If you have about 15 minutes, listen to the first segment about a doctor in Ohio who can't decide between Bush and Kerry - it will make you want to bang your head against a wall.
And reliving the most frustrating moment of our political lives will be worthwhile because.....?
undecided voters in the 2004 election
How little attention would you have to pay not to know which side you were on in 2004?
Someone recently linked to a (TNR, maybe?) story about undecided voters and their level of misinformation. Best example was how one thought Cheney would be great to get us off of foreign oil because of his experience in the oil industry.
Ah, found it. Multiple head-banging opportunities.
1 - Worthwhile because I think it does a good job of showing how the GOP smear tactics worked, even on reasonably intelligent people, so that we can anticipate and better fend off those attacks in 2008.
2 - That's what surprised me. The voter in the third segment is the type of person I would have expected to be undecided in 2004 -- completely clueless. But how the doctor in the first segment, who watched all of the debates and kept abreast of the news and all that, could be undecided? Jeez.
Shudder. 2004 was a terrible, terrible time. I spent most of it cursing and playing with Legos. I don't just mean on Nov. 5th, either.
4.2 is exactly the sort of thing that can drive me towards despair for this country.
And reliving the most frustrating moment of our political lives will be worthwhile because.....?
I think Kerry's nomination was almost as frustrating to me as Bush's reelection itself, either because I'd spent so much time beforehand dismissing Kerry as an unprincipled hack, or because I was convinced there was no way he'd win in the general. From Iowa on it was one long, slow nightmare of inevitability.
The voter in the third segment is the type of person I would have expected to be undecided in 2004 -- completely clueless. But how the doctor in the first segment, who watched all of the debates and kept abreast of the news and all that, could be undecided? Jeez.
I'm sure he sometimes wonders what the most important issues are, but the media never tells him, so he figures there aren't any.
7: I'm saving the last few small steps for any possible meltdown in '08, in which case I give up. Not that I wasn't close in '04.
A White Bear: unusually precocious? or neotonous?
4.2: I think it's an indication of how little information is conveyed in those media.
Shouldn't the "illustrating" in the post be "illustrative?"
2: I was undecided for almost all of 2004. And I think I paid very close attention.
13 is the kind of thing people say when they forget about the importance of judicial appointments.
13: Did your views on abortion play into that? From what you've said, that's a big deal for you, but it splits you politically from most people you'd otherwise agree with. That doesn't make you an idiot, just conflicted in an unusual way.
Most salient question in response to this post: Do you have old episodes of TAL saved on your portable media player of choice, or did you download it while at the gym using some kind of new-fangled technology?
13: What factor eventually led you to decide?
15: yes, I suppose. And now that I think back some more, I don't think I was really that undecided, at least not in the conventionaly sense--I just disliked both candidates. Most of my indecision was related to whether I should vote for Kerry or should not vote at all. I don't think pulling the lever for Bush was ever a realistic option.
17 makes sense to me; this administration had already outed themselves as fuckups, but that didn't mean you had to like the alternatives offered.
15: I know someone who is mostly a Democrat but is considering voting for Huckabee because of the abortion issue. She's Indian-American with HIndi parents, but she converted to Roman Catholocism.
That doesn't make you an idiot, just conflicted in an unusual way.
Every thinking and politically aware person in my family who has stayed in Missouri is conflicted in exactly this way. (Mostly lined up with the left, but ends up voting on the abortion issue.)
19./20 doesn't really describe `undecideds' to me, so much as button issue voters who don't really like their options.
17, 19, 20: My lefty nun aunt was all about Schundler for senate in NJ a few years back for this reason. And this is a woman who lives and works in urban blight ground zero, who has pretty much not a single other shared belief with him.
16 - Yeah, I have some old TAL episodes saved on my iPod. No newfangled technology.
Well, they're undecided in that with recent elections they've been ever more seriously considering not being that "button issue voter".
TAL was relatively disturbing last Sunday.
The one about the muslim girl in fourth grade? Yeah.
Raise your hand if you read the post title, read the post, and were disappointed accordingly.
95 % of R's will vote for whoever is the R candidate. Same for Dems. 2/3 of Independents are not Swing voters but in fact vote reliably for one of the 2 major parties.
So about 1/3 of the Independents and 5 % of Registered D & R's are actually Swing Voters and are mostly ignorant of the candidates and parties true records. That's about 10% of the population.
My guess is they will break for the Repub based on the PR campaign and lies that are facilitated by the media.
Not to mention Election Fraud (Electronic Voting, Caging, Uncounted Provisional ballots etc).
And that is why I continue to expect that the horrible Rudy Giuliani will be our next President.
Sad but True.
I'll admit that "you'll want to bang your head against the wall" didn't exactly sell this story. I do recommend it for its fantastic pwnage. So many things like (paraphrasing):
1: I can't bring myself to vote for Kerry, even though I'm pro-choice, for gay rights, and I think Bush messed up the war, because he's too liberal. He's the most liberal person in the Senate!
2: Has he ever voted in a way that was too liberal for you? What positions of his are too liberal?
1: (crickets)
3: A true classic, and one of the more depressing things I've ever seen.
31: Here was my head-banging, day before the election, suspect we might be screwed moment: A seemingly reasonable co-worker—Agree, agree, agree... "but I've got to vote to protect my little girls." (he had two young daughters).