On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 4:32 AM, Doug Fields <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Perhaps we're devolving into a semantics argument, but aren't you just > confusing "undecided" and "uninformed"? Why couldn't a bloc of people be > very up-to-date on the current state of the race and have formed mixed > opinions on different platform points between the two campaigns, and haven't > yet made up their minds over which candidate to back? > > It's the hard-core Republicans and Democrats, who are going to vote along > their party lines no matter what, who more closely resemble your analogy of > people who should be able to form their opinion based on minimal exposure to > the issues being discussed. The current "undecideds" are arguably the most > valuable voters still in play. They haven't surrendered to the polarization > between the far right and far left, who made their decision more than a year > ago, when there wasn't nearly enough information available to make an > "informed" decision.
This is something I am really very interested in, and I would love it if Doug could shed some light here. For the sake of argument I will grant your premise (just temporarily) that people who knew who they were going to vote for a year ago or 6 months ago or 3 months ago or 4 weeks ago are just extreme party hacks who follow the party line without thinking for themselves. But can you tell us what are the questions that any currently undecided voter might have that has not by this time been answered over and over again by both of these candidates? What I hear when I ask this question is something like "I still don't know how they are going to fix the financial crisis (or "bring peace to the Middle East", or "guarantee universal health care without spending any more money"). But these are not really requests for the candidates to give more specific answers to real political or policy questions - they are fantasies that somehow there are easy, quick or painless solutions to extremely difficulty problems. It does seem to me that anyone who does not know by now where Obama/McCain stand on the health care, or foreign policy questions, or the financial crisis, has just been incredibly inattentive (well, with the possible exception of McCain's position on the financial crisis, since it seems to be changing day by day). --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Like TV only smarter. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
