Youth Politics

The recent polls show that McCain is catching up to Obama and that the race is close. The recent polls also show that Obama is performing far better than Kerry and Clinton did during this time in their respective election years. Okay, so how can this happen? Wait, it can’t. The McCain catching up poll I got from the Wall Street Journal. The Obama performing better poll is from CSPAN radio. Which one then should I believe?

Neither. And not only should I not believe them, but I should ignore them. Again, who cares how the public feels right now? People are saying how Obama is poised to lose at this point, and I would ask how anyone could possibly say that. Who says he’s poised to lose? Republicans? Of course that’s what they think. I think the Republican party is grossly underestimated the number of Obama supporters and will live to regret banking on that fact should they lose. I’d say the race has only just begun. There are a lot of people who wait until once the debates have begun to finally choose their candidate. It’s their right to wait that long so that they can make the most informed decision possible.

I’ve never been polled. Then again I’ve only been allowed to vote for a little over two years, so I don’t expect to be called up. But even if they wanted to, how would they reach me? By calling the house I do not own? How can they get an accurate polling of young voters when most of them do not own houses and polls do not generally call cell phones?

While listening to the radio, I heard a comment saying how polls are good enough with just a diverse sample of people and that you do not need to poll the entire population, much like how doctors do not need all of your blood to run a blood test. This is the worst analogy I’ve ever heard. How can you compare people to blood? Your blood is mostly the same throughout your body minus a few imperfections. Can you say that about a population of people? If I scooped up a bunch of people from China is that the same as scooping up a bunch of people from the United States? Is scooping up a portion of Maine the same as a portion of Texas? I’d think not. And while you can get a few people to poll in from each state, there are no guarantees. Polls try to mimic circumstances, but it’s impossible to do so with so many variables affecting the poll.

The one thing to remember about polls is that they are snapshots of viewpoints at the time of the polling. This is extremely important. You cannot declare a candidate the winner before the election or it’s not fair. Remember when the media goofed in 2000? That can have a serious impact on voting, and that is not something I want to see happen.

I do not trust polls. I do not care about polls. I never participate in polls (although I’m not saying that I wouldn’t). Should you base your vote on a poll? Absolutely not.

I live in Northern Virginia. Why is this significant? Because Northern Virginia is transforming Virginia from a Republican stronghold into a battleground. Obama is putting in significant resources to try to win over the voters in my state, especially seeing the current trends (250,000 new voters, Democratic governor). This is good news for Democratic Virginians, and an even more compelling reason to register to vote. It does not matter if you’re going to college in another state, your ballot will still count for Virginia unless you change it otherwise.

I have noticed myself that there are a lot more Democrats than there were before. I don’t know what it is about the Northern Virginia area that’s making it more and more Democratic, but I suspect it has to do with its proximity to Washington. Further south Virginia still looks largely Republican because of its root; however the Northern Virginia population is exploding, and with this explosion comes a higher percentage now of Democratic voters. Let’s not forget the Independents though. There are plenty of Independents in my area, and a lot of them seem to be left-leaning.

So if you’re from Virginia, and you’re not registered to vote, I urge you to do so. In Virginia your vote is going to be even more important than ever, as now it is not certain whether we will go red or blue. Do not let others determine the fate of your state, vote!

Have you ever thought about why you’re a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Libertarian, or a Green? If someone asked you what party you belonged to and why, out of nowhere, would you be prepared enough to respond, assuming you consider yourself to be of a certain party? If someone asked you if you believe in everything the Democratic party stands for, as an example, would you be able to say yes with absolute certainty? Do you even know all of the platforms that the Democratic party even pursues? What about the Republican party; are you absolutely sure that you know about all of the positions they represent?

Sometimes it’s baffling that someone would pick one or two issues and then go with a party on those issues alone, as if there are no independents or other parties that take the same exact stances on those issues. The reasons that explain these occurrences simply do not satisfy me, such as aligning yourself with the same political party as your parents. You need to take a step back, and analyze your parents’ position carefully. Do you know why they vote for a certain party? Are you of the same alignment because their ideas are firmly engraved into your brain? Maybe. It does not have to be this way, but it happens a lot. Otherwise it’s due to ignorance, I mean how many people can claim that they know all of the party’s platforms and their stances. My guess would be not many, and I would be right.

The two big shots, the Democrats and the Republicans, are backed by the people as well as corporate interest. It’s true. They pull in a lot of money from donations, it’s simply not fair. People often vote for only these two because people feel like voting for anyone else outside of these two parties is a waste of a vote. No one should ever feel like their vote is being wasted, ever. Why should there only ever be two candidates we can vote on and not feel like the other candidates are a waste of time? The world is not in black and white. The world is not one way or the other, it’s simply not true. There are not only two opinions on any matter. Let’s not argue about the different colors within each party; we all know that these two parties are virtually in the center when you look at the grand scheme of political alignments. So the question becomes, will these two parties be from now until forever the only two “choices” that America really has, or is the public eventually going to do its research and vote for their truly best match?

With the advent of the Internet, it’s simply inexcusable not to know what the major party platforms are, as well as the platforms of independent candidates and the minor parties. So many hours of the day are spent, wasted away from surfing the web. Why not do a Google search on Ralph Nader? Don’t take a look at just what you disagree with him on, take a look at his entire platform. His beliefs on all issues is what’s important, because come election time you’re not going to be able to pick just the one or two viewpoints you agree with, you have to take along the entire bag of ideas each candidate carries. If you’re a financial conservative, but disagree with the war, are you willing to forfeit that disagreement to get the financial policies that you’d like? That is the kind of question that everyone should be struggling with.

