Observations from the Door

So I have become "that dude." I am the guy who bangs on your door, ask who you're voting for, and hands out propaganda. McCain is not my pick from the Republicans, but he is far better than Obama and his empty promises. The Democrats have run a really dirty campaign and it makes me ill. As they pitch it, they are the "open minded party," which is total crap. Some of the incidents that I have hear of while volunteering were some college Republicans were beat up at UNM, McCain signs being torn down, and Democrats volunteering at Republican headquarters and trying to throw a wrench from the inside.

I understand that what I am "selling" is not very popular (ie religion, politics), but they treat me worse than a serial killer despite being friendly. A few encounters that I have seen that I found interesting were an African American man I ran into and some lady in a Mercedes.

The African American man was basically voting straight ticket Republican with the exception of Obama. I thought this was really odd, because he was conservative until he had the opportunity to vote for another Black man. Another instance of the race card being flipped, was when my co-worker was picking up his wife from CNM the community college, formerly TVI, and some African American guys were campaigning asking who passers by were voting for. My co-worker witnessed a man a few feet away, who said that he was not voting for Obama, was called a racist. We have probably beat this like a dead horse, but it worries me that we, Americans, are willing to vote for a man based upon "packaging" and not who he is, what he stands for, or what he hopes or plans to do. I am confident that Obama will attract more "non traditional" voters than we have ever seen.

I was leaving flyers at some lady's house when she rolled up in her late model Mercedes, the last few years have killed her portfolio. I approach her and politely speak to her about the election. Due to my association with Bush, whom I did not mention at all, party wise, received one of the rudest "get off my property" responses that I have gotten in all of my encounters. Some Obama supporters were polite and told me what they thought, which I can respect, but being associated with Bush is almost equivalent to being Dahmer's assistant. Where I am going with this is that the forces that be, read media, have made Bush into the boogie man. What bothers me the most about this is that they do not consider the alternative: Gore or Stacie (read Kerry). If Gore was president during 9-11 I'm confident that things would have been much different. With Stacie I cannot even begin to start where we would be.

So I am worried about the outcome, but on the bright side, this may lead to a resurgence of the Republican party.