:: Election venting continued ::

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

"Moral" issues were important in this campaign to an extent that surprised many, myself included. Two primary ones were stem cell research and gay marriage.

I'm continually surprised at how much of a minority I am with respect to these two. They don't even seem like issues to me - I feel like I'm staring at the answer key to a math problem which doesn't reconcile with what I thought was my no-brainer solution. It's that same sense of "ok, what didn't I account for?", and checking, a dozen times, that I made my calculations properly, only to have a dissonant result stare me in the face.

On other issues (say, Iraq), I can at least understand - not agree with, but recognize as an argument - the line of reasoning. When I look to these however, I don't even see anything there, not even a paper tiger. It's like losing a debate to which your opponent didn't show up (which is fittingly what happened in KY with Bunning and Mongiardo). It's not that I've never heard persuasive logic, it's that their appears to be no logic whatsoever.

I really hope the Democrats don't debase themselves by swinging hard to the right on these issues, but something tells me that will be their knee-jerk response. I'd much rather have them reformulate their communication strategy to better educate and persuade voters, especially regarding stem-cells. I accept that certain people will dig in their heels and refuse to change their minds about same-sex marriage because of their intractable moral outlook, but I suspect the resistance to stem cell research is a product of disinformation and lack of education.

Posted by morland @ 02:12 PM

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