But, the people hardly ever are torn in this manner. How can that be? How can so many people agree on the exact same ideas on every issue? It’s not probable. I wouldn’t want a country whose population thinks the exact same things anyway, because then there’s no debate, there’s no questions asked, and there’s no criticism. People need feedback, without it, people continue to make the same stupid mistakes or the same sorts of actions that could be corrected or improved. Right now, the Democrats correct the Republicans, and the Republicans correct the Democrats. But what if they’re both wrong? Who’s correcting the both of them?

I urge you to take a look at the different platforms that exist in the United States. Do a Wikipedia search on all of the major political parties and then on some of the other independent candidates. Get to know where you truly stand on the issues and which party satisfies a particular issue the best. Then decide where your alignment truly is. No stupid online quiz is going to be able to tell you what party you belong to, it’s nonsense. It would take a very long time for a quiz to know absolutely how you feel on every possible issue. It’s hard for a quiz to know how you feel about even a single issue! Feelings are hard to use as empirical data. Only you can know where you are on the political spectrum.

Knowledge is power here, and the power to change the political climate in the United States I think should be a powerful motivator for anyone. Why should anyone pick the better of two evils? Why can’t someone pick the best candidate for their own views? Why should two parties influenced heavily by lobbyists control what the American people want? Why do people have such a poor view of government? Could it possibly be because they were forced to choose a candidate they did not much want, because they wanted the other candidate even less?

If you do a Google search of young liberals, or young democrats, or college democrats, or young progressives, etc., you will notice an abundance of websites trying to spread the word about progressive issues and generally promoting Barack Obama these days. I did the same search for generally Republican websites and… I can’t find many. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single good one that I have been able to find.

So where are the young republicans? Don’t they exist? Please tell me they haven’t been reduced to this pathetic excuse for a site. Good luck trying to navigate the pages. There are a few possible explanations here. The first obvious one is that there are no young Republicans or their numbers are few. This would suggest that the Republicans have to shape up and reach out to young voters. McCain is going to have a tough time in this election if they do not try to convince the younger population that their stance on the issues is correct. The Republicans may even be better off just making sure the young voters don’t turn up (don’t let that happen!)

Another possible explanation is that young Republicans are computer illiterate. I find this hard to believe. Someone can easily make a site dedicated to youth Republicans. You don’t have to know a damn thing about programming to set one up. Either this is the problem or young Republicans are lazy, and I know that cannot be the case. So far it looks like explanation number one is correct.

The 65 and older age group is not going to make a young Republican website. Most of them just do not know how, and that’s the biggest demographic that the Republicans reach. It looks like without youth support, the Republican message will get lost on the Internet to all of the progressive, liberal views. And I do not see that fact changing before the election comes around.

So do you hear that young Democrats? Do you want to make sure the Republicans lose this election? Get out there and vote! You need to make sure the Republicans lose hard to the demographic that used to be the least important one to care about. Let them be majorly wrong about this point! If the Republicans are not going to care about the youth vote, why should you let them win this election? Stand up for your beliefs and get out there vote, no matter which side you vote for!

Anyone who claims they have no time to listen or to watch the news simply isn’t trying hard enough. Okay, some people legitimately cannot, but there are many people who can easily accommodate news into their schedules.

1. Radio - any time you’re in a car, turn off the mostly terrible radio music, and put on the news. Talk radio news is my favorite, in particular The Inner Loop, a program in the D.C. area. I do listen to others however.

2. Internet - any time you check your e-mail, check the news page. Take a quick glance, if anything catches your eye, skim it. If something really catches your eye, read it. It’s pretty simple to keep up to date with this approach.

3. TV - News programs are on all the time. Even thirty minutes of local news is enough, although I’m talking about staying informed politically. Thirty minutes of Fox or CNN for thirty minutes while eating dinner is easy I think even for the busier people.

The benefit of getting your news from all of these different sources is that hopefully you will get multiple views on the topic or even gather more information about a situation than with just one or two choices. This is especially true if those one or two sources lean Democrat or Republican exclusively. The media always finds a way to insert its little bias to persuade you into one direction or the other. Political news should never be that way, it should be just news. Facts are supposed to be incorruptible, or so they say.

So next time you find yourself bored out of your mind, or even if you’re not, try just looking up the latest news story. Read it, know the subject. You’ll sound a little bit smarter if a discussion about it ever comes up.

A few unrelated remarks:

My “Three Reasons Why Republicans Are Wrong” article has recently been published by the Carnival of the Liberals! I’d like to thank them for the review and for putting up my blog post. If you’re a Liberal looking to find others who share your view points, or if you’re a Conservative looking for the other side of your arguments, I highly recommend reading the articles posted on their site as it is an impressive web zine.

What happened to The Inner Loop? I haven’t been able to listen to them in the last few days because they’re missing! I hope they come back soon, because my car rides to work are starting to get pretty dull and uninteresting. Yes I could just listen to some regular news, but I’d much rather have political talk in the morning more than anything else. If anyone knows what happened to it, please let me know.

Looks like Russia has backed down, although now everyone’s trying to figure out what to do about it. I think I’ll comment more about it in a future blog post.

Until next time…