Just watched a couple of hours of post-election analysis on television and I'm disgusted and frustrated by it. Chuck Todd on MSNBC, the pundits on PBS, CNN, ABC, CBS etc (no, I won't watch Fox News) dwell on the mechanics of the campaigns and the demographics.
But it's the issues that effect people, the values, the policies that are behind this. Women didn't vote for Barack Obama just because somebody found them and registered them for no reason. Hispanic voters weren't just sitting there waiting to be discovered, seeming blank slates susceptible to the clever Chicago machine. All the discussion of white males, Latinas, those young people...it's degrading.
That's the point--Obama understands it's dignity. FIRST comes the issue: respect for all, diversity is our strength, tax fairness is just, etc. THEN comes the demographics. Is it just me? It's like the pundits think black people never would have had an opinion if they hadn't been contacted by one of the awesome, poll-tested OFA volunteers.
Don't get me wrong, I volunteered for OFA, I saw the huge bit of awesome that was the Obama campaign apparatus. But when I contact a voter, when I recruit a volunteer, it's because of ISSUES. Of VALUES. Of shared outrage at the lack of respect for voters. We care that:
- those who work for a living have equitable pay
- those who work for a living have tax fairness
- those loving each other can do so with dignity
- we have access and the right of family planning
- those who are sick have access to healthcare
- the environment is our inheritance and legacy to future generations
- diversity is to be celebrated as a strength
- voting is a right, not a privilege
- America's foreign policy protects us, and honors human dignity
I'm sure you have issues that drew you to the Democratic party and Obama. It wasn't just that you're a certain age, race, ethnicity, or other superficial category. It's our liberal values--liberal as in liberty, freedom. Wish the pundits would talk about that instead of the awesome OFA slice and dice campaign machinations.
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