My brother, a lifelong republican, told me he was voting for Obama this morning.....
...i have to say i was in shock, so much so i was speechless! he told me there were several reasons, mainly he's fed up with the birther issue, and that Rmoney destroyed businesses and profited from peoples misery, not to mention the tax returns...his words..."i can't vote for a candidate that won't make his taxes public"....this is the same brother, with whom after nearly getting into a fistfight with 10 years ago over the bush admin, swore off talking politics between us again ever.....if he can have a change of heart, anyone can....keep pushing our message folks...
= new reply since forum marked as read
It seems that we mostly are very red and very ignorant in this area. I have traveled to many places. As a disabled person, the greed and lack of caring Dr.'s was the first thing I noticed.
I display an Obama/Biden bumper sticker on my car. I am forced to defend this almost daily and I am surprised that someone hasn't removed it, yet.
While I have only seen 1 or 2 Rmoney stickers, unfortunately Rmoney did win the primary here. My bumper sticker explanations have made the people I have spoken to, at least think (a little) and I have heard a lot of "I didn't know that" from these people. Sadly, I am still ridiculed when people first see my bumper sticker. I want to move to a blue state where I can at least have an intelligent conversation about my choice. Most of these comments come from people who have never voted....greedy neanderthals IMO.
I do have some wealthy friends (R), who are so worried about "the coming class war" and say "we'll all have to stick together to survive,,,"
They started the class war, decades ago. Hopefully, we are going to win and everyone will be treated equally. They couldn't stand that. Their mommies and daddies have always told them they are special because they can buy whatever they want
....
Plenty of teabilly geniuses have 'em in their rented yards...of course, what could anyone expect out of the laughingstock of our nation? Ohio Browneyes', rigging a Liebold machine near YOU!
His vote will count more then.
Fantastic!! I hope there are many, many more like him!!
the President to a second term. I hope they vote Democratic in all the congressional races too.
Last edited Tue Feb 13, 2018, 10:30 PM - Edit history (12)
Conventional wisdom is that all but 8% have their minds firmly made up. I think conventional wisdom may be wrong. The logic the seasoned watchers use is simply that in "normal election cycles" (if there is such a thing anymore)...I think that could be very wrong this year...
I've always said that the polls should be taken with a pillar of salt. But since 2005, I've also said that "conventional" election watchers have been loath to acknowledge that there's new skin in the game: the Internet has given the voters themselves the power to shake their dependence on the MSM and define their own roles within the election cycle:
2005: The MSM has been perfectly happy to go along with Bush's fake news videos, scripted press conferences, prepackaged talking points, and payoffs. More important, they were also able to dismiss the Will Pitts, Greg Palasts, Daily Kozes, and Mike Malloys as part of a luntatic fringe who commanded neither credibility nor respect. But then the Gannongate swung open!
To use a now archaic journalism term, the MSM got scooped, caught completely flat-footed missing a story that anyone over the age of twelve with an Internet connection could have put together. Even worse for them, the authors of Gannongate did what journalists are SUPPOSED to do -- TELL THE TRUTH completely, accurately, comprehensively, and objectively. The MSM's response was to accuse bloggers of working in basements in their pajamas and looking at the world "through a pinhole"...
2007 (by DU-er PlaidAdder): In a recent address to NYU journalism students, NBC’s Brian Williams bemoaned the fact that his hard-fought climb to the top of his field is now being undermined by "people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe...(N)ow I'm up against a guy named Vinny...who hasn't left (his) efficiency apartment in two years...” What really gets Brian’s goat is the fact that Vinny’s ever-widening audience consists of...intelligent, self-motivated people who have a wacky penchant for wanting the facts...
Brian just doesn’t get it. Day after day, he serves his pre-digested, warmed-over, corporate-endorsed, nutrition-free pablum, and he wonders why the world is beating a path to Vinny’s Place, where the news is served pipin’ hot by a guy who probably doesn’t even have a personal manicurist. Maybe Brian should use his alleged journalistic prowess to do an in-depth report on why Vinny’s rise to the top was so inevitable...
2008: (The MSM has) got two problems: McCain's flagrant disrespect for them, and the blogosphere... The...GOP couldn't care less if the MSM doesn't like getting only 90-second peeks at McCain's medical records...But the MSM also knows that the less they fight back, the less credible they become, and the more their viewers will turn to--WAIT FOR IT!!!--the blogosphere for information that has at least a nodding acquaintance with reality and truth...
