Monday, October 18, 2004
Undecided Voters Really Exist
I have taken a bit of a break from drinking out of the firehose today, partly because I've had other work to do and partly because I have got to conserve some energy. The next two weeks are going to be as exhausting as they will be exhilarating for we political junkies, and I ain't as young as I used to be.
I meant to write about this next over the weekend--I met an actual Undecided Voter last week. UV is a young guy, maybe 30, professional, with a two-month-old baby at home, concerned about taxes, doesn't have a strong opinion about Kerry, likes Bush because "he sticks to what he believes in." UV isn't a news junkie, although he is interested in learning "both sides of the story" and watches cable news to find it (blogger inserts heavy sigh here), and watched a little of the debates. So I talked about the unequal distribution of the Bush tax cuts, and the fact, which is not mentioned often enough, that whatever most people got in cuts on their federal taxes has been more than swallowed up by state and local increases in taxes and fees necessitated by the tanking economy that the Bush tax cuts were intended to fix. And I also talked about whether it makes sense to stick to a policy in Iraq that keeps getting people killed day after day, when it doesn't seem to lead to any improvement in the situation. The rest of the conversation was gentle and polite give-and-take, in that careful way casual acquaintances have of trying not to offend one another. The two of us have a business relationship, and neither one of us wants to screw it up.
Did I change his mind? I have no idea. I wish I'd had better arguments at my fingertips. My excuse for not being fully loaded for this particular bear is that in this town, an Undecided Voter is the last thing you expect to run into. My suspicion, based on very little, is that UV was, as we spoke, leaning toward Bush. Maybe I pushed him back the other way--although I guess I'll never find out. If you've met any examples of this rare specimen, please share your sighting by clicking "Comments."
Recommended Reading: Remember shortly after his inauguration, when Bush claimed to have looked into Vladimir Putin's heart? Apparently Bush saw some stuff there that looked pretty good to him, because Putin's shadow seems to be afoot here in the United States. Matt Yglesias wrote over the weekend about "the creeping Putinization of American life."
I have taken a bit of a break from drinking out of the firehose today, partly because I've had other work to do and partly because I have got to conserve some energy. The next two weeks are going to be as exhausting as they will be exhilarating for we political junkies, and I ain't as young as I used to be.
I meant to write about this next over the weekend--I met an actual Undecided Voter last week. UV is a young guy, maybe 30, professional, with a two-month-old baby at home, concerned about taxes, doesn't have a strong opinion about Kerry, likes Bush because "he sticks to what he believes in." UV isn't a news junkie, although he is interested in learning "both sides of the story" and watches cable news to find it (blogger inserts heavy sigh here), and watched a little of the debates. So I talked about the unequal distribution of the Bush tax cuts, and the fact, which is not mentioned often enough, that whatever most people got in cuts on their federal taxes has been more than swallowed up by state and local increases in taxes and fees necessitated by the tanking economy that the Bush tax cuts were intended to fix. And I also talked about whether it makes sense to stick to a policy in Iraq that keeps getting people killed day after day, when it doesn't seem to lead to any improvement in the situation. The rest of the conversation was gentle and polite give-and-take, in that careful way casual acquaintances have of trying not to offend one another. The two of us have a business relationship, and neither one of us wants to screw it up.
Did I change his mind? I have no idea. I wish I'd had better arguments at my fingertips. My excuse for not being fully loaded for this particular bear is that in this town, an Undecided Voter is the last thing you expect to run into. My suspicion, based on very little, is that UV was, as we spoke, leaning toward Bush. Maybe I pushed him back the other way--although I guess I'll never find out. If you've met any examples of this rare specimen, please share your sighting by clicking "Comments."
Recommended Reading: Remember shortly after his inauguration, when Bush claimed to have looked into Vladimir Putin's heart? Apparently Bush saw some stuff there that looked pretty good to him, because Putin's shadow seems to be afoot here in the United States. Matt Yglesias wrote over the weekend about "the creeping Putinization of American life."
