Voting Without the Facts

[TimeToGo]

NYTIMES:

November 8, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Voting Without the Facts
By BOB HERBERT

The so-called values issue, at least as it's being popularly tossed around, is overrated.

Last week's election was extremely close and a modest shift in any number of factors might have changed the outcome. If the weather had been better in Ohio. ...If the wait to get into the voting booth hadn't been so ungodly long in certain Democratic precincts. ... Or maybe if those younger voters had actually voted. ...

I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.

This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.

SNIP

Read more at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/opinion/08herbert.html

[BlueEyedSon]

1. dupe....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=83726&mesg_id=83726&page=