convinced we need its output in our energy portfolio.  I'm also not convinced that its employees will be without job prospects if we take action on boosting the economy and planning a good transition to a post-Yankee environment.

You know what ad I'd like to see come from the anti-Yankee folks?  Something that acknowledges the plant has helped our economy since 1972, now that it's past its prime needs to be safely retired, and as we plan for that future we will help its employees move on as we commit to a more secure economy and environment with renewable energy.

We have so many opportunities to do positive, constructive work, and we should start taking them now during the campaign.

todd

(x-posted at Todd for Vermont House)

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