Here we are - Barak Obama made very clear where he stood on the issues during an almost two year presidential candidacy and he has made abundantly and consistently clear on his stands - not to mention his performance - in the almost four years of his presidency. Mitt Romney has run for president twice. He has been talking about the various issues of our day, in the national media, for almost six years. After all of that, how can anyone not know enough about either man to have not made a voting decision yet?
It is absolutely astonishing to me that anyone who hasn't live under a rock for the last six years would be undecided at this point. So let's cut to the chase. The issue isn't really "undecided". It is "uninformed" - politically apathetic, governmentally ambivalent, or perhaps informationally lazy. Call me judgmental, but I believe that the people who are undecided at this point have no one to blame except themselves. They have either not been paying attention, have not cared, do not particularly enjoy thinking for themselves and/or are being dishonest about being undecided. Am I being too harsh? Perhaps, but think about it for a minute.
We've had round-the-clock coverage on Obama - especially Obama - and Romney for years - for years, folks. Gosh, imagine what hell it must be to have to sell a car to one of those undecided types? "But ma'am, you have test driven the car 50 times, I have read every word of the driver's manual to you, and I have provided you with hundreds of articles about the car's performance. But I haven't provided you with enough information?! (Exit car salesman to go out and throw himself off the nearest cliff)
Folks, what it really comes down to is this: the president of the United States is ultimately selected by the piece of the voting public that is the most passive, apathetic, uninformed and lazy out there - with respect to seeking information, staying informed, and thinking for themselves. Yes, who holds our highest public office is being decided by our least informed voter.
What about the votes of we people who do closely keep up with the race and make it a point to ferret out where the candidates stand on the issues? We voters who collect the information we need - not waiting to be spoon fed with it - and then make a careful, deliberate decision? Do our votes not count? They absolutely do, but we make up about 47% of the red vote and 47% of the blue vote, with the outcome coming down to which way the other - undecided - 6% swings.
(BTW, where will you find most of that 6% on a debate night? I think I know where - somewhere else besides the debates. Case in point: 52.4 million people watched the first debate between Barak Obama and John McCain. Around 130 million people voted. That tells us that only 40% of the voters in 2008 watched the first debate. According to an October 2 Quinnipiac poll, 93% of likely voters indicated they would watch the first debate between Barak Obama and Mitt Romney. So did 93% actually watch, if we consider how many watched in 2008? No way. Many of those people only said they would watch because they wanted to seem like civically-responsible citizens and many others equated checking out the news about the debates with actually watching it. In other words, they got the Cliff Notes version.)
I am convinced that the issue I have described is a big part of what is wrong with Washington: too many of our leaders - particularly our president - are being elected by the least informed, most apathetic among us. It is time to stop celebrating those voters - to stop putting them on a pedestal as super voters of a sort and start expecting them to be more responsible citizens
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