november ii: election boogaloo*

Corrie down at Pottery Blog has been a fan of changing the world by an increase in voter turnout (as inthis example back from her days on Privet Drive). In the past, she's gone along with the standard explanation for America's low voter turnout--apathy, disaffectedness, the lack of a shrieking candidate to inspire the electorate, etc.. However, she's apparently now all enthusiastic about a new theory: more Americans would vote if only they could remember when the election is!

Meanwhile, as I was telling Corrie yesterday at Starbucks, I was surprisingly unsurprised by Kerry's preannouncement announcement yesterday that the world would be first notified of his vice presidential choice via e-mail. It's as if his staff was sitting around and thinking "How could we do this in a way that would generate the least excitement? What if we came up with some way where there would be no sound bite and no compelling video image, but instead just a still shot of a computer screen with an inset photo of the candidate?"

I am becoming increasingly convinced that if the vice-presidential-short-list is really down to the contenders being reported and Kerry picks someone other than Little Edwards, it would not only be a bad choice per se but also bode ill for the campaign decisions we will get to witness over the next four months. It's like it has turned into a multiple choice question with the options (a) bland guy, (b) bland funny-looking guy, (c) bland guy who comes across as a tool of organized labor, and (d) charismatic guy who seems like he could make Dick Cheney look like an surly-pompous-country-club-jerk in a debate. If somebody gets that question wrong, how well should you expect them to do on the rest of the test? Then again, I'm of the opinion that if Edwards had been the nominee, he would be ahead of Bush by five points now (seven without Nader).

I am worried that the next four months will feature much of me checking the political news on the web obsessively, pacing agitatedly around the RV, and occasionally shouting at my monitor.

* (Reference to this.)