Reply #92: I've thought about this thread for a while before responding.

[expatriate]

My main question is - what do you think you've accomplished by doing this? What did you want to accomplish?

If you just wanted to humiliate someone publicly, you probably succeeded. But do you think your actions did anything that might make this woman change her vote in the 2006 elections? Did your actions make her think more kindly of Democrats, or will your actions make her more amenable to listening to a Democrat's point of view?

Somehow, I can't quite imagine being open to the point of view of someone who humiliated me in public. Now, if you just don't care about her potentially listening to your point of view, and just wanted to hurt and humiliate, I guess you could consider this a triumph. I guess it's a matter of whether you hope to reach some Republicans and get them interested enough to listen and perhaps change their votes come 2006 - or whether you just want to shame them in public and make them even more determined to vote Republican.

Word of mouth is something else again. This woman will tell this story to dozens of other people, they'll pass it on. By the time the story makes the rounds for a while, you'll have been foaming at the mouth and threatening to kill her. Not a great advertisement for the Democratic Party.

Of course, you can always rationalize by saying that no-one like this woman will ever change their vote, that she's obviously a Republican and not worthy to be breathing, etc, so humiliating her in public is a great thing. However, you don't know her. You don't even know if she's a Republican. For that matter, you don't even know if she's an American citizen. Might have been from Canada, or Europe, visiting - those people would have not voted Democrat in the last election either. She might be a non-voter. There are options other than her being Republican. You decided she was Republican by her appearance - perhaps if you saw me when I'm dressed to meet a client, you'd think I was a Republican too, rather than a Socialist Democrat. I don't carry a $3000 handbag, but otherwise, I clean up really spiffy. I wear really nice shoes, and a suit, my hair, though I do it myself, looks like I went to a salon. I make jewelry, so I have what looks to be a lot of expensive baubles. My mother is a lifelong staunch Democrat and hates the Bush administration, and she looks as you described this woman, except that she's seventy-three. Looks don't mean squat.

And honestly, I have to say that other than satisfying your urge to be angry, lash out and hurt someone, you didn't accomplish much by what you did. You might have hurt someone who really didn't deserve to be hurt, and you might have alienated someone who might, just might, have listened to your side, under less adversarial circumstances.

I'd direct the anger into something more productive, like fighting for voter verified paper ballots or another form of activism.