{"id":13662,"date":"2008-10-30T21:17:27","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T04:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/10\/30\/if-you-cant-say-something-nice-4.html"},"modified":"2008-10-30T21:17:27","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T04:17:27","slug":"if_you_cant_say_something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/10\/30\/if_you_cant_say_something.html","title":{"rendered":"If you can’t say something nice …"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

I’ve spent a fair amount of time and effort ragging on the GOP ticket this year. There’s been plenty to criticize about McCain, and Palin, and their advisors, and their supporters, and just the general goofiness from the Right.<\/p>\n

But the fact is, I don’t think (unlike some other campaigns) that scaring folks is going to make much difference at this point. Fact is — most people who have made a decision aren’t going to be scared by it. They’ll filter out or discount anything negative said about their candidates. And the folks wavering between the candidates aren’t going (or shouldn’t) be scared into voting for the other guy.<\/p>\n

So. Here on out, I’m not going to dwell on why I think McCain is a dishonored, opportunistic, angry, Bush-supporting tool of the Right, or why Palin is a bubble-headed incompetent ultra-conservative ideologue. While I may criticize stuff going on around the election, I’m not going to spend my time dissing the GOP ticket.<\/p>\n

Instead, I’m going to try to focus more on making the case for Obama. For the folks not sure, for the folks a bit scared, for the folks who (sigh) still claim not to know “who Barack Obama is” — I’m going to try to dwell on the positive, on the question of why you should vote for Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if it will make a difference (I mean, it’s not like this is a high-volume blog where everyone is hanging on my every word for guidance and inspiration). But it might change … one mind? I don’t know.<\/p>\n

Maybe it will let someone who just cringes whenever I criticize McCain and Palin read something I’m writing about the election.<\/p>\n

Maybe it will just inspire folks who are already Obama voters, making sure they get out and vote, and tell their friends. <\/p>\n

Or maybe it will just make me feel like I’m ending this campaign on an up note. Which is pretty worthwhile, come to think of it.<\/p>\n

Note: The above doesn’t apply to my Google Shared items. There are far too many tales both positive and negative that are far too worthwhile passing along.<\/small> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent a fair amount of time and effort ragging on the GOP ticket this year. There’s been plenty to criticize about McCain, and Palin, and their advisors, and…<\/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":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_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":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-2008"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12744,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/10\/06\/dave_does_the_election_mo.html","url_meta":{"origin":13662,"position":0},"title":"***Dave Does the Election – Monday Night Edition","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 6-Oct-08 6:36pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The McCain\/Palin have gone into high gear, quite openly and explicitly openly and explicitly\u00a0shifting their strategy away from podunk thinks like \"issues\" and \"policy\" and in favor of --...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12939,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/04\/with_friends_like_thse.html","url_meta":{"origin":13662,"position":1},"title":"With friends like thse …","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 4-Sep-08 11:08am","format":false,"excerpt":"Some conservative Christians are so enamored of Palin, they not only now want McCain to win, they want him to win and then quickly\u00a0die. Antiabortion militant and all-round theocratic activist...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12838,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/19\/election_round_up_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":13662,"position":2},"title":"Election Round-Up","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 19-Sep-08 7:13am","format":false,"excerpt":"The biggest kerfuffle in yesterday's news remained the whole McCain\/Spain thing. I already blogged about that separately, but it (and McCain's increasing lack of access)did raise again the specter of\u00a0McCain's...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12902,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/10\/election_round_up_4.html","url_meta":{"origin":13662,"position":3},"title":"Election round-up","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 10-Sep-08 3:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Still trying to figure out the best way to spread the linky-love here. I think I'm going to shift most of my politics\/election stuff into its own set of posts,...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12967,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/the_next_dick_cheney.html","url_meta":{"origin":13662,"position":4},"title":"The Next Dick Cheney?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 29-Aug-08 9:58am","format":false,"excerpt":"It looks like McCain has selected his VP running mate -- and gone against all the punditry and received wisdom as to who the choice will be. If nothing else,...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12790,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/26\/dave_does_the_election_no.html","url_meta":{"origin":13662,"position":5},"title":"***Dave Does the Election (now with Financial Implosion Goodness)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 26-Sep-08 2:45pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm actually feeling pretty tired this afternoon, so I'm not going to go on at much length. As usual, we start with Gov. Palin -- though I must confess that,...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13662","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=13662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}