{"id":12839,"date":"2008-09-18T23:00:10","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T06:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/09\/18\/election-contemplations.html"},"modified":"2008-09-18T23:00:10","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T06:00:10","slug":"election_contemplations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/18\/election_contemplations.html","title":{"rendered":"Election Contemplations"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been posting a lot about the election of late. Rather, I’ve been reading a lot of feeds, from a lot of sites, and using Google Reader to share them, and then later turning them into Big Long Election Posts that go on, and on, and on.<\/p>\n

Part of this is that I’ve had the opportunity to do so this week. Part of it is just getting a bee in my bonnet (yes, as has been noted in several quarters, the Sarah Palin pick energized the base on both sides). And part of it is that Google Reader makes it all just so damned easy.<\/p>\n

That said, someone IMed something very nice to me today:<\/p>\n

\n

Someone: you’re providing an invaluable service in your poli-compiling.<\/p>\n

Dave: Really? I’ve been feeling like I’ve been moderately obsessive and probably redundant with it. That’s good feedback to hear.<\/p>\n

Someone: oh… there’s a point at which a person might mutter something like “really, Dave? 66 shared items since noon? really?”, but it’s generally stuff I haven’t seen elsewhere, cuz i don’t follow pundit blogs or news sites. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s good to know that this is not just a rhetorically or internetally masturbatory effort, but that someone’s actually getting some value out of what I’m doing.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

And here’s something else that’s interesting (to me, at least).  I am, I like to think, a moderate (to BD’s eternal amusement and annoyance). I find some of the rhetoric of the Left to be annoying-to-disturbing (though less so than an equivalent amout of rhetoric from the Right), and, honestly speaking, I didn’t decide who I was voting for in 2004 until the 11th Hour. I disliked Bush’s policies, but disliked Kerry as a person.  I did end up voting for Kerry, however<\/a>, though looking back on my rationalization of it, I was more than a bit of a doofus (ah, for the power to go back in time and slap some sense into myself).<\/p>\n

This time, though, there’s no question in my mind. While not swooning over Obama like a bobby-soxer over Frankie, I have no doubt that he is a superior candidate in all respect to McCain, and the VP choices only magnified that sense.<\/p>\n

It’s … odd feeling so certain about something political. It worries me, not so much that I’m wrong, but that I’ll be really, truly upset if Obama doesn’t <\/em>win.<\/p>\n

And all that said, in case anyone thinks I’m some sort of really profound political pundit, my post mortem of the 2004 campaign and look-ahead to 2008<\/a> is … um … nothing that’s going to win a Pullitzer.  Looking at it, I sort of feel like the Foundation folks showing up for Hari Seldon only to discover he didn’t take the Mule into account. I know what I was talking about then, but it seems a whole other world only four years later. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been posting a lot about the election of late. Rather, I’ve been reading a lot of feeds, from a lot of sites, and using Google Reader to share them,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,52,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-elections-2004","category-elections-2008"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":30565,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/12\/the-election-as-stimulus.html","url_meta":{"origin":12839,"position":0},"title":"The Election as Stimulus!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 12-Oct-12 8:14pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This segment was awesome. And I, for one, look forward to seeing Chelsea Clinton running vs. Donald Trump.Reshared post from +The Daily Show\"The problem isn't that there's too much money in elections. It's that there are not enough elections in the first place. \" - John Oliver http:\/\/on.cc.com\/X0Z8Zw Google+: View\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31136,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/05\/election-shenanigans-in-ohio.html","url_meta":{"origin":12839,"position":1},"title":"Election shenanigans in Ohio","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Nov-12 11:06am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'd like to think I would object to these kind of tactics regardless of the partisan politics behind them. \u00a0This particular list is nothing new, but a good summary of Husted's actions this political season (though it leaves out his earlier casting deciding votes in a GOP-leaning fashion for individual\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31101,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/01\/computers-and-elections-a-history.html","url_meta":{"origin":12839,"position":2},"title":"Computers and Elections: A History","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 1-Nov-12 11:01am","format":false,"excerpt":"Nice look back on the use of computers to predict elections on Election Night.Reshared post from +Guy Kawasaki(Thu02) The story of the first time a computer was used to predict an election result.http:\/\/www.npr.org\/blogs\/alltechconsidered\/2012\/10\/31\/163951263\/the-night-a-computer-predicted-the-next-presidentMore on Politics: http:\/\/politics.alltop.com\/(Shared using #DoShare) Google+: View post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30786,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/23\/election-monitors-use-black-helicopters-to-pollute-our-precious-bodily-fluids.html","url_meta":{"origin":12839,"position":3},"title":"Election monitors use black helicopters to pollute our precious bodily fluids!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 23-Oct-12 3:26pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Election monitors use black helicopters to pollute our precious bodily fluids!Just like they have since 2002. And in other non-news events that the conservative media are having hissy fits over ... Embedded Link Conservatives Panic Over \u2018U.N.-Affiliated\u2019 Election Monitors Conservative blogs and news media are all buzzing about a team\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkprogress.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fosce-arlington-2004-300x225.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":30785,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/23\/yes-clearly-just-another-voting-suppressive-mistake.html","url_meta":{"origin":12839,"position":4},"title":"Yes, clearly just another voting-suppressive mistake","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 23-Oct-12 3:39pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Maricopa County in Arizona again seems to have (purely innocently, of course) given the wrong date for the election in Spanish-language materials.'Yvonne Reed, spokesperson for the Maricopa County Department of Elections, told HuffPost that some of the Spanish-language notices were incorrect because the department used the election date from last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12740,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/10\/07\/breakneck_pace.html","url_meta":{"origin":12839,"position":5},"title":"Breakneck pace","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Oct-08 6:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"Doyce and Kate were over last night for a bit, and we chatted about this and that, the subject inevitably circling around to the election. And both of them did...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}