Category: Elections 2004

A poem by John Greenleaf Whittier (1848) (as heard on NPR’s Morning Edition today):

The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people’s hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man’s common sense
Against the pedant’s pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

While there’s a grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon’s vilest dust,–
While there’s a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee and ragged coat
A man’s a man to-day.

Vote. Do it. Get off your ass, make the time, go in, and participate in this country’s future.
Don’t let the last-second campaign ads and stump speeches dissuade you from voting (or persuade you as to whom to vote for/against — check out FactCheck.org for the skinny on both sides). Do some research, make a decision, and do it. Vote on issues. Vote on character. Vote with your head, or vote with your gut. But be a part of it.

There are plenty of idiots out there who are dumber and less-informed than you, and they’re voting. There are people out there whose opinions you simply cannot stand, and they’re voting. Don’t let theirs be the only voices heard.

Even if you don’t know who to vote for in the presidential race, then vote on local issues. Ballot propositions. Your local US Representative. A US Senator, if one’s at stake. Your state races are important, too — in some ways, just as important for your day-to-day life.

Each vote counts. Each lack of vote “counts,” too. Individually, in some cases, in aggregate in others.

If you agree with my own selections in the Elections of 2004, then vote with me. If you disagree with them — vote against me.

Just vote, dammit.

… the third party candidate.

Well, I certainly wouldn’t tell him to his face I wasn’t voting for him, would you?

(via BoingBoing)

In which Our Hero decides on local candidates.

(I frankly admit I have not done all the review of the “confirm this judge” or “select this local district sub-lieutenant council member adjutant secretary” races)

Continue reading “All Politics is Local, Part II”

And, to that end, here are this year’s ballot propositions I’m facing (and I’m doing this exercise as much for my own clarifying-of-thoughts as to sway anyone, so don’t take it as a “voting guide”).

Continue reading “All Politics is Local, Part I”

Granted that its clear intent is to show that the Bush administration is a bunch of evil buffoons, this timeline of goings-on over Dubya’s presidency is useful as we hurtle toward election day — and, as with me, you may very well look at some of them and shrug, or even say, “Right on.”

Still, even if (or particularly if) you wade through the spin, it’s a good reminder of some of the things Bush and the GOP have done over the last three-plus years. I’d certainly forgotten some of these gems (though, no, it hasn’t changed my mind).

(via DoF)

I’m trying to decide if this is one of the better, or worse, reasons to vote one way or another:

Planets governing President Bush are eclipsed and in an uncomfortable position, making his tenure controversial and his re-election bid unsuccessful, the [Indian] soothsayers said on Friday, four days before the vote.

On the other hand, the planets of Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry were in the ascendant, ensuring him success in competitions.

“Saturn, which is the lord of health and fortune for President Bush, has been eclipsed by the Sun, which is unfortunate and gives him a clear defeat,” Lachhman Das Madan, editor of a popular astrology magazine, told Reuters.

“Kerry will win,” said Madan, who is also known as “the emperor of astrologers.” “It is cosmic writ that George W. Bush cannot become president of United States again.”

Bets that, if Bush wins, Pat Robertson will comment on this? (Which, in and of itself, might be a reason to vote …)

I’ve decided to spare everyone the trouble of reading daily installments of my internal debate over the election. Instead, I’m storing all my thoughts in a nice file that I’ll drop like a bomb on this blog on Monday. Every day presents new reasons why I shouldn’t vote for one presidential candidate or the other, which makes the decision all the more, um … entertaining. Yeah, that’s a word, all right.

For what it’s worth, I think I know who I’m voting for. My internal polling is running about 51-48 (with 1 percent suggesting I just blow off the whole thing). That’s enough for me to think I’m likely to vote the way I’m feeling now — but there’s always the chance of some last-moment revelation/gaffe that could change that, or some reasoned argument I stumble across altering my decision. I don’t think so, but …

Speaking of which, is it my imagination, or have the “Bush is a dolt / fiend / criminal / lunatic / idjit / puppet / danger” folks been in a full court press over the last week or two? Maybe it’s been because I’ve been avoiding explicitly political sites, for the most part, but a lot of the non-explicitly-political sites have been doing a lot more Bush-bashing. That’s certainly their prerogative, but it still feels a bit odd (especially given the polls) — and, in marked contrast, assuming that is their political bent, I’ve seen very little Kerry-supporting on those same sites. Which I can also understand, but it does lend itself to the idea that Daffy Duck or Boris Badinov could run for president and folks would support him over Bush …

Anyway, more Monday.

Jon Henke summarizes his views of the pros and cons of the different presidential candidates.

There are particulars I disagree with him on — I’m a scosh less enthused about some of the Bush “pros” than he, and less unenthused by some of the Kerry “cons,” and I’m not nearly the “neolibertarian” he is (though I’ve some of that, too) — but it’s about as close to my own internal analysis as I’ve seen.

Just a dozen days left, praise the Maker.

Now this … this makes me happy. Happy, happy, happy …

Two weeks before Election Day, voters hold a sharply critical view of President Bush’s record in office, but they have strong reservations about Senator John Kerry, leaving the race in a tie, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

Yup, that’s about right.

As I left this office this afternoon, I realized that I’d decided who I was going to vote for president. It wasn’t a decision I was happy with, obviously, but I’d hit a tipping point over the course of the day’s reading, believing that the consequences of the lesser of two evils’ shortcomings outweighed those of the somewhat-less-lesser of two evils. It just sort of came to me, and I didn’t feel the immediate shrinking back from the conclusion that I’ve felt every other time I’ve made a tentative move toward that decision over the last month or two.

I actually felt slightly tranquil, as though I’d found a position that, though not fully comfortable in, I could live with.

Then I turned on the afternoon news, heard campaign statements made today by the candidate in question, and literally shouted at the radio, “HOW THE FUCK CAN I VOTE FOR A MAN WHO SAYS CRAP LIKE THAT?!”

Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted. Maybe I should just flip a coin, send in an absentee ballot, and go camp out in a cave for the next few weeks.

And make it a triple.

It’s the President Match game.

I dislike the “No Opinion” (vs “Conflicted Opinion” or “The question oversimplifies the issue into a simple statement”) phrasing. I like that you could then weight the different types of questions/policy areas — but I discovered that the weighting really didn’t make that much difference in my final analysis, which seemed odd (indeed, ratcheting up the “Security/Foreign Policy” slider to either extreme only affected things a percent or two, which is very odd given my responses and the two candidates).

For what it’s worth, I came up Kerry meeting 53% of my criteria, Bush 36%.

Hrm.

The text may be different, but the sentiment’s the same.