RTP-area local music and culture

[grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>]

Good Frank Rich in the Times that touches on some of these issues (talks 
about % of Bush voters who were right-wing nutjobs, and Thomas Frank's 
assertion that it's all about values until the day after the election, 
when it goes back to being all about $$): 
http://nytimes.com/2004/11/14/arts/14rich.html

I'd like to see somebody, maybe the Democrats but maybe better Soros or 
Moveon separate from the D.P. itself, do some serious intensive research 
into what keeps the remaining 40% of eligible voters from voting. We 
already know that massive registration drives do a little bit to get 
some of them involved, but pollsters also know that just being 
registered is useless by itself as an indicator of voting likelihood.

Is it access? Regardless of what else happens, pushing for more 
widespread early-voting, with more open polling places in more states, 
should be a Dem Party Platform issue.

Is it satisfaction with the status quo? Do we write that % off entirely 
then as unreachable?

Is it like the guy in Cary who called into the State of Things to 
complain that their attitude towards non-voters was really patronizing, 
and when MPK asked why he didn't vote, he said "my politics are to the 
far left of the spectrum." And unfortunately nobody on the panel that 
day had the sense to say "do you realize that your non-vote is actually 
a vote for the incumbent?"

I mean, there is a massive third party in America, one that would have 
won this election had it voted as a bloc. Tapping it by massive 
voter-registration drives seems to be close to a zero-sum game for both 
parties. What about finding out what would motivate it? Or is it all 
about legalizing pot?

Re: moral values issues, I think you're discounting the number of 
single-issue abortion voters somewhat. I've known plenty of folks who 
were that way, and I heard a few on the radio leading up to the election 
as well. I'm curious to know whether at this point it would be possible 
to reframe that dialog. I know that for a comparatively tiny die-hard 
minority, even birth control and particularly the morning-after pill are 
just as bad, but I wonder whether some ground could be gained by pushing 
harder to reduce the number of abortions performed by increasing 
education and access to birth control.

That is to say, by explicitly saying "look, you want fewer abortions, we 
want fewer abortions, but logic and common sense say you've got to teach 
people how not to get pregnant, and abstinence alone isn't cutting it," 
is it possible to reach the large % of people who are unhappy with 
abortion but who aren't so right-wing as to be against sex-ed and birth 
control as well?

I know there are already people trying to work this angle, but I don't 
know that it is being explicitly pushed as the most logical "solution" 
to the abortion "problem."

Changing the subject, I heard the tail-end of a piece on the radio about 
a ranked-choice voting experiment in San Francisco. How did that work 
out for them? It would seem to almost necessitate moving to touchscreen 
systems (although one could redesign the op-scan to handle it by 
switching to little round SAT bubbles instead of the arrows, and having 
3 bubbles by each name--but I think the spoilage rate would go way up) 
but I think the gist of recent hacking discussion has been that the most 
likely point-of-hack is the central server and not the UI anyway.

Lastly, if y'all aren't aware, the new FM talk-radio station in 
Greensboro (101.1) has that total freaking psycho nutcase Michael Savage 
on nightly from like 6-10 p.m. Hoo-boy he's a loon. If radio elsewhere 
is sucking I'll turn him on to remind myself just how completely 
off-the-scale the right-wing propaganda machine is. In terms of sheer 
egregiousness, I don't think it would be close to possible for The Left 
to match him, no matter how hard it tried, unless Air America gave 
Seymour Butts a talk show that consisted of nothing but on-air 
reenactments of dirty sexual innuendoes about republicans.

Ross


> > I don't see what's wrong about talking values when it comes to 
> > figuring out how people vote for president. There's forty years of 
> > hard, statistical evidence that suggests that values of one sort or 
> > another trump just about everything when people vote for president. 
> > Check out Thad Beyle's stats at the Center for the Study of the 
> > American South. Furthermore, my affinity for the Democratic party's 
> > position on most of the issues are fully in keeping with, if not 
> > directly the result of, the values I hold, some of which derive from 
> > my (gasp) church background, some from the hours sitting zazen at the 
> > zendo, and some just because I'm a fan of the Enlightenment. I'm not 
> > afraid of a discussion of values, but I'm sorry they make you berserk.
>
>
> values don't bother me a bit; that's how *i* voted.
>
> what bothers me is the rush to make sense of it all, which seems to be
> leading in the direction of easy platitudes like "wow. all those 'church
> people' voted for bush. we've really got to figure out a way to reach
> out to them." how far does one go "reaching out"? where do you give
> ground? choice? gay rights? prayer in schools? what?
>
> i thought i heard the dems talking about "moral values" quite a bit 
> during this campaign. i seem to even recall a speech containing that 
> refrain over and over again--"it's a moral value to want decent 
> healthcare. it's a moral value to want people to earn a decent wage, 
> etc..." unless i was just hearing things, where was the disconnect? fear?
>
>
> > On the other hand, the statistics also seem to indicate that in races 
> > down the ticket, people _do_ vote the issues more often, probably 
> > because they're more immediate and less abstract. 
>
>
> assuming those statistics are true---my own experience makes me doubt 
> that they are--how do we make the issues less abstract at the national 
> level?
>
>
> > Democrats still live on down the ticket, and as a result the Democrats 
> > (this time) increased their share in the State House. Julia Boseman 
> > was a county commissioner, and therefore was 1) a proven, well-known 
> > leader who had 2) obviously long ago resolved any issues her 
> > electorate had (if they had any at all) about her sexuality.  
> > Boseman's experience isn't one from which you can extrapolate a lesson 
> > for the national Democratic party. 
>
>
> i think it's one from which you can extrapolate *a* lesson, not
> *the* lesson. there are many lessons to be learned from this election.
>
>
> -k