Be happy if you live in a non-swing state. Sure, the candidates don't visit you and you don't feel like your votes really matter (they really, really do), but, let me assure you, it's a bit of hell living in a swing state right now (I'm in Wisconsin).
During my numerous GOTV phone banks, I've been hearing a lot about the nearly endless stream of robocalls coming from Republicans. People getting them are irritated and getting angry as the calls increase over time. They DO appreciate calls from live people rather than the automated recordings, but even those are adding to the frequent intrusions into their lives.
And it's not just the presidential race, but nearly everything down ballot, too. That's a whole lot of robo calls.
While I'm out doing GOTV and other things, I've been getting bunches of them when I'm at home (and plenty of them left on the answering machine when I get back home), but today, they've escalated. Starting at 8:30 this morning, they've been coming about every 30 minutes. I've never, ever gotten this many and it's 5 days from the election. From my past experience, it will be much worse this weekend through election day.
I'm a late sleeper, staying up to the wee hours of the morning and getting up around noon. While I have an event scheduled tonight, I'm saving myself for canvassing tomorrow and that's good considering that I'm running on about 4 hours of sleep thanks to the GOP robocalling machines. I can imagine what night shift workers are going through.
Normally, the GOP sticks to Republican or R-leaning households when peddling their endless stream of BS. While I get a few robo or "poll" calls, this year I have been smelling the desperation of the Republicans in their frantic efforts to call my phone, solicit my support or "opinion", or plant a heaping load of propaganda on whomever answers the phone or listens to accumulated messages on the answering machine.
Most people are just not answering their phones anymore. Retirees, stay at home parents, 7 day service workers like nurses, and night shift workers find their sleep and daily routines disrupted from the endless ringing of their phones. It's often hard to get someone on the phone during phone banking in the past few days. Caller ID, for those who have it, allow people to screen the calls they take, but doesn't stop the calls. For the rest of us, we wait for the machine to take the call to see if we want to pick up.
Clearly, they're wasting their time (and money) on me and other Democratic voters. There hasn't been a halfway decent Republican on the ballot for decades and, while Democrats have been disappointing, I do respond to the customary "the other guys are worse" Democratic campaigns that have been the mainstay for longer than I can remember. And the GOP keep on proving again and again how much worse they really are.
The fact that they're making so many calls to everyone tells me they're either desperate or unconcerned with the increasing voter anger. That anger is directed towards Republians since they're the ones making all those calls and that anger might just blow back in their faces.
Add to that the endless parade of scare the pants off of you attack ads that now fill every commercial break on the television program or newscast and you have people even more angry. Folks can't even tell if they're more upset with the ads or their phones, although I imagine most of us think that we'd be better off without both.
The media, of course, is delighted with the profits they're racking up due, mostly, to their lack of real reporting which necessitates buying ad time to get information out to the public. Naturally, they've created their own "news story" about how "negative" campaigns are getting and the public frustration with attack ads. For them, it's win-win. Get the money from the ads and get a bonus "story" that requires little effort to prepare and broadcast.
For those of you that like graphs and stats on how much political advertising there is, check this article out.
Robo calls and ads. Endless. Maddening. Disruptive. Sleep depriving. And getting worse.
However, I'm not going to tell them to stop. I'm going to tell them to keep on going.
So, Sarah Palin and the rest of you Republican celebs, keep on recording those calls. Those calls are making people more and more angry at your party since you're the folks with virtually no volunteers (yes, you have to pay people to canvass and phone bank because your supporters are, well, Republicans who expect to be financially rewarded for everything they do). You're the party that relies on huge piles of money for ads, robo calls, mailers, as well as your own well-oiled media machines that infest our lives.
People are angry and they're angry at you.
Keep it up.
PS: Pssst, GOP. When you call public employees or retired public employees in Wisconsin, we know which party was the one that took 18% out of our paychecks to pay for the benefits we've given up pay raises over the last 15-20 years to protect. We also know which party took away our union rights to negotiate over safety, staffing, and working conditions. We also know which party has decimated public education and our safety net. We now it's you. Keep wasting your money trying to get our votes. The Koch Brothers have plenty.
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