Arianna on Undecided Voters

Arianna Huffington, like many of us, is scratching her head about how anyone can still be "undecided" after almost four years of this thieving, venal, mean-spirited, greedy Bush Administration. If you keep up with Electoral-Vote.com, you can see daily shifts from state to state as the polls come in, including an animated version where you can watch the shifts take place before your eyes.



Take a state like Ohio, which has shifted back and forth between Bush and Kerry for the last two months. How can this happen? Ohio is the prototypical Midwestern industrial state, which has seen its job base decimated over the last three years. And yet right now, it's back in Bush's column. How can this be?



I know how it can be, because I have some friends who aren't politically aware, and they only hear the noise that filters into their heads as they prepare dinner or pack the kids' lunches or clean up the kitchen -- and that noise, otherwise known as network television news, is all Swift Boat Liars, all the time. No wonder 46% of undecided voters find the ads believable.



These friends, who are sandwiched between growing kids on the one hand and aging, increasingly needy parents on the other hand, don't know about Bush's plans to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare that will affect their parents -- and later on, themselves. They don't know about the draft that is inevitable, the one for which the SSA is gearing up by next June, the one that will affect their sons. They worry about their jobs, but they don't know that the Bush Administration encourages companies to move jobs overseas, to stop providing health care, and to pay people less and less, with fewer worker protections.



But they sure know that the Swift Boat Liars have said something about Kerry not being honest. They know this because it's what the news media have decided to cover, and that's what their ears hear as they turn over the chicken in the oven and shell the peas. The Swift Boat Liars have almost to a man been exposed as lying or contradicting earlier statements. But my friends haven't heard that. All they've heard is that John Kerry is shifty -- because the networks decided that they had to give these lies equal time. This is like saying that Osama Bin Laden should be given equal time on Dan Rather's news because he represents "the other side, so it provides balance." Lies are not "the other side", they are lies.



Most of these people, and yes, they are all women I'm talking about, the ones I know, believe in equal rights for gays, and world peace, but they also want security. They want a safe world for their children, and they'll vote for whoever reassures them that they can be safe -- even if it's a lie.



These aren't bad people, they aren't stupid people, they aren't even willfully ignorant people. What they are is busy -- too busy to filter out the wheat from the chaff. They rely on Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings to filter it for them -- and those guys (and their counterparts in network news) aren't doing their job.



I'm with Arianna Huffington in that not sure how much effort John Kerry can or should put into these voters. Kerry can outline his plan to provide health care for all Americans that will be covered only on C-SPAN, but tomorrow Larry Thurlow will be given 10 minutes with Matt Lauer to spill yet more bile and more lies. And that's what these people will hear.



We need to get solid Democratic voters to the voting booth on November 2....progressive men and women; African-American voters...the elderly...THE BASE. The polls show Kerry as far stronger among registered voters than among likely voters. Likely voters are those who regularly show up at the polls. We have to get the others out there.



The undecided voters? They may very well have to go to their kids' soccer dinner on November 2 or take their mothers to the movies and won't have time to vote anyway.