Of the more than 1000 words we had to read for this class' assignment, there was only one part of it that actually made me think about something interesting. Why do people vote what they vote? this has been a question that has been on my mind since Barack Obama announced he received the nomination for president. as soon as people found out that there were be a black democratic nominee, there was chaos. some people, that i knew, immediately decided that they were going to be vote republican. was this a race issue? at the same time, even more people that i knew decided that they would vote for the black nominee.
This immediately bothered me, both sides. in my quest to find who to vote i asked these people why they thought their candidate was the best and the reasons i got were limite to none and i received plently of " its right because its right, i dont know".
Sympathy seems to have played the biggest role in this election, black and whites sympathized with the fact that this could be the year that we have the first african american president and the others thought that we should vote for the veteran and pow because he truly knew what it was to give your all to your country. blah blah blah, color will not run the country and something that a candidate did 40 years ago will not run the country either. what can these people do for us today???
I remember there was a church that i visited for a youth meeting and they were preaching about politics and the church. They said "if you vote democrat you are not a real christian". i was thinking to myself, what is their positioning for saying this statement and when i asked that, the youth leader said that it was because democrats support abortion. so wait, does not supporting abortion take us out of a recession? will morale alone take us out? i really dont think so.
When Schudson, author of Click here for Democracy, says that politics is more of chosing for comraderie than policy, he is absolutely right. the church that preached that was brainwashed by the pastor to believe that if they voted democrat they would go to hell and so McCain got all 1500 votes from that church.
If politics are run as a popularity contest i better start friending people now for my run in 2040!
IKE
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I really agree with your comments regarding this past election; more than ever before, I truly felt was if it didn’t matter who was running because most people just saw it was a black man was running. I heard countless of my friends telling me that they were voting for Obama, but not a single one knew his stance on any of the 'hot-button' topics. All that matter was that for the first time in America, a black man had a chance of going to the White House.
ReplyDelete"Sympathy seems to have played the biggest role in this election; black and whites sympathized with the fact that this could be the year that we have the first African American president..."
Even though I myself voted for President Obama, I still wonder if he was elected because he was the best man for the job or if its because he is black?
I couldn't agree more with some of the comments you made, especially the final one regarding McCain. I know plenty of people who voted for both ways just because of the candidates race, age, or sex. They knew nothing of their stances or anything else, just what they physically saw. I hope one day that it no longer becomes a popularity race or a race of choosing for comradely but that the best man or woman for the job is in there based upon their performance and politics.
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