I will always remember from Orwell’s 1984 the point about the massive propaganda machine put into motion by the state, and how as soon as a new story broke, the entire machine was made to forget the past.
Does anyone remember the war in Iraq? It’s absurd, over this past month, how all political speech has moved off Iraq and onto tax policy, the domestic economy, and general candidate character issues without mentioning Iraq. It’s as though the entire issue has been forgotten. Meanwhile, I’m a single-issue voter on this issue alone. It’s pretty disgusting.
Vote Bob
McCain’s clearly not hopping to get out.
On his web site, Obama’s called for ending the war “safely.” Gotta love “safe wars.” Orwell at his finest. No wonder he won’t worry too much about Iraq–it’s a safe war.
Glad to hear you’ll be voting Libertarian this year. Or perhaps Nader? If you’re a single-issue voter is it a coin-toss between those two? Chant with me: Bob Barr…Bob Barr…Bob Barr….
Things I’m a single-issue voter on
The following issues turn me into a single-issue voter:
* If you say you want to “put God in Government”, I say keep your god out of my government, and I’ll keep my government out of your god. Religious plurality and the lack of any religious test for office is a mainstay of US domestic policy; let’s keep it that way.
* If you announce that you’re in favor of invading other countries, I’ll probably vote for the other guy. Yes, occasional consensus-based peacekeeping is a necessity from time to time. Sometimes a president has to take unilateral action for a very limited time in an emergency… but that’s not something you make part of your platform when running.
* Strong military. Lower taxes. Smaller government. I tend to vote for the guy that promises these three things. Unfortunately, neither presidential candidate has promised those things.
* I tend to vote Republican, if they adhere to true traditional Republican values like those immediately above. That’s why I say that my Republican party has drifted too far away from its roots in Lincoln and Roosevelt, and too far toward despotism, fascism, and corruption via close relationships with the defense contracting industry.
If you use the following code words or issues, I may vote against you out of spite:
“Family Values”. Yeah, this is a euphemism for “I oppose abortion and gay rights”.
“Big tent”. This is a euphemism for “my party is willing to make concessions to extremists to gain their support”.
Making your opponents religion a matter of public debate. I don’t care if he’s a Christian, Jew, Atheist, or Muslim (or anything else), I want to vote on the issues and not on the religion.
Character attacks. The negative campaigning of John McCain, combined with his pro-bomb-Iran stance, caused me to realize that I cannot vote for him despite my party affiliation.
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Matthew P. Barnson
My vote doesn’t matter
I live in Maryland, which is bluer than a sex show in Amsterdam. Any vote not for Obama will just get washed away here. That didn’t stop me, I didn’t vote for Obama or McCain, but it is frustrating.
As for the war, unless you have a family member fighting over there, it’s not real. What’s real is the economy now, affecting people’s pocketbooks here. Any smart politician knows that. </sarcasm>
The funny this is, I think the people ARE voting with the war in mind. Even with the economy front and center in the media, the war isn’t lost on the voters.
My take on it is this: McCain will spend my children’s money overseas on a war I don’t want Obama will spend my money domestically on programs we don’t need
Pick your poison My $.02 Weed
Not Alone
Don’t feel bad, no one individual’s vote really “counts” any more than anyone elses. Here in PA, where the state could go either way, it doesn’t matter to the outcome whether I vote red, blue, or green. It’s like picking the blade of grass that makes your lawn pretty. But, voting does matter to YOU as an individual, exactly the same way it matters to me. One of the core myths (in a good sense) of a democracy.
Votes matter
All one has to do is point to the 2000 election, the tightest Presidential race in a century.
In 2000, 269 votes reversed would have given us President Gore.
That is a sobering fact. Just 269 people in various places in the US would have totally changed the outcome of the past eight years. You can fit that in a single high-school gymnasium, easily. It’s no wonder McCain and Obama have fought so hard for votes in states that traditionally don’t support their party: they realize the outcome of the election can be changed by the equivalent of the graduating class from a small high school. But knowing who those 269 people are is a mystery, so you have to get to them all.
Since Bush already had the ball rolling and a plan to invade Iraq underway on the very day he took office, despite what else might be different — or the same — it’s a virtual certainty that a President Gore would have kept us out of Iraq, but also almost certainly have led us into Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11.
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Matthew P. Barnson
Or not.
According to the recap at the eternally reliable Wikipedia, depending on how one counted, the spread was from 171 Gore to 537 Bush. That’s a “hazy area” of 708 votes. So 1 vote obviously doesn’t matter–it takes 708 votes just to get a definite win. (And by definite, I am suggesting that too many Democrats continue to whine about Bush’s win in Florida, hence it was not definite enough.)
At any rate, even if a candidate only wins by 2, your individual vote didn’t effect to the outcome. If you drove your wife to the polling station, and she otherwise wouldn’t have voted, and you both voted for the winner, it mattered. But not if you voted independent of anyone else’s vote. Sorry.
And I’m okay with that. That’s why “voting matters,” like “what goes around comes around” is just a myth. And I use myth in the sense of Merriam Webster’s 2-a, not 2-b.
Reliable…
It’s not necessarily reliable, but it does generally represent a consensus view.
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Matthew P. Barnson
It’s All About The POV
Obviously my one vote doesn’t decide one way or another, but I didn’t mean it that way. If I was worried about that, I wouldn’t have voted the way I did in Blue Ole Merryland.
But thanks to the Electoral College, my vote doesn’t count because it gets thrown away with all the other non-Democratic votes.
I think that the popular vote should carry some electoral votes. 25? 50? 100? Proportional to the size of the popular victory? That way if I’m in the minority for my state my vote can still “count”.
My $.02 Weed
Your vote definitely counts
Your vote definitely counts. Just ask all those people living in MN (including yours truly) where the Senatorial vote, with 100 percent of the 4,130 precincts reporting, has Sen. Norm Coleman with an unofficial margin of several hundred votes out of nearly 2.9 million cast.
And to say that the MN Senatorial is a microsystem juggernaut compared to the national Presidential race, I respond: don’t believe your vote is inconsequential because of reported polling data leading up to the election.
Every vote matters, and thinking otherwise is wrong.
Bankrupting us
The USA and China together nearly bankrupted the old Soviet Union in Afghanistan through our clandestine bankrolling and training of resistance fighters.
Who’s bankrolling those in Iraq? I don’t think it’s the same players. I really don’t know who they are, and I don’t think our government does, either.
There’s an old saying in a game of poker, though. “If you don’t know who the sucker is, you’re it.” Well, Iraq is a global game of poker, and we don’t know who the sucker is.
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Matthew P. Barnson