Democrats, day 1

[calimac]

I got home in time to see the last 2.5 or 3 hours of this, something around that.

We don't get Cspan on our bargain-basement cable service, so I watched it on PBS. PBS specializes in recursive commentators, the kind who say, "What she just said is [what she just said]."

Hey, it's Lilly Ledbetter. I remember her from four years ago. Glad she's doing OK, even though the law with her name on it couldn't provide retroactive justice for herself.

One of the things I'm looking for at this convention is something to fill the huge unspoken gap in Democratic politics: someone good to run in 2016. After tonight, I want to vote for Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio. What an inspiring speaker; what a moving story. Reminds me a little of the new guy who told his moving story inspiringly eight years ago.

Not Ted Strickland, though. Hoarse, bullish in both senses of the word, thinks a guy working 60 hours a week in an auto plant is a success story.

Michelle Obama, the final act of the evening (I hope so; I turned the TV off afterwards to avoid listening to the commentators again), was more fragile and emotional than in her speech four years ago. Maybe she figured she could afford to be. She said that Barack is still the same man she married twenty years ago. Resisted the impulse to ask, "Was he targeting civilians with drone strikes then, too?" I know; what she really meant was that she's relieved at having been able to carve out a stable home life in the White House after all.

... post interrupted by a political campaign call about a state proposition. Was unable to convince this person that its number alone was not enough to remind me offhand which one it was (there's eleven on the ballot this fall). Seemed to think that meant I'd never heard of it, but still wouldn't respond to my requests to tell me which one it was. After several go-rounds of this, she had the gall to ask why I was getting upset, and asked if she should call at a better time. Told her not to call at all and hung up. Afterwards, looked up the proposition. Oh, that one. Yes, I was planning to vote the way she advocated, but now I'm not so sure.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

If it was 32, it doesn't matter how irritating she was ...

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I haven't even looked at the ballot propositions yet. I start researching them when the sample ballot gets to me.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That would require more backtracking than I'm comfortable with. Much of the public conversation has already gone on by the time the sample ballot arrives, by slow riverboat from Sacramento. I collect the first annotated list I can get and mentally hook my notations on to that, though I don't make the final decision until sample ballot and everything else have come in.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I agree, but I want to scare them. If they call back, I will.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I hardly ever pay attention to what other people are saying about a measure; so little of it is based on political values similar to mine that trying to get anything useful out of it takes too much time. I read the measure and think about it. I usually find it easier to decide which propositions to vote for than to find meaningful information on political candidates.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of information like who's sponsoring it, and why; what they're trying to accomplish with it. This is useful to know regardless of the voter's political orientation. Figuring out the purpose and intent of a measure from the formal documentation alone is hazardous, as they're often highly technical; and the voter information pamphlet is often seriously deficient in that regard.

Of course it's possible to gather this information later on, but I find it a lot easier to take note when it happens to float in front of my face anyway. For instance, this year I'm using an article that appeared in the local paper nearly two months ago, summarizing in plain language each prop's sponsorship and intended purpose. This is quite useful, especially as this year there are two trojan horse measures whose purposes are quite different from what they appear to be. This article was enough to allow me to make tentative judgments based on my political philosophy, and it should be just as easy for yours, even if the conclusions are different.

And I clipped the article, so now when someone says, say, "Prop 32" out of context, I just look it up in the article so I know which one they're talking about, the same way that when someone says "Paul Ryan" I know they mean the budget-crunching congressman from Wisconsin, regardless of whether or not I intend to vote for him. The real point is that the numbers just aren't memorable.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was planning to vote the way she advocated, but now I'm not so sure.

Perhaps that was the purpose of the call?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. It would have required conspiracy-movie levels of specific knowledge to have set out to annoy me in that way deliberately.