I've written a few more letters and I go hang out with one of the lawyers for a bit.
We talk about the election in general terms, how nasty things have been and how we can see rational reasons to vote either way, so we don't understand why anybody really cares about William Ayers and such. I feel like there are people all over the country having exactly the same conversation.
At some point, the talk moves to our families and she says:
"My mother-in-law and sister-in-law found a plastic surgeon who is having a mother-and-daughter special. By the time I go down for Thanksgiving, they're both going to have new boobs."
Now THAT conversation might be unique to us.
On a more serious note, read this beautiful thing that a Chaliccesseur sent me. Especially if you're voting in Virginia as I did.
CC
1 comment:
so we don't understand why anybody really cares about William Ayers and such
People who vote based on "character." There are a lot of them, and they're why I think Obama could lose.
The GOP advertising is not oriented toward an honest critique of Obama's stated policies, because those policies are mostly centrist and quite popular. Instead, it reiterates the same message over and over: You Can't Trust What That One Says. McCain's most effective tax ads don't go after Obama for his stated policy of raising taxes on individuals making more than $200k and couples more than $250k; instead, the ads say that when you weren't looking, Obama voted to raise taxes for people making $45k!
The fundamental premise of the anti-Obama campaign is that the Democratic candidate is a bait-and-switch: he'll bait you with a nice young man with a good education, raised by his middle-class white mother and grandparents from Kansas, offering basically the same policies as Bill Clinton; and then SWITCH to being an Arab, Muslim, Black Power, protectionist, socialist, anti-Semitic Neville Chamberlain. That's why Charles Krauthammer keeps saying we don't really know Obama, why we get a stream of articles on Obama's associations with various people as revealing the REAL Barack Obama. Have you noticed that Bill Baar has offered very little criticism of Obama's actual platform? Everything that bothers him about Obama seems to be based on what Bill thinks he knows about Obama's character.
It's a way to shift the cost-benefit analysis, because unless you think the risk of Obama's being untruthful about his intended policies is quite high, it is difficult to make a really strong case against electing him. Pretty much every Republican with whom I have discussed this election and who still plans to vote for McCain has stated in one way or another that he does not trust Obama to do what Obama says he will do, either on taxes, support for Israel or some other issue.
And so it may go in the voting booth. The voter's head is agreed with Obama's stated policies, but at the moment she is to pull the lever, the accumulation of Fox News, blog rumors, e-mails and her own lack of experience in trusting black people will coalesce in her gut to change her vote from what she told a pollster.
Post a Comment