First diary.
With 59 days to go, please seek out that rare species, the undecided voter, and talk to him. I've been volleying emails with my friend Jack, who lives in a red state. Jack is undecided. If we can figure out how to convince Jack to vote for Kerry, we win.
Discussing election with the Jacks of the world is more rewarding than spewing bile at wignuts, freepers, and trolls. My wingnut uncle informed me last week that Fox is the best news "because it has the highest ratings." Why even bother to refute such tosh? It only raises blood pressures, and it has no effect on the polls.
My friend Jack isn't like my uncle. He has a Ph.D, and he leans
Libertarian: he's angry at the record deficits, he wants to keep his gun, and he doesn't care if gays are allowed to marry. On Sundays he goes to church, but not the kind where they raise their palms toward the ceiling when they pray. For months, he's been telling me that this election is "a choice is between Coke and Pepsi," and I've been trying to convince him that he is wrong.
Jack made an effort to watch most of both conventions, hoping to be convinced by somebody. After the Democratic convention, we discussed Obama's speech; he found it inspiring. He was less impressed with Kerry, but he wanted to hear more. Now, after watching both conventions, Jack emailed me this:
The GOP most definitely put on the better show, particularly when Zell Miller was in the center ring, and I'll simply leave it at this: I pretty much know what W is and what he intends to do, and have no idea what is behind door number two. Kerry is unacceptably disappointing: he says it's all Bush's fault, and he'll make everything better. But he won't talk about anything that he has done for the past twenty years to provide me with any confidence that hecan be effectual.
Whaaat?!! After hearing Zell Miller, how can it be that Jack is leaning toward the Dark Side? After Bush campaigned in 2000 as a moderate and governed like a wingnut, how can Jack possibly think he "knows what W is and what he intends to do?" Sounds like he watched a different convention from the one I saw.
Jack is also a tired person who lives in the suburbs. He has two young children, a working wife, and works long hours at a good job in a big company.This is from the same email:
My day is pre-empted even before I wake, and I am pretty much an automaton from 6AM to 9PM, then decide between catch-up work, dishwashing, or a bit of reading until I rapidly pass out.
Jack is so busy that he doesn't have time to upgrade his computer. His 486 machine at home runs Windows 95 (barely); it does email, but has trouble with HTML. He's considering "upgrading" to a Pentium III from work that he can have for cheap, because he wants to exchange baby pictures more easily with his other exhausted parent friends.
Here lies the answer to the conundrum of how Jack might decide to vote for W. The revolution will not be televised, but at the moment, television (and perhaps a few articles from his local red state newspaper) is all Jack has time for. If he catches a network news report at the end of his tired day, his brain is already mush, and highly susceptible to the Kool-aid.
I press the refresh button at dKos at least 20 times a day. Like many dKos participants, I have the time and motivation to track down links, watch streaming broadcasts, etc. Jack can't do this at work because he is too busy, and he can't do it at home because his technology is outdated and because he is exhausted. By the time he clicks on the remote, his mind is primed for the "hard-hitting" analysis provided by the bobbleheads.
I assure you that I haven't given up on Jack. In his last email, he also said this:
I am really happy with the issues raised by allsides this election year, as I believe that I have matured a bit politically.
In this election, information, in the form of verifiable facts, is our best weapon. Jack's problem is that he isn't getting much of that. I've known Jack for 23 years. Underneath his ignorance, he is a man of reason. He might not have HTML, but I assure you that he will get the information, spoon fed from me, in plain text, even if I have to cut, paste, and send to him daily updates from Media Matters. If you have friend like Jack, please do the same.
Remember, James Madison is on our side:
A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy. A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives them.
And so is Jefferson:
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.