I'm about to stick my neck out...

[figmo]

...and make a prediction re: the Presidential election.

I have been saying for months that if McCain were to select a female VP candidate, he'd win the election.

I stand by that statement.

This has nothing to do with anyone's political preferences, including mine. I am making this prediction as a journalist.

My logic: Barack Obama's VP, Joe Biden, is male, thus alienating the folks who voted for Hillary Clinton because they wanted a woman President. Many of Hillary Clinton's supporters felt alienated by Obama's choice.

Many of these Hillary Clinton supporters are so desperate to see the "glass ceiling" shattered they'd vote for anything female on a ticket, no matter what her viewpoints were. Now that they have their female on a ticket, many of these former Clinton supporters will vote for the Republican slate, mostly to have a woman only "a heartbeat away" from the oldest Presidential candidate ever, exclusively because of her gender even though Sarah Palin's viewpoints are very different from Hillary Clinton's.

Comments

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I have more faith in Hillary's ability to woo her supporters to Barack's side than you do. Her point to them - "is it about me, or is it about the issues I am working for?" is very pointed, pardon my redundance. Any woman who votes for McCain because he has a woman VP candidate - indeed, any person who votes for him - based simply on the configuration of his VP candidate's wabbly bits has no business voting.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, being stupid or bigoted doesn't remove the right to vote. People can and do vote based on the most trivial of reasons (I've actually heard someone say that they voted for a person solely because he had the same name as their grandfather!). Certainly colour and racial background are going to be big matters for a number of people, even though they are irrelevant to how well he can do the job. I don't see any way round it, it's neither practical nor desirable to have a question on every vote about the reasons the voter cast it that way.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

it's neither practical nor desirable to have a question on every vote about the reasons the voter cast it that way.

I'm glad we disagree on that point. What you've just outlined is my entire life's work at this point - researching the reasons people vote and do what they do in regards to the law.

But in any case, I'm about ready to say that we should require passing a critical-thinking test before being allowed in the voting booth, because I'm tired of stupid people electing other stupid people and thus allowing our country to be run into the ground. The original intent of the Founders was an educated populace making informed decisions; what we have now is certainly no relation to that intention.

Voting is a responsibility as well as a right. Too often people only exercise the latter without exercising the former, which makes their vote a joke.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Let me clarify. "It is neither practical nor desirable to have a question on every vote about the reasons the voter cast it that way and use it to invalidate the votes. Sure, you can have a question on there (as long as you don't mind that I will sit there for a couple of hours writing an essay about why I voted that way) but are you going to make the analyses in time to get a meaningful vote count? You already spend close to half a term thinking and campaigning for the next one, how much longer are you going to spend?

An educated populace can just as easily be wrong or biased. It depends who does the education. At the risk of invoking Godwin, most of the leaders in a certain party in a European country in the 1930s were well educated, and very well educated about political realities. Most members of the Communist Party in the USSR were well educated. Pity the peasants who only knew that the leaders were 'wrong'.

Who chooses? Who makes the tests to tell if the voters are educated enough? Not very long ago black people were forbidden the vote because they were considered 'uneducated' and many people regarded them as uneducatable. Not very long ago women were denied the vote because they were considered "not intelligent enough" to vote. What other groups are going to be marginalised because they aren't "good enough" to vote? Dyslexics because they can't spell? People whose first language isn't that of the vote?

"Voting is a responsibility as well as a right. Too often people only exercise the latter without exercising the former, which makes their vote a joke." True, and they treat lots of other things as 'rights' without accepting the responsibilities as well. They have children and don't take care of them or bring them up as responsible citizens. They demand their right of "free speech" and then abuse it to hurt others. They demand their right to drive and then get lawyers to buy them off the hook when they crash. Have driving tests with a written component reduced the number of deaths? Not in the UK from what I can gather.

Yes, 'stupid' people elect 'stupid' leaders. Unfortunately what people consider 'stupid' is never what they themselves do, only what others do. I remember being asked after a university election "did you vote the right way?" Yes, of course I did, because the way I voted was what I considered right by definition. I didn't vote the way the questioner meant, but since he was a 200lb linebacker type I wasn't going to correct his question for him.

If half your population is actually stupid or corrupt enough to elect someone who is stupid in the clinical sense, you've got a big problem and restricting the vote won't be enough to cure it. Especially since the ones doing the restricting are very likely to be the ones in power...

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

and i'm sorry but the media covereage, except for PBS and CSPAN, is also a joke, and a huge part of the problem with every single show a shouting match between pundits because they know it improves ratings. at the cost of tearing apart the country. shameful.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely. When news became entertainment in the mid-1970s or thereabouts, the media began to go downhill in their role as the fourth estate.

I can dimly remember newscasts that were about news, rather than ratings. That changed when I was still a child. What passes for "news" today disgusts me.

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

i'm afraid i don't remember real news, except that my parents sometimes watched the news hour with jim lehrer and meet the press. tim russert's death was a huge blow.
and ironically the best news on tv... on comedy central. (daily show & colbert)

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Alas, the reason Jon Stewart gets away with asking the real questions is the folks at the White House don't take him seriously because they see his show as a "comedy" show.

Note that until this President got into office, Helen Thomas had a front row seat in the press room at the White House. Now she's relegated to the back, rarely gets called on, and when she does, her question is indubidably dodged.