http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081004/pl_nm/us_usa_politics

Millions of otherwise not mentally disabled Americans don't know shit about their government, and have little or no capacity for seeing through the most transparent of scuzzy politicking and emotivist/Luntzy catchwords.

So it really doesn't matter if they are retarded. They know fuckall about many of the matters of vital importance to the governance and leadership of this nation. I guess what I'm saying is that, for all intents and purposes, they ARE fucking r-tards.

Goddammit, I hate it! I fucking busted ass for Kerry. I busted ass for Obama. I've wasted god-knows-how-many hours trying to inform fucking dipshits from here to New York to Colorado and back. People ARE fucking ignorant of politics/current events/government to the point of retardation.

That's all there is to it. The civic knowledge base of the majority of this country is for shit…which is why we ALL deserve to continue to get fucked right in the goat ass by the top 5%. It's communal punishment. Sigh…

We did watch the same debate. The differences are two. One is that you fell for a transparent trick (the expectations game – she didn't drool on herself, ergo she looked great) and I didn't. The second is that I don't assume that people who lack high incomes or advanced education are drooling retards who need to (and want to) be spoken to like infants and who can't understand when someone is flinging meaningless slogans at them. There is a structural difference between what working-class people and working class people as imagined by multimillionaire faux-populist Republicans. We can all name a person or two from our circle who fall for the "Gee Golly Shucks, I just a-wanna chat with Joe Six-Pack" bullshit. Feel free to cite some evidence that she effectively swayed some portion of the electorate that was not already voting for McCain anyway.

George W. Bush answered questions. He made arguments. He presented ideas he was clearly familiar and comfortable with. Palin stood there and read scripted statements of cobbled-together sound bites regarding issues she had not considered as of four weeks ago.

The biggest mistake people in business, politics, and academia make is conflating "lower middle class" with "mentally retarded." There is nothing inherently valid about your classist assumption that people being A) minimally educated or B) unskilled means that they feel like Sarah Palin is "speaking to them" and saying just what they want to hear. Working class people want to hear ideas too. They don't want to hear someone condescending them with dumbed-down, empty-calorie talking points that mean nothing.

In short, the Joe Six-Pack crap is a classic straw man. Were I not prone to being an asshole myself, I would take great umbrage at the implication that Regular Folk are naturally turned off by Biden because his answers had too many words they obviously couldn't understand. And that Palin won them over by using an act approximately as convincing (and offensive) as if I painted in blackface and used slang from 10 year-old rap albums to "connect with" my black students.

damn right, BK. couple of weeks ago ed posted something about the GOP lowering expectations so that the definition of success was a clean pair of lady-strides at the end of the debate. seems this, at least, worked a treat on ben, beth & co. there may have been no 'deer in headlights' moment, but was i the only one who detected a shart here and there?
honestly, i was expecting more from her. strange as that seems.

elizabeth, i didnt expect Kerry to win. i wanted him to win, but thats not the same thing. Polls, debates, etc. notwithstanding, he was up against a charismatic encumbent wartime (ha!) president.

and gore did win. :)

I live with two evangelical Christians who were leaning Obama – and think Palin is a "real smart cookie" They are leaning McCain because of Palin. (Which kind of makes me want to move) One of them is pro-choice, pro-gay marriage – but tells me the GOP is more inline with her moral values.

I also have a friend who is a liberal – but is suddenly worried about the radical racial views of Michelle and Barack Obama…and she liked Palin in the debate saying, "We'll she trashed NCLB, she seems good…" At which point I almost threw up into my phone.

I really hope I'm not living in the mainstream of America.

She was horrible. Saying something folksy because you don't know anything else is not acceptable. Imagine, if you will, that she actually had to meet with a world leader and all she could get out was "Aw shucks Mr. Putin, there you go again looking backwards to the cold war… I'm such an international outsider Ahmadinejad… "

And shame on anyone who think that most Americans are unable to tell a big pile of BS when they see it. The American people know when somebody is full of it… it's just, unfortunately, sometimes we don't care.

Bart: Wow, my father an astronaut. I feel so full of…what's the
opposite of shame?
Marge: Pride?
Bart: No, not _that_ far from shame.
Homer: [quavering] Less shame?
Bart: [happy] Yeah…