Uncommitted voters

A CBS poll that asked 516 “uncommitted voters” who they thought won the debate returned results with 40% saying Obama won, 26% saying McCain won, and the rest calling it a draw.

Why do we care about these uncommitted voters?

Oh yeah, because these people in the wishy washy, fence sitting, uninformed (yes, I said uninformed) middle are the ones who decide elections. Republicans and conservatives don’t, Democrats and liberals don’t, 3rd party wackos sure as hell don’t, the people who can live through at least a year of campaigning, primary season, conventions, with 24/7 cable and network news coverage, daily front page headlines in the paper, blogs, web sites, radio - these people who still haven’t picked a side are basically the ones who decide the elections.

I have more respect for the Daily Kos kool-aid drinkers who’d vote for Obama if he were caught red handed with child porn on his laptop and a million dollars in bribe money in his freezer (and they really would vote for him) than I do these so-called “independents” who seemingly have no principles whatsoever to guide their choice.

So they look to things like who has more experience, who is older, who is younger, who is black, who isn’t black, who talks nice, who is mean, who seems strong, and they may even tune into a few convention speeches, debates, and if they live in a battleground state, they see the ads while watching American Idol or Heroes or whatever it is people watch on network TV these days.

Apparently they don’t have a set of issues that are important to them. They don’t care what happens to their taxes, they don’t care whether Constitutional rights are eroded, they certainly can’t be bothered with understanding the difference between the kind of judges a liberal or conservative nominates. They aren’t concerned with the safety of the country, where are troops are sent, how we deal with other countries, what we’ll do about bad ones who can, might, or have produced or procured chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

If they cared about any of these things, if at least one or two of these issues were important, wouldn’t they have figured out who’s taking what position on them?

No.

Instead, they wait for someone like Katie Couric to tell them what the big issue is today and what to think about it. They might even decide that being things basically suck right now, and being the guy in the White House has an R next to his name, the guy running with the R next to his name must be bad. Way to connect the dots. Never mind that the suckitude may be completely or partly beyond the control of the current president, and never mind the guy running to replace him has a completely different position.

So, when you watch a debate, or a speech, or a press conference, and the candidate is talking baby talk, pulling punches instead of describing what an incompetent fool his opponent is, when you see Obama being able to get mileage out of a problem that he and his friends and colleagues who share his ideology created - its because of the “uncommitted voters.” The kind of voters we need less of, but are pandered to instead.

If you are reading this, and you still haven’t made up your mind. If you’re still on the fence. If you are still not sure who would be better for the country, do me a favor, do the right thing and don’t bother. Just stay home on Wednesday November 5th, stay home on super-Wednesday and don’t go out and vote. Leave that to those of us who are informed.

Oh yeah, stay home the day before too. Rent some DVDs or go see a movie. Whatever you do, don’t turn on the TV, there won’t be anything good on anyway, just politics and stuff.