O.K., so this Friday I went to a friend's follow-up house party for John Edwards. She played the "Meet John Edwards" DVD for her neighbors. After the video there was a rather firm negative comment made and advice to Edwards supporters to look at "exactly what he had done for NC" before deciding to support him. "He had the worst attendance record in the Senate," was the primary point.
It was an old cannard, and I knew exactly where those words came from, but didn't comment on the source.
Instead, I responded calmly with what I knew -- that it was only while campaigning for the Presidential nomination that Edwards attendance record took a hit. (Every Senator's does.) No further comment was needed. Closer to the Primaries and in the Generals these intelligent Southern cross-over voting registered Republicans will hear the 'attendance record' criticism from the Right again about somebody, whether it's Edwards, Clinton, Obama, McCain or John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I can hope that they'll have some doubt that the criticism is valid.
See, I subscribe to the Mudcat Saunders school of political mathematics. That is, if you can get a Republican to vote for a Democrat, how many votes do you win? One? No. Two!! You win two votes because the Republican lost a vote and your Democrat gained one. (See 'two player swing' as explained by Patches O'Hoolihan if you're having trouble with the practical implications.)
OK. Y'all get it? The trick is to hear the criticism, forget where you've heard it before, address the facts calmly, quickly, simply and matter of factly. It's your confidence and calm that make you effective. You may not change the mind of the person you're talking to, but the others in the room (or the thread) will hear (or see) the conversation. They will be much more influenced by the respect with which each person addresses the other, their command of facts and their comportment when the discussion is done.
I let my response to this future voter's criticism end simply, but I did not drop the negative comment in my own head. No. No. No. I know I'll hear it again as we move closer to 2008 so I need more ammo for the more loyal ditto-head types I'll come across.
I live in some of the reddest territory in NC. What my people (the middle and working-classes) and their friends in these parts listen to on the news and the radio is often misinformation and outright crap. You can bet your bottom dollar that stuff will be flying around here like chimney swifts at dusk within minutes of Edwards winning the Iowa primary. I need to be prepared to comment, maybe even argue, without offending. So do you.
The facts around Senator John Edwards' attendance record in the Senate isn't why I wrote this post so I won't bore anyone with those things by launching into an analysis here. However, those facts are important if you are an Edwards supporter and you live in a place like my little corner of NC, so I've made each link that follows take you to information or hard numbers (even WaPo's Database) so you have what you need when the issue comes up in future conversations. It will become clear that absences were due to campaigning (Fall/03 - 11/04).
Thanks for reading, y'all.