Election half-time

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Well, it’s part way through the count­ing. MSNBC & CNN are report­ing Bush ahead with 54%/156EV vs Kerry’s 45%/112EV. That’s about the ratio that it’s been for the past hour & a half. Looks like my opti­mism may have been a fan­tasy.
It makes me won­der about peo­ple who voted for bush. I don’t think they’re crazy; I’m sure they had some rea­sons that made sense to them. I’d love to hear those rea­son­able rea­sons. [guess I bet­ter install that spam soft­ware so I can turn on com­ments]
From where I sit, it seems like there’s over­welm­ing evi­dence that this admin­is­tra­tion has harmed the coun­try more than helped it. Do folks see this? Am I just not see­ing all the data?
Or — is it that reality-based vs faith/fantasy-based thing that is so much talked about: Perhaps it’s just that there is a group of peo­ple who hear fac­tual argu­ments and dis­re­gard emo­tional argu­ments and there’s a group of peo­ple who hear emo­tional argu­ments and dis­re­gard fac­tual. Perhaps, there are just more of the later than the for­mer. If so, it seems like the Dem strat­egy going for­ward would be to fig­ure out how to be fantasy-based while stay­ing true to the reality-based folks.
It gets down to know­ing your audi­ence.
Dems think every­one in the audi­ence is just like them — that if you just explain all the facts, you can’t help but agree. But the audi­ence isn’t that homo­ge­neous. There are some that glaze over when pre­sented with facts, but lis­ten in to the emo­tional pull — some­thing that makes them feel good. You have to speak with a dif­fer­ent voice to these folks if you want to win them over. Put down your 9/11 report and appeal to emo­tions alone.
(mean­while, I think that Republicans are a lit­tle more prag­matic than Democrats in this regard — they know there are other types of peo­ple in the audi­ence; they just don’t care).
Anyway, enough rant­ing. Time to go hit refresh on all the browser win­dows and see if Ohio’s pink shade has changed.

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