NPR has been doing an interesting series this week. They’ve sent out a reporter who is going all across Pennsylvania interviewing people at local food markets. He found a fish shop in Pittsburgh, a market in Lancaster, and some shops in Philadelphia. He sought out Democratic voters to ask them about their thoughts on Clinton vs. Obama.
A lot of the Pennsylvania voters were for Clinton. When asked why, most of them said that they liked Bill Clinton and his policies. A few said they liked how Hillary handled the Lewinsky affair. To me, none of that has anything to do with whether Clinton or Obama would be better for the country.
Then there was the person this morning who was criticizing Obama for not offering specifics. She said she is Jewish, and so Israel is important to her, and Obama hasn’t said anything about helping along the peace process. So I went to barackobama.com, clicked Enter the Site, went to Issues, Foreign Policy, then Israel. Then I clicked on the full fact sheet, which was a full 2 pages on Israel, including far more detail than the voter said she wanted.
I often wonder about these people that say Obama doesn’t have specifics. Just because each speech doesn’t read off a whole lot of information doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have it — it’s all there on the website. I’m sure people that don’t have Internet access could call the Obama campaign and get information, too. It seems Obama ought to do a better job of mentioning this fact at every possible opportunity.
Then I hear a lot of Clinton supporters saying that since Clinton has won states like Ohio in the primaries, she’d do better there in the general election. I think that is a totally facetious argument. Just because Clinton did better with Democrats doesn’t mean that she’d do better in the general election. We can generally assume that the Democratic voters will vote for the Democratic nominee, whoever it is. The question is how many independents and Republicans a person can win over.
“”Then I clicked on the full fact sheet, which was a full 2 pages on Israel, including far more detail than the voter said she wanted.””
This is because people still depend on traditional news vendors to get their data.
IMHO no news organization can be trusted to get anything right. They have their own political leaning (whether they admit it to the public or even themselves is completely irrelevent) and are generally a bunch of lazy assholes more concerned about ratings then anything else.
But people still on insisting that the news people are generally factual and should be trusted. I don’t think that at all.
People need to learn that they either pay attention and do their own research or stay the hell away from politics and voting and let people that actually care enough to pay attention do the policy making.
People are pretty dumb. And who did they talk to in Pittsburgh? Everyone I know is an Obama supporter. Clinton was endorsed by the douchebag politicians in this city that everyone hates. That’s not a good thing for her.
My problem with all of them is that I automatically rebound away from anyone who says they think another ‘group of folks’ needs help.
I wonder when it will hit them that throwing money at a problem is not the answer. It has effectually made it worse almost everytime it’s tried.
Also, I think the question is how many in ‘depends’ ants and Democrats you can sway.
Other than that I agree with you John.
PS. Stop global warming. I’m tired of being cold.