Mon, November 1, 2004
Time To Decide—9:42 AM
This weekend, the public radio show This American Life devoted its hour to that famous, quizzical group: undecided voters. Among the many astonishing realities uncovered on the show, I was surprised by how effective the seemingly silly TV ads have been. One undecided voter who has always voted for a Republican president but really dislikes just about everything Bush has done – and in fact agrees with Kerry on the vast majority of issues – still felt uncomfortable with Kerry because "he's the most liberal Democrat in the Senate." But he couldn't name a single liberal thing Kerry had done. He just had this sense that he was the most liberal Democrat because he'd heard it a lot. Host Ira Glass (who was campaigning for Kerry a little too hard for my taste, but made valid points) explained why that "most liberal" label is misleading, quoting none other than the journal that applied it in the first place. The undecided voter – an intelligent guy who follows politics – said, "Oh. Hm. I guess I'll have to think about that some more." It went back and forth like this for weeks.
The whole episode ("Swing Set") is very fascinating and well worth a listen, available on the This American Life website. But absolutely required listening is the segment by Jack Hitt about the rampant vote tampering that's going on this year. (I'm sure it goes on every year; but this year we know about it. And this year – like 2000 – the vote may be close enough for it to come into play.) Voter suppression, absentee ballot destruction, fraudulent registration, you name it. TAL has split out the Hitt segment as its own file, so you can listen to just that if you're in a hurry. I heartily recommend it. Then, if you're looking for more reasons to throw up your hands at the futility of it all, check out the running tally of dirty tricks at Vote Watch 2004.
Brandon — Mon, 11/1/04 12:37pm
Listened to the Hitt segment. Disheartening and depressing. I am absolutely sick of this election. I'm sick of Bush, I'm sick of Kerry, I'm sick of listening to their distortions, their evasive non-answers and their outright lies. I'm sick of watching the media fail time and again to ask harder questions, focus on real issues and hold people accountable for their mistakes. This has been an utterly frustrating, demoralizing, uninspiring, bitterly polarizing election process, and it has left me with a bad taste in my mouth and a sour outlook on the democratic process at the national level. I'm voting tomorrow not with a sense of pride, but rather a sense of "Thank Christ this is finally ending."
Of course, even that's likely not true. No, because it's time to brrring on the lawwwwwwyyyyyyerrrrrs! Woo-hoo! This party's just gettin' STARTED, baby! There's plenty more backbiting and mudslinging to go around! Awwwwww yeahhhhhh.