Regarding yesterday's post-election predictions: There's a reason I'm a web designer/administrator and not a political analyst.
On the plus side, I clearly have a positive outlook on life. To a rose-colored fault.
I've listened to a lot of radio that involves callers phoning in today. Since I'm in the Chicago area, the majority of the calls have been from citizens who are in different levels of grief. Some are putting on a good face and saying things like "At least we still have John Kerry in the Senate, where he can keep an eye on Bush ..." or "It was a valiant fight!" Some are not sure how they're going to get through the next day, much less the next four years. The two calls that stuck out to me -- one on AM and one on FM -- both said the same thing, and it's where I am to. It's this: "I just don't understand."
When I heard this morning that the predominant issue for Bush voters was "moral values," I was dumbfounded. Moral values were important ... and so you voted for him? While John Kerry took a principled and difficult stand against a war that everyone hated (whether you liked his position or not, there's no question that it was principled), George W. Bush was best known by his Air National Guard as the guy who threw the best parties.
(And don't go telling me, dear Dubya supporters, that Bush's partying days are ancient history and that it has nothing to do with now -- not when, in the next breath, you're going to tell me that Kerry's anti-Vietnam stand was an affront to all current and veteran members of the armed services. You can't have it both ways.)
Moral values. And they pick him. I just don't understand. Reagan said it, and I'll make a small editorial change and repeat it. I'll speak for a slim minority of US citizens: "It's mourning in America."
1 comment:
[Comment transferred from old blog]
Except the moral values under scruntiny were basically one: homosexuality.
From "Morning Edition" this morning:
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Pollsters say voters they spoke with on Tuesday often identified "moral values" from a list of possible reasons why they voted as they did. NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports.
http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=4143409
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For me the biggest problem is that reporters ask people questions and then don't follow up when they get nonsensical or irrational answers. Like a mother in Peoria who is scared she's going to be attacked--no one asks her either why she's afraid in Peoria v. a big city OR was she this afraid before the Bush administration told her she had to be afraid. (Hell my genius-level IQ boyfriend who works on super sensitive anti-terrorism projects actually believed that John Kerry would not keep America safe.)
In the same vein, these voters who were so opposed to gay marriage as a threat to straight marriage, were not asked how this could possibly be so. How could the increasing divorce rates in the "red" states possibly be linked to gay marriage? But they never get asked the obvious questions.
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