If you vote against your best interest, you deserve what you get.

[ranosgol]

If Bush wins and the American people once again vote against their best interest, it serves those people right. I know all of us will suffer as a consequence for their actions but people have a duty to be informed. I know everyone leads busy lives but that does not excuse you for not being informed about the issue that confront this country. No one in this country lives in a vacuum and people feel the affects of the GOP agenda everyday yet they blame others. John Kerry in my opinion is doing a good job under very tough conditions. The entire mass media is under the GOP control and it is a daunting task to overcome that. I challenge anyone who is knocking Kerry for not doing enough; you try overcoming such a disadvantage.
I know that another GOP will all but destroy this country, as we know it. The Supreme Court will be the GOP’s for decades, if the masses do not realize this than I blame them not Kerry. The choice is so clear, if the American public is so naïve or willfully ignorant, that they believe the GOP lies than it serves them right.
I do not want to let the Democratic Party off the hook either. Most of the Democratic Party is made up of nothing more than GOP Light individuals. The GOP Lights also hold to the Trickle Down/Reaganomics/Voodoo Economics/Herbert Hoover agenda, which is destroying the middle class and transforming the United States into a Pre-New Deal country once again.
We can’t just shift America over night back to a Democratic country. The U.S. population has been so brainwashed by the GOP agenda it will take years if not decades or a complete collapse of our economic system such as another Great Depression to change people’s minds.
The American electorate has the responsibility to vote in their best interest if they do not, I blame them just as much as I blame the GOP or the Democratic Party.

[liveoaktx]

1. Not entirely fair-the visual media does NOT educate anymore

but entertain. If people do not realize they are voting against their interest because they are hearing right-wing propaganda all the time, it's not their *fault*.

And since *we* know that people are not hearing balance, it behooves us to do all we can to create our own media opportunities in our local communities.

[ranosgol]

2. People do not need the media. Look at their lives.

People are making less, working longer. Loosing their rights. These issues are already on their face what do we have to hit them in the head with a bottle labeled George Bush?

[liveoaktx]

4. Get out TODAY and start talking to them. Go to people in the

precinct you live in and talk to them. Find out if they are registered to vote, find out what their issues are, leave them something to read that will help them figure it out.

[ranosgol]

6. Indiana is GOP stronghold.

Indiana has voted republican in every presidential election since Lydon Johnson. Indiana was the fist state to report in for a Bush victory. It if the Oklahoma of politics in the Midwest. Bush won by i think 20 points last time as has that amount of lead again. Indiana has be devastated buy Trickle Down and union busting. Yet Indiana is a W state, it boggles my mind but true. You can not reason with the willfully ignorant.

[liveoaktx]

9. I don't get the defeatism- turn it around- even if Indiana as a whole

goes to Bush, does that mean that any efforts in talking to others are wasted, for the future?

I live in Texas, which is supposed to be a Bush stronghold and definitely was in 2000 and 2002. However, that does not stop me from working to change those around me.

All Politics is Local.

[wurzel]

3. Assumes people know "what their best interest is". Most can't.

This country has almost become like a country of defeated people. They are being harassed, overworked, undereducated, and over fed with junk "food" and worse "entertainment". They have almost no control over their lives today let alone the future. In the past parents were expected to teach the culture to their children. This is about the first generation in history that is required to protect its children from the toxic nature of its own culture. An impossible task.

[Nay]

10. Thank you, Wurzel. I have made that point (about parents

having to protect their kids from the toxic nature of our present culture) and people just look at me like a nut. It IS an impossible task, even if all parents could ever even understand that it is the main problem. But, like fish who cannot reject the water they were born in, humans are conditioned to accept their culture, no matter how corrupt or life-destroying, from birth. To expect most parents to shield their children from their whole culture is to blame the victims.

[wurzel]

14. True. And as far as I know a unique situation for parents to be in.

I go nuts when I hear the responsibility put on the shoulders of parents. It really does "take village to raise a child"!

[ranosgol]

5. Then it Will have to be a economic disaster.

If that is true which it very well be, then it Will have to take a economic meltdown far worse then the Depression to get them to wake up. Trickle Down without rules will lead us down that path. A free market has to have rules or it Will fail just like it did for Hoover. I guess we have to relieve history now and again.

[CityDem]

7. Too busy

Most people are working 2 jobs to maintain a minimal standard of living. They don't have the time to devote to the real news. Its tough out there.

[Nay]

11. Copout. The fact that they have to work two jobs should be

enough to clue them in.

[ranosgol]

12. Two jobs and renting a trailer.

How much more of a clue do they need. People are working two jobs, living in trailers but yet they love Bush. While many working two jobs do not vote. I still say it is their fault. They are not to busy to buy cigarettes or beer or scratch of lottery tickets.

[LisaL]

8. I kinda feel the same way.

If people are going to vote for Bush, they deserve everything they got.
The unfortunate thing is, we will also get what they got.

[ranosgol]

13. I know but you can only do so much.

I know if the American Public is duped again by GOP lies then they deserve it. I know we all will suffer from it but people make their choices.