USA Today had a fascinating lead article today by Susan Page. It's easy to tell she's a Democrat, and it's also easy to tell she's worried about this upcoming election.
The article's fascinating because of the suggestions it makes about voter demographics and the overwhelming proportion of voters who know next to nothing about the candidates they're choosing.
It was striking to read that USA Today's numbers suggested that only 39 percent of voters are able to name the Vice President. A woman featured in the article as an example of a disaffected voter unlikely to bother showing up at the polls was quoted as follows:
"I really don't know that much about him, but from what I hear, he's all about putting taxes on the middle class people, and I've heard that he's put his money in overseas accounts".
She's disappointed in Obama but has swallowed the false media-amplified narrative so aggressively hammered home about Mitt Romney by the Obama campaign over the summer. She admits that she doesn't pay much attention to the campaign, or politics for that matter, which supports the idea that the coordinated messaging on behalf of the Democrat candidate is highly effective.
Polls consistently show that Americans are divided approximately in thirds: One third are committed Liberals, one third Comservatives, and the remaining third are in between. But this article suggests that the true division is inside the approximately 40 percent of voters who are actually paying attention. I suspect that among those 40 percent, about half are conservative and the other half big-L Liberal. So the electoral fight is really to find that catchy jingle that will appeal the unwashed and ignorant masses from the other 60 percent.
If Romney wants to overcome the sycophantic media's Obama messaging echo chamber, he needs to find a way to connect to people at the grass roots level. He needs a different narrative about himself that tells the disconnected and disaffected voters who he really is; rather than the elite rich guy who's going to stick it to the middle class so he can make his rich friends richer, he needs to promote an equally simple message that he stands for prosperity for everybody. Alongside the message telling the same folks that Obama's objective is to make everybody poor except the government class, who live like kings while everyone else suffers.
Susan, the author, is clearly worried. She found out that most of these disaffected voters who say they're unlikely to show up to vote this year voted for Obama in 2008. She tries to make her liberal self feel better by offering the hopeful news that Romney's got only tepid support from the other side, but I think she's missing a very important distinction about that observation.
Although most conservatives, me included, are less than enamored with Mitt Romney, we are all planning to show up at our polling places with bells on to enthusiastically pull the lever for him. Because we are unified behind the absolute certainty that Obama will destroy America if he's allowed to stay in office beyond January.
What's disappointing about the article is that it seems close to 2/3 of American adults are almost completely ignorant about candidates and their policies, not to mention any notion of how the Left's policies affect their lives.
What's encouraging is the knowledge that millions of people that were so enthusiastically turning out for Obama last time are disappointed and discouraged, and most likely won't bother this time. I'm pretty sure that adds up to a Romney victory. Although I also believe if more of those ignorant folks took some time to educate themselves, they would be more likely to be converted to the conservative philosophy.
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