Over Saturated

I confess to being so over saturated with so-called “news” about the coming election, that is mostly just the repetition over and over and over of the same few themes and claims, I am almost ready to conclude that I don’t really care anymore who wins, almost but not quite. I find the possibility of a Romney/Ryan victory so terrifying as to be virtually unthinkable. And as I have said before, more than once I fear, I do not see how it is possible Romney could win, what with almost all voting blocks known to be in favor of Obama: Blacks, Latinos, Women, Seniors, Young voters, etc. Do less educated White racists really make up 50% of the voting public? This seems unlikely.

Even so, we are being told more and more now that the election is so close it could go either way, Obama is ahead but only by one or two points, Romney is leading by a many as 5 points, and so on. There are now so many different polls, and they vary so widely from day to day and week to week, I do not see how they can possibly be trusted. Many people believe, perhaps rightly so, that the polls are being manipulated by those in charge of them. There seem to be at least two hypotheses about this. Mine, which I think I mentioned previously, is that the polls are deliberately being kept so close because if they reflected the truth it would become too difficult for Republicans to try to steal the election. Somewhere the other day I saw an alternative and opposite explanation, namely, they are being kept artificially close to give the Tea Party an explanation for why Romney/Ryan lost. That is, recognizing they might well lose, they will argue the reason was because they deviated from the Tea Party line, thus giving them ammunition to repeat the same attempt again in 2016. I have no idea if either of these suggestions truly makes sense, but, then, I have long since given up believing that our American political system makes sense, as I am absolutely convinced it does not. We are just plain and simply not really interested in governing ourselves. I can see no other explanation. There is no excuse for elections that go on for two or more years, that require billions of dollars, that offer only two parties, that disenfranchise everyone who does not live and vote in a “swing” state, and so on. At this point in time I am not sanguine about the possibilities for change.

Having now been following this farcical process for the past couple of years, and having thought long and hard about it, I am, as usual, forced to choose between two candidates neither of whom I can wholeheartedly embrace. This does not represent a Hobson’ choice (picking one thing or nothing), but is more of a Morton’s fork (having to choose between two equally undesirable choices). So, I have concluded that being forced to choose in this way, I will stick with President Obama, to my mind clearly the least objectionable of the two. I find Romney/Ryan and their Republican agenda so outrageously awful I cannot imagine anyone with a mind larger than a split pea voting for them. This makes me all the more suspicious of polls that claim such a close election.

It is being claimed by some there are only a few undecided voters remaining and I guess maybe that is so. And there are those who cannot understand how anyone could remain undecided at this point because the process has gone on so long. I am personally surprised there are not more undecided voters. There are at least two ways to looks at this, (1) voters cannot decide which of the two Wall Street candidates would be the best (this assumes there is very little actual difference between them), or (2) there are genuine differences between the candidates and they cannot decide which one is the worst (there is the pathological flip-flopping liar on the one hand and the murderous drone killer on the other). Granted this is a bit of an oversimplification

''Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.''

—President George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004