Mike's Election Guide (4 page)

Sue Kinter

Salem, OR

ANSWER:
Yes. If you fail to understand that these Bible stories are just that—
stories
—then there’s little sense in going to church, because you are going to be continually confused. Have you heard the one about the guy who set up house in a whale’s stomach? Or the one where some woman looked back to say goodbye to her town—and she turned into a friggin’ pillar of salt?!

The idea of these stories and parables was to help people lead a better life and get through their daily struggles. Most weren’t meant to be taken literally.

If you’re looking for the literal, there’s plenty of reality TV you can watch. But church and the Bible are there for your self-improvement and spiritual enjoyment, not for helping you cook up a couple fish and feed 5,000 people. If you want the Cliff Notes version of all this, it’s pretty simple: Jesus wants you to love your neighbor as yourself, do unto others what you would want them to do to you, love your enemy, and take care of the least fortunate. That about sums it up. Oh, and play bingo.

I was surprised to see a woman running for president this year. When did they start voting?

Bud Jones

Orem, UT

ANSWER:
They’ve been voting for about 88 years now—can you believe it?! The Founding Fathers had no use for women. They enacted legislation that said married women had no civil rights—those all belonged to their husbands. Married women had no right to own property, and any income they earned was considered the property of their husbands. Married or single, women were prohibited from going to most colleges. They were taxed but had no say in how those taxes could be spent. Women were to obey men, defer always to men, and their position was slightly above that of a slave. They weren’t hung if they tried to escape.

Beginning in the early 1800s, a number of women decided they’d had enough. They began demanding equal rights, starting with the right to vote. In 1878 and 1914, amendments to the Constitution were introduced that would allow women to vote. Both failed (as do all first attempts to right a profound wrong). Women committed acts of civil disobedience and walked into voting booths. They were promptly carted off to jail. Today there are 2,372,647 women still alive who were born under this system of apartheid. Many of them had hoped this year to witness the ultimate payback—a woman who would become president of the United States.

It almost happened. But Hillary Clinton made one sad and fatal mistake in the run-up to the 2008 election year. She voted to give George W. Bush the power to invade Iraq. And for the next four years she kept voting for the war. By the time she started to run for president, nearly 70 percent of the country was against the war. And Senator Clinton was on the wrong side. She tried to change, tried to sound anti-war, but never admitted her mistake, never said she was sorry. Thus, she lost the nomination to another historic candidate—Barack Obama.

Why would Hillary Clinton vote for an illegal war? My guess is her advisors told her that America would be too afraid to elect a woman unless she proved that she could kick ass and start wars just like a man. They convinced her that people (men) don’t think a woman can defend the country.

It was a total misreading of the American public. I believe Hillary Clinton went against her own heart, and her reckless, calculated decision helped to send more than 4,000 of our soldiers to their deaths. She knows that wars of aggression are wrong. Her mistake cost her the election—and the chance for those 2.3 million elderly women to see a final act of justice near the end of their lives.

Everyone knows Ohio sucks. Why is everyone saying it will once again get to decide who the next president is?

Drew Ashanti

Ypsilanti, MI

ANSWER:
It doesn’t have to come down to Ohio—or Florida—again. We need a new strategy. Here’s an idea:

Forget Ohio and Florida. Assume, to begin with, that no blue state will go red this year. Then concentrate on New Mexico, Nevada, and Iowa. Win these three Democratic-leaning states, and Obama is in the White House. Win newly-blue Colorado on top of those, and he’ll have an extra 8 electoral votes to spare.

New Mexico went for Gore and has a Democratic governor (Richardson) who endorsed Obama. Nevada is home to the Democratic majority leader of the U.S. Senate. Iowa ignited Obamania, and it, too, went for Gore. Kerry lost Iowa by a margin of less than 1 percent (10,060 votes).

And Colorado represents a trend in the Mountain West that shows each new generation leaving the Republican Party behind. Montana now has two U.S. senators who are Democrats (as is their governor). Arizona has a Democratic governor, as does Kansas (of all places). And Colorado has a Democratic governor, a Democratic U.S. senator, and 4 of their 7 members of Congress are Democrats.

I recommend an excellent book,
Whistling Past Dixie,
by political science professor Thomas F. Schaller. In it, Schaller writes that we need to quit worrying about winning elections in the South. We can win by concentrating on the traditional blue states and the emerging democracies of the Mountain West and Southwest. The South will eventually catch up due to so many blue state people moving there and bringing their wild and crazy blue state ideas with them. Plus, with a higher birthrate among people of color, whites will make up a dwindling percentage of the population. And that can only be a good thing.

And then, finally, there’s just the simple fact that mean, old, conservative people eventually get old enough and die. All those people who started the trouble we’re still in because they voted for Ronald Reagan? Well, the majority of people who were in their fifties then and voted for him are now six feet under. Gone. Can’t vote from the grave.

And the succeeding younger generations have grown up to be
not
like them. They don’t believe the earth was made in six days. They don’t care about the race of the person they date. They hate war. And their movement this year has made it possible for an African American to be nominated for president of the United States. If you had asked any of those Reagan-loving old farts back in 1980 if they thought a black man could get elected president, they would have looked at you with a strange, confused expression, and then they would have punched you.

Things do get better. Forget the South for now. And forget poor ol’ Ohio. Or not. After all, Kerry only came up 118,601 votes short in Ohio in 2004.

And a good number of those voters are dead now, too. Just like Woody Hayes.

In the last election, Republicans were able to get out the vote by placing proposals on state ballots outlawing gay marriage. Now look at this photo—who on earth would want to outlaw THIS?

Greg Houston

Asbury Park, NJ

ANSWER:
Exactly
. Had the anti-gay marriage forces run ads with scenes like the one above, none of those gay marriage bans would have passed. I’m told that
no one
is opposed to watching two women kiss. Men love it, women love it, and the women doing it love it—something for everybody!

I don’t think it’s female-on-female love that has so many people (men) so discombobulated. I think when they say they are against gay marriage, what they
really
mean is that they are against this:

Now that’s disgusting! Guys going all brokeback on each other—gimme a break! The state can’t sanction that.

Which is too bad. Because the statistics show that gay—and lesbian—marriages last just as long as heterosexual marriages. Gay couples also do a great job raising the kids, and, don’t worry, the majority of kids raised by gays grow up to be on our team. And if you’ve got a gay couple in the neighborhood, well, your property value just went up, ’cause you can pretty much bet that their house is going to be the nicest one on the block. How about crime? Well, how many women have to worry about a gay guy jumping them? Or a lesbian? I’ve never encountered a gay gang trying to jack my car or a marauding band of lesbians doing B & E’s.