With the conclusion of the Republican Convention last night, the quadrennial dog and pony shows are over and now the two major political parties can hunker down for the 60- day-long homestretch of what will be, I'm sure, a very nasty Presidential campaign.
The GOP did their best to play the "compassionate conservative" card...trotting the moderates out to center stage, stifling the firebrands on the far right, and even backing away from the snarling, ugly keynote speech by "Democrat" Zell Miller (who seemed to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed on Wednesday)...hoping that it will work this time the way it almost worked in 2000 (luckily for them they had a majority in the Supreme Court to make up for the fact that they didn't garner the majority of actual votes in the country.)
After all of the ruthlessly stage-managed convention hoopla and hyperbole from both parties I'm no more engaged in the race than I was beforehand. It is, I realize, important...but neither of the candidates is very appealing and I will be, as I too often find myself doing, voting AGAINST someone rather than enthusiastically FOR someone. But vote I will... after all, playing our part in the process is the least we can do for the privilege of living in this ramshackle, sometimes-infuriating, sometimes-thrilling, bittersweetly glorious democracy of ours.
1 comment:
I'm in the midst of a very slow political awakening. I've tried in the past to take an interest, but as you say, I am most often appalled by one candidate and only mildly accepting of the other.
I understand and appreciate the power of a vote, and I've always wanted my vote to matter, to be in support of someone I believed in.
Consequently, I've never voted.
The last four years have proven that I've made a poor choice in doing so. This year, I vote against the destruction of our school system, against the stripping of our social services, against hand-outs to the richest in our society, against banning loving couples from uniting under the law, against a climate of paranoia and fear, against environmental terrorism, against an aggressive and destructive foreign policy that breeds the very terrorism that it proposes to eradicate, and against the president.
Once my country is off of the respirator, I will do more research into the candidates, and I will find a candidate who comes close to something that I can truly believe in. I don't care if mine is the only vote that he/she gets, I will vote for the candidate who deserves my vote.
Michael C Lorah
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