Thursday, September 29, 2016

The unforgiving minute: Decideds and undecideds


Last night I heard a woman sitting a few seats down from me say this to the man she was with. For verisimilitude's sake, you have to imagine it delivered in a classic early 1980s Valley Girl-speak, and without the slightest trace of irony:

"I've decided to be less judgmental of women. [Pause.] It's not fair to hold them up to my standard."

My initial impulse, of course, was to grab the man by the arm and shout, "Run away! Run away!"

/But then I realized that he knew perfectly well what he had gotten into; they'd been trading passive-aggressive barbs since the moment he sat down with her. He'd long-since made his choice.

I feel much the same way about voters in this election. I've read a number of posts and articles this week mentioning "undecided" voters. I don't believe there are very many of those -- certainly not if the choice is about Trump versus Clinton. Maybe a few dazed or confused Democratic or Republican  voters can still be picked off by third-party candidates, or vice-versa. And a lot of voters -- particularly Trump voters, I suspect, and particularly Trump voters who haven't been in the habit of voting for years -- may be undecided about whether they'll actually cast a ballot at all.

But this year, pretty much anyone who makes it to the voting booth has already made up their mind about who they're voting for, and why.

Turnout, I suspect, will be everything.

Minute's up.

No comments: