Driving Votes: Matt's Blog - Archived Entry

I was getting drinks with some friends last night and they told me they didn’t know who to vote for. “Do you mean Kerry or Nader?” I asked optimistically.

“We mean Kerry or Bush,” they answered.

I asked one of them what she thought about Bush. She said that our country needs steady leadership in times of change and that America would look weak if we switched leaders.

I asked her what she thought about Kerry. She said they didn’t really trust him because he flip flops on issues. Her friends agreed.

It seems like everyone is aware that both parties’ spin machines are operating in high gear. Fewer people are aware that Bush has raised a whopping $80 million more than John Kerry. On top of this, there’s the sad fact that Republicans seem to be better at marketing (but worse at running the country!) than Democrats.

Given the amount of money that goes into advertising Bush, it’s no coincidence that my friends’ concerns were identical to the top two marketing messages of the Bush campaign:
1. Steady leadership in times of change. This is the official slogan of the Bush campaign. See http://www.georgewbush.com.
2. Kerry flip flops on issues. The Bush Website has an entire section called “Kerry Flip Flops.”.

I asked my friend, “What does steady leadership mean?”

“It means we shouldn’t switch leaders when we’re at war.”

“Why shouldn’t we switch leaders?” I asked.

“Because we’d look weak.”

“Why do you think we would look weak? Isn’t our military the largest in the world?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

The Republican's marketing is really working! I just looked it up and here’s one good reason we shouldn’t worry too much about looking weak:

The United States military budget is larger than the military budgets of the next twenty biggest spenders combined, and six times larger than Russia's, which places second. Source: Wikipedia.

I asked my friend, “Why do you think Kerry flip flops.”

“Well, he voted for the war and then voted against it.”

I reminded her that Kerry voted for the war when the Bush administration said they had evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The Bush ads forget to mention this or the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have ever been found—heck, they haven’t even found evidence that Iraq was trying to build weapons of mass destruction.

Here’s an excerpt from a good article that reminds us of the way Republicans were talking about WMDs. What they were saying scares the shit out of you so bad you can understand why Kerry might have voted for war.

Bush graphically warned, “we cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” The month before, Bush claimed an International Atomic Energy Agency report stated that Iraq was “six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon.” The problem? No such report ever existed. In fact, in January 2003 the IAEA told the U.N. Security Council, “we have found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program since the elimination of the program in the 1990s.”

I asked her what else she’s heard about Bush she said, “It’s so hard to know what’s true. I don’t really trust either of them.” Her friend chimed in, “Both sides have so many facts.” All of us agreed.

I’ve heard people say similar things about not knowing who to trust when I’ve been out registering voters. Let me know if you have good ideas about what to say when people don’t trust either candidate.

Like my friends last night, lots of folks are internalizing the messages from the Bush ads. If you dig past the shouting and the noise of the TV commercials, there are some undisputable facts that show Bush favors the rich, is destroying our environment, and is tarnishing our reputation in the eyes of the world. There are so many facts that we have a whole section of our website dedicated to them. There are entire websites such as www.misleader.org with many, many more.

As for the war, the best thing I’ve heard lately was from Greg Palast who said, “Regardless of whether we originally went to war with Iraq for oil, we sure as hell ain’t leaving without it.”

I’m going to talk more with these friends to tell them the truth about Bush. There are lots of facts on both sides and it is hard to know who to trust. But you don’t need to be an expert to know that President Bush robs from the poor to give to the rich and none of us should want a President like that.