My absentee ballot arrived in the mail yesterday and I realized I have a decision to make pretty soon. Am I a terribly ignorant person for not knowing whom I'm voting for yet? Sometimes I feel that I am, that since I'm an adult of 27 that I should have strong political opinions and maybe a t-shirt with somebody's campaign slogan on it.
The internet is little help. Ninety percent of Facebook political posts are something to the effect of "why we should NOT vote for so-and-so" or "why such-and-such is a liar." Telling me why I shouldn't vote for Candidate A is not the same as telling me why I should vote for Candidate B, you know. I took one of those online political quizzes and it said I should vote for Jill Stein of the Green-Rainbow* party, who, as far as I can tell from her webpage, believes in everything but doesn't seem to have any concrete plans about how to accomplish any of those things. But I guess she doesn't have to. Being a Green-Rainbow or Libertarian candidate is a pretty low-stress gig. You don't even have to go to the debates.
Watching (and by "watching" I mean "reading the transcripts online the next day") the debates doesn't move me in either direction. All I've learned is that each candidate is above-average at arguing most of the time. And sure, I could vote based on what a candidate says he's going to do if re/elected, but come on now, how much of that stuff is he actually going to do in four years? It's kind of a lot of stuff for someone who is going to get checked and balanced all the time. I could say, "yes, I'll vote for you if you do this one thing, but I don't really care about most of that other stuff, so if you're only going to do that stuff and not the one thing I do care about, I don't really care."
I have reasons to like each candidate, or rather, I have reasons to want to like each candidate, but nothing has been said or done that has made me love one particular candidate. Then again, I'm voting in a state that's pretty set in its ways politically, so I could vote for anyone and it really wouldn't matter, and that takes a lot of the stress out of things.
*I was hoping that Kermit the Frog and "Rainbow Connection" were somehow endorsing this candidate, but apparently Muppets are politically neutral.
Ditto to everything you just said. Except I haven't taken on online quiz and I didn't know the Green party is now the Green-Rainbow party but I kind of like it better like that.
ReplyDeleteLast Presidential election I voted for Ralph Nader and for some reason I feel like I was being kind of a wuss. Now whenever politics comes up I try to find out who the people I'm talking with are supporting and then I support the other candidate.
ReplyDeleteThat said: the Green-Rainbow party has no official party recognition in Massachusetts. That makes Jill Stein a FAKE candidate from a FAKE party.
You should vote for Pizza. Who doesn't like pizza?