Washblog

My husband and I are on all the political "walklists"  as probable Democratic voters.  Campaigns, which have limited resources, typically don't invest time in doorbelling at the homes of people who are unlikely to give them a vote.  So I figured that he was probably not very interested to talk with me.  

But I was interested to talk with him. So I walked over and said hello.  He was very friendly.  He introduced himself as the candidate and said, I can see you're not one of my probable voters.  We were shaking hands and smiling all over the place.  And I replied, that's right, I'm very happy to meet you but I don't plan to vote for you.  In fact, I'm actively working to help your opponent win.   And he said, oh right, is that Donna Watts?  And I said, your opponent?  Your opponent's not Donna Watts.  You don't know who your opponent is?   I found this to be a very curious statement for Mr. Riley to make.  Donna Watts is a Republican candidate in the 47th legislative district.   Here's what popped into my mind:

A couple of months ago, I'd heard from a friend in the 47th district that he'd been called by political pollsters.   The interviewer had asked him questions on a wide variety of candidates from the  national level down to the legislative district level.  It was clear to him during this interview that this was a "push poll" for the Republican party -- a poll meant to push public opinion as much as to gauge it.  

When the interviewer came down to the candidates in the 47th legislative district, he told my friend that there was no Democratic candidate for the Washington state Senate for the 47th legislative district.  Well, at the time, there were two Democratic candidates.  I was so angry when I heard this story.  Here, I thought, was another case where the Republican party was messing around with the natural wisdom of the voters and manipulating the democratic process for their own narrow gain.

So, when Mike Riley said he didn't know Claudia Kauffman's name, I thought to myself  ... hmm, unless this nice man is really out of it or afflicted with dementia, he must be pretending that he doesn't know his opponent's name.  And I felt sad about this because here we were, person-to-person and I thought he was probably not being straight with me.  

I said, you know, you must know your opponent's name!   And he leafed through his sheaf of papers for a few moments and then put his finger on a line and said, oh, right, Claudia Kauffman, is that it?   And I thought, oh my goodness, I think I'm being "handled".  But the funny thing is, this didn't dampen my enthusiasm for talking with him.  I have this sense sometimes of boundless happiness to talk with people.  So we went on.  We talked about our children.  We both have 13-year-old children.  He said, let's not get our children together (and laughed).  I put up my hand for a high-five because it seems to me a wondrous thing to have a 13-year old in ones life and that was something we could share even if every other trust between us was broken and lying on the ground in pieces underneath our feet.  Dramatic eh?  

Then we got to talking about transportation. He said we need more infrastructure.   And I said, what kind of infrastructure?  And he said roads and highways.  And I said how about public transit?  And he said, we've been doing public transit for many years now.  It's clear that public transit doesn't work.  And I said, but we've been building highways for even longer and that hasn't solved our problems either.  You know  that saying, I said, 'build it and they will come.'  Aren't we just encouraging more traffic by building more roads?  But we couldn't come to a meeting of minds on this.  We'd reached the end of the line, so to speak, on transportation.

Then I asked him, what do you think of the suspension of habeus corpus in America.  And he said something like:  It's troubling -- but then, it won't stand.  You liberals (or Democrats?) won't let it stand.  It'll be overturned soon in the courts.

I told him about all the political signs that had been stolen and torn up and chopped into bits and vandalized on my property.  He said, I really dislike that, this business with the political signs getting stolen.  He looked genuinely sympathetic.  Fibber or not, what a nice man.  But I wasn't feeling so nice now.   I told him that only the Democratic signs in our neighborhood got destroyed in 2004.  That my neighbor's sign for George Bush had stayed up for months across the street while 10 of my signs for Kerry were destroyed or stolen.  I said that I thought current Republican culture was morally bankrupt and that I hoped, if he won, that he would buck that trend.   My boundless happiness was fading now, and I hadn't even heard yet about Mark Foley.

That's when I asked about I-933.  We have a NO ON I-933 sign up near the road.   We were both kind of looking toward the sign as we talked.  He said, I'm going to vote for I-933.  I said it's going to cost us so much money in litigation and in compensation to property owners.  No, he said, (I'm paraphrasing here, of course), I-933 will make the government more careful about what it does.  There won't need to be all that litigation.

I didn't have the presence of mind to tell him  that this was not a logical argument, as under I-933, property owners can sue for what the government has done going back into an undefined past.  Plus, the government has a legal obligation to uphold state and federal standards and can't just give everyone what they want.    I sort of lost my presence of mind altogether at this point and our conversation devolved as my emotions got the best of me.

We went back and forth a couple of times.  I said stuff like, "You want to represent us in government and yet you support a measure that undoes government, strips away the power of representative government?"  And he said stuff like, well, we have an honest difference of opinion.  And I said, no this is not a matter of opinion.  You are wrong about this issue and you will know you are wrong if you read up on it.  And he said I have read up on it.  And I said I-933 is EVIL!  

Gee that was helpful of me. I actually don't think of I-933 as evil.  But it was the worst word that I could find in my mind at that point without resorting to curse words. I think of I-933 as immoral, unethical, unneighborly, and reckless.  So I apologize for my outburst which I know was neither polite nor helpful.  I think I need some counseling in how to talk with people about our current situation -- that democracy and representative government and the middle class are being crushed -- without getting so emotional.

Right here, I think that another tale from my neighborhood might be worth telling.  Last night, I had another political encounter in front of my house.  One of my neighbors, whom I've met doorbelling, came calling.

Noemie, he said, as we stood in my driveway not far from where Mike Riley and I had stood, I'm so disgusted with both political parties.  The Republicans are corrupt and totally out to lunch (that wasn't his language -- but I believe the general gist) -- and the Democrats are too liberal.  Neither party is focusing on what is important.  They have abandoned us.  I don't care if a man marries a man!  That makes absolutely no difference to my life or my family's life.  I want the political parties to get back to the bread-and-butter issues!  I was late to a meeting and we couldn't talk long.  But I recognized in him, I thought, a sense of desperation very similar to mine.  

That's all for now.