I wrote this in an email discussion today, where people were debating why the conservatives are so much more effective than liberals at getting their message out. One guy said that the left doesn’t lack for ideas, but thought that the messages was less important than making sure the ideas got out there, meaning we […]
Was it worth it?
A coworker of mine asked me today what it felt like to have worked for several days and have accomplished nothing. And I took issue with that. Sure, judged from a national perspective, it was a failure. But, if that’s the only metric of success, it’s hard to justify doing anything, because it’s very hard […]
Closing thoughts
Was it worth it? I think so. Yes, our guy didn’t win. But I feel like I did what I could for the cause. I was in the right state, the one it all came down to. I helped out with an effort that achieved a truly ridiculous voter turnout for a relatively small town. […]
Amusing anecdotes
There were a couple anecdotes that I wanted to record but didn’t really fit into the narrative elsewhere, so I’m recording them here. I already related this one over at LiveJournal, but it’s pretty funny, so I’m putting it in my official blog. Brian and I arrived in Cleveland at about 9pm Saturday evening. We […]
Election day
I got off to a late start on election day, after staying up until 2am the night before working on the database with Ken. But I got over to HQ by 10am, and immediately left with Ken and Brian. It had been decided that Brian and I, as the out-of-towner carpetbaggers, should be running tech […]
Helping out
So, as mentioned last week, I decided to go to Ohio for the election this year. And, despite the national result, I’m glad I went. Brian and I ended up spending our time in Ohio helping out the local Oberlin effort, Oberlin Votes!, run by Rob’s friend Ken. Oberlin Votes! aimed “to identify every individual […]
Conservative selfishness
A couple weeks ago, I happened to hear Pat Buchanan on Fresh Air (scroll down). I don’t recall all of the details, and I don’t have the time to listen to the whole interview again, but I was struck with a thought while listening to him: the conservative viewpoint is all about selfishness. The things […]
The Animal Who Tells Stories
One of the issues brought up in response to my last post was that we, as humans, are really poor at statistically evaluating risk. We’re really good at remembering spectacular stories, or relevant anecdotes, but we’re really bad at taking numbers in the abstract and turning them into guides to behavior. And this isn’t just […]
The danger to ourselves
A flame war erupted on an email list I’m on when somebody decided to endorse Bush over Kerry, because Kerry wasn’t going to stand up to the terrorists. He went on to mention Kerry’s comment about 9/11 attacks being a “nuisance” (which is a mis-quote but never mind), and how awful an idea it was […]
Going to Ohio
After going to that political campaign training, I mentioned to my friend Brian that I thought it was neat that many of the participants were planning to vote absentee in California, and head to a swing state for the election itself to help get out the vote. I didn’t think anything more of it until […]
