mid term election over! Thought it would never end!

Is it just me or did the negative adds and unsolicited calls and mailings reach never before seen levels? I am not much for government intrusion, but it should be illegal to campaign for more than a month before the election!
Mike

 

I use VOIP for my home phone and didn't get one call the entire time -- blissful silence. Plus, I don't really watch TV (that isn't through my DVR), and I pretty much don't even vote anymore -- I only vote for local initiatives. So this whole political season went completely unnoticed by me. It was a beautiful fall, and I can count on one hand the number of times I was annoyed or intruded upon by politicians (TV, door-to-door, radio etc.) And filling in those three local initiative bubbles was really fast

k.

 

This pretty well sums up the Florida experience:

 

well, they got the vote out in DC and Oregon

 

And doesn't it seem like the more poor-mouthing is done for funding a particular item ("We MUST have more $$$$$$$ or you'll lose services!"), the more they spend on mailings, phone calls, street signs, etc? The request for funds may be legitimate, but the grandstanding makes me want to pound rocks with a baseball bat. We had one local issue that was asking for funding, and they must have sent out 30 oversized, glossy color mailings. Not to mention putting up road signs every 100 feet or so.

 

some want more money and others want less waste. im in the less waste camp but it seems my middlest views are largely useless

 

I think it's just you

I haven't gotten anything. The only phone I have (cell phone) is an area code from out of state. Plus I don't answer it if I don't know the number - meaning if it is not programed in my cell phone that pops up a name when it rings I don't answer it. Period. That's what voicemail is for

I watch a lot of DVR'd shows so commercials get skipped. Even when not watching DVR the channels I do watch typically don't show any political stuff (HBO, History, Discovery, NatGeo)
News....nope. Don't watch it.
99% of the time you can tell when a piece of mail is a bill (especially when you get the same bills over and over). Junk mail doesn't even get opened or looked at - straight to the trash.

So yeah...there was a midterm election?

 

The political seats up for grabs where bought and paid for long before the election.

 

Amen, brother!! As liberal as Massachusetts is, I'm shocked that its not even talked about. They just passed medical use 2 years ago and there has been almost nothing done since then. This state sucks! lol

 

Sad state of affairs. Not only the outcome... The two things that annoyed me the most: candidates in the Gov election out here were fairly civil in their debates, but mainland/DC PACs from both sides spent millions on campaigns smearing the other candidates. And I always feel bad when I see people waving signs on the side of the streets. I find this humiliating - don't they have any contents to talk about? How could waving a sign influence my political decision? Well, I guess there is name recognition for those who don't bother to inform themselves... Anyway, elections in this country are a very strange thing. Not sure it's worth applying for citizenship just to become part of this madness.

Stefan

 

My parents always told me "If you don't vote you can't complain." Well, I've been voting for 30yrs and things have only gotten worse. Maybe I'm the problem?

 

I don't vote and don't complain, and my decision to stop voting was one of the best decisions I ever made. Don't get me wrong, I always voted before, educated myself about candidates and issues, and followed important (and political) issues A LOT. And my job was actually running elections full-time. And a large part of my job was registering voters, running ad campaigns to encourage voters to vote, and doing everything I could to get people to vote. How's that for irony?

But with my family growing, I simply felt that how the media in the US are developing along with the complexity of the legislative process, that the transaction cost of truly being educated was too high for such a small return on one vote. To get to a 'reasonable' but not perfect understanding on a handful of issues it takes more time than it used to, and I had to endure the idiotic chatter of faux news and electronic misinformation, the nearly complete uniformed chatter of the people around me who knew less and invested much less time in understanding things, and the development of an anti-civic society. This last part was particularly discouraging. That civic space between household and government that was traditionally the 'glue' that kept things together and getting better had become a battle ground of politics with constant proponents and opponents. No longer were the media (news outlets), for instance, part of that glue, media outlets were created just to counter different forms of media and negate them. The media as part of civil society is now largely dead, like a well that has been poisoned. And with every group that emerged to try makes things better in health, the environment, commerce etc. other groups quickly pop up that fight them leading to the politicization of civic society. Even the traditional civic groups are now pulled into politics. Red Cross scandals for instance. The near complete politicization of chambers of commerce, etc. I also had a friend who was a lobbyist for Sesame Street in DC. Seriously. Because do you know how many people/politicians spend significant time and money fighting Sesame Street every year?

Anyhow, it just makes me angry writing about this, and that was the main reason I stopped voting. I was angered, annoyed, and wasted so much time just to be countered with the uninformed, crappy news, and organized anti civic society elements. Hows that for dismal? Now I just enjoy my family, enjoy my wine and knives, and start and end my day -- more or less -- in a good mood.

End of rant, now I have to play legos with my kids.

k.

 

+1

I totally agree with your entire rant. I told my wife I wasn't going to vote in this election but the chance to vote against the lizard Mitch McConnell one more time got the best of me. This was probably my last though. It was so obvious that most of the winners were bought and paid for a long time ago. Some of these idiots shouldn't be working at McDonald's much less in congress.We are now The United States of Corporate America.

 

I always thought he looked like Cecil the Turtle:

 

I think you may be right!