We made a quick trip to Michigan last weekend and were suddenly immersed in American politics, post-Citizens United style. Our main exposure came in the form of campaign ads on bar and restaurant TV screens with the sound muted.

Lots and lots and LOTS of campaign ads. Every commercial break contained at least two political commercials about Michigan’s races for governor and U.S. Senate. The screenshot above is from a conservative attack ad against Democratic senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed. These ads blow ALL the dog whistles about El-Sayed’s ethnicity. One ad tries hard to tie him to progressive influencer and Fellow Brown Person Hasan Piker, who’s become the conservative movement’s bête noire in 2026.

It’s exhausting, even with no sound to go with the images. (The only TV we watched with sound was PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre, shout out Marble Hall Murders.) And Michigan voters will have to endure another five and a half weeks of this saturation bombardment. It’ll only get worse as the election draws closer, and even worse than that if the polls continue to show El-Sayed leading the very bland Republican candidate Mike Rogers. The conservatives are getting desperate.

But hey, this isn’t a blog about Michigan politics, so let’s get to the point. Which is, I’d forgotten what it’s like to be immersed in a high-profile election campaign. For the most part, it makes you want to bathe in Purell for a day or six. But there is one undeniable advantage to the nonstop barrage of political advertising: It reminds everyone that there is, in fact, an election with real consequences. Which is not the message you get from Vermont media.

They continue to resolutely ignore the 2026 election, most critically the race for governor. Given her inability to bankroll a TV ad campaign, Amanda Janoo desperately needs a fair share of earned media — the kind of coverage that used to be par for the course. Reporters would shadow candidates on the stump and write compare-and-contrast stories about their positions and records. This year, our media appear to be waiting until the last minute to do anything, just as they did with the August primary. You remember the “sleepy” campaign featuring a bunch of competitive and very costly Democratic races? Yeah, that one.

My brief experience in Michigan suggests that robust spending on TV ads has an indirect but sizeable benefit: It makes newsrooms take the campaign seriously. It’s on TV constantly, it’s front of mind, it’s tough for editors to ignore all the noise.

There’s a potentially deadly irony here for Janoo’s prospects. She can’t afford the ad blitz that would force news organizations to give her what she badly needs: Full-on coverage of her bid to unseat Gov. Phil Scott. But she isn’t going to get it without an unattainable flood of TV ads, which she can’t afford because the campaign isn’t getting much coverage at all. It’s a Catch-22.

The hive mind of our major media organizations, meanwhile, appear to have decided that the big political story of 2026 is a shadowy upstart organization called Rural Vermont Rising. Both VTDigger and Seven Days managed to publish major RVR pieces on the very same day. (If you’re only going to read one, the Seven Days piece is better. Digger’s story is on the uncritical, breathless side.)

I wrote a preliminary analysis of RVR on June 12; I will have more to say in an upcoming post. My views haven’t changed much; I remain skeptical of an organization that assiduously avoids any kind of disclosure while seeking to become (in the words of Seven Days’ headline writer) “a powerful voice in Montpelier.” RVR is a black box. Which makes me very suspicious.

Anyway, neither Seven Days nor VTDigger has given the election campaign anything more than cursory attention since the primary, but they both decided at the same moment to expend their precious reporting capacity chasing down a nascent movement that describes itself as “not ready for prime time.” Those words were spoken by an RVR organizer refusing to allow reporter Kevin McCallum to cover a meeting in Montpelier. Well, gee, if they’re so unready that they can’t let the press in the door, maybe they’re unready to wield the kind of broad influence they seek.

It’s about enough to make me wish for, of all the damnable things, a flood of political advertising on my teevee screen. Because I guess that’s what it would take for our news media to take the campaign seriously.