2009: ...Fortunately, we DIDN'T have to judge the election by who "won" the daily news cycles: thanks to the blogosphere providing us with a "public option" of sorts, the MSM couldn't "push" McCain "ahead" the way they could have a few short years ago. If we'd had to depend entirely on the MSM news cycles, a LOT fewer of us would have learned that the Clintons also had ties to Wright and Rezko, that there were plenty of controversial clergypeople in the McCain/Palin camp, and that Joe the Plumber WASN'T a plumber...
And since the last presidential election, we "little people" (including the "vinnies" ) have been given even more skin in the game via increased social media capabilities, and pollsters have only recently come up with a way to reach people on their cell phones!
rocktivity
way to view things.
The big network media has always had cozy relationships with the candidates. Rove took this to a new level, being ruthless with access. And Romney is trying to play that same game, mainly hanging out on Faux, and making reporters to agree certain questions are off-limits ("If you ask me about rape, abortion, or Akin, we'll throw you out and you will never get access again."
That is one battle front. But the other battle front is, as you mentioned, in the blogoshpere. The tighter they get with the network media, the more it hurts them in the blogosphere because their tactics are observed and widely reported. It exposes the cowards, what they are hiding, and why.
Not everybody is hooked into the blog world, and that cuts 2 ways. There are a lot of people on the right that evidently frequent places like Drudge and FreeRepublic. We won't get many of those people, as they are the most extreme. But to totality of people from either side tuned into the blogs is probably less than 5% of the public. It is the SECONDARY communications that make the difference. How we interact with those who are being bombarded by the hysterical claims from the right will be decisive.
A person who wants to believe that Obama was born in Kenya will do so. But there are millions who have heard that and are not automatically pre-disposed to believe it.
We have truth on our side, and we have intelligent reasoning on our side. Hell, we have the ability to formulate complete sentences on our side. The blogs enable us to have these secondary interactions in an effective way, and THAT is what has made the media networks obsolete. They are no longer trusted, and frankly, don't even seem to try very hard to be relevant.
I am probably no different than many others here. I have a posse of about 20 right-wingers hammering on me every day with the extremistscrap that doesn't have even a tiny bit of truth. My goal is to win over 1 or 2 of them. But that isn't the main purpose. The main purpose is a:
a) let them all know that not everybody agrees with them (which seems never to have occurred to any of them. Indeed if you spend you entire existence with Faux and Friends or Glenn Beck, I guess you wouldn't have any reason to believe there was anything else.)
b) Let them know that they are spreading lies and every lie will be opposed. The goal here is twofold. If I can coerce them into actually checking their facts, they might actually learn that they have been idiots, and if that doesn't happen, at least they are served notice that others do check their facts and judge them.
I don't know that I have won over any of them yet. But 5 went up in smoke, heads exploding at the slightest push-back, so I don't have to deal with them anymore. Two have changed their behavior in a big way. They rarely send me the most hysterical stuff anymore. Mostly they send me things that are matters of opinion. I respond politely with why I have a different opinion. It always comes down to things I value. I ask them is they truly don't value the same things or if it is just a case that they haven't thought it through. Those are civil conversations now. I haven't won them over, but I am pretty sure they are no longer bombarding everyone they know with the right-wing trash they were sending out daily.
Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying there are a lot more people who can come to our side than the polls indicate.
Last edited Sun Jun 27, 2021, 06:30 PM - Edit history (16)
has compelled me to return to this conversation, because I mentioned that social media would give us "you peoples" even more skin in the political game.
Barely before Clint was finished, Twitter was set ablaze by #insertchair, #invisibleobama, #clinteastwooding. Nobody sat around waiting for the MSM or the network-connected blogosohere to instruct them on how they ought to react -- they reacted with thousands of tweets, with the more skilled among them linking to quickly-constructed cartoons:
in response, the Obama camp tweeted:
This seat's taken.
Twitter says it was the most popular retweet during the RNC convention, and Obama's most popular retweet next to the one he sent out supporting same-sex marriage. Yet I'm supposed to believe the MSM'S insistence that it's still a dead heat right now.
rocktivity
Last edited Sat Sep 1, 2012, 11:17 AM - Edit history (1)
What a lovely idea for an epitaph...
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rocktivity
Now that is funny!! 
It's been a while. Hi!
he won't vote for obama, but on the other side, he may note vote for romney either...dad's a cpa, and he has already told me the ryan budget is a wounded duck... his rep, in texas is none other than louie gohmert too, whom he thinks isn't all there...he'll never vote dem, but a "no" vote for any of the repubs is better than nothing....
And I'm sure over all you get some of the credit!
CHEERS 
!!
