Many people are "weak minded" voters.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

They will literally vote whichever way their spouse, pastor, or influential friend tells them. Really.

So as much as I dislike this concept, if you meet these people, TELL 'EM HOW TO VOTE! Hopefully they won't run into anyone else before Nov 2.

I generally avoid talking politics at work. The subject of the elections came up, and one of the technicians at my work, a very nice middle aged lady, mentioned some BS RW talking points she had received from one of her supervisors, the ones about Teresa and the Heinz corp. having so many foreign plants with outsourced jobs yada yada. (There is debunking of this all over snopes and other sites BTW) I had to point out that that was BS, and that JK and TH-K don't have controlling interest or control over the company anymore etc. Then she recited some other RW talking points, but more as a recitation, not with any real conviction. She told me that she had received the talking points from this supervisor, and she said that of course the supervisor would say that because she is against Kerry.

I basically said that, where there is an election when an incumbent has had 4 years, a person should vote based on whether they feel the incumbent has done a good job, and is worthy of being reappointed to the job.

Then she asked me whether I thought this was true in the case of Bush. I thought it was obvious enough from the tone of our discussion, and then it occurred to me that she was kind of asking me to tell her how to think. Hard to explain, you would have had to have been there. I told her, simply, "No." Without any embellishment or elaboration or any other personal attack on Bush.

Now I have no guarantee that this lady would have been strongly influenced by my conversation with her. And as it is, she is not registered and cannot vote this year. But there really are a lot of people like this, who don't follow news and don't think critically, and are just borne along on whatever winds are blowing where they are. If they live in San Francisco, those are likely to be liberal winds. If they are here in Texas, they are the winds of FOX news, Limbaugh radio, and endless repetition and echo of those talking points from dozens of coworkers and fellow churchgoers.

If they are decent souls like this lady, and barely above blue collar status if that, shrubco has nothing for them but tattered bibles and the bloody shirt of their dead son from Iraq. It may not be that hard to make a sale and it's worth a minute of your time.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. Kick (blub blub) kick (gasp)