I am still feeling sick, although better than I was — which makes this the delicate time when I should be making myself rest so that I don’t relapse. Instead, I am writing angry emails to the Washington State Obama/Biden campaign, because they have seriously pissed me off.
Here’s the email they sent me today. Maybe everyone on the national Obama mailing list got one, who knows? And maybe everyone else thought it was just fine. I did not.
Kelley —
[…]
This is the last week before Election Day, November 4th, and we’re executing the largest get out the vote (GOTV) effort in Washington’s history. We’ve filled 82 percent of our GOTV shifts, but we have to fill every last slot this week.
The conversations you have with friends, family, and voters across Washington right now will make a real difference in whether they stay home or make their voices heard on November 4th.
[…]
We have to make sure every voter hears about the kind of change Barack and other Democrats will deliver for Washington families. What we do or don’t do in the next six days will decide the outcome of this race.
Imagine how you’ll feel if you wake up on November 5th — facing four more years of the same Bush-McCain economic policies — and realize that you didn’t do all you could to make sure Barack Obama is the next president.
I know that’s not a feeling I could live with.
Volunteer to get out the vote between now and Election Day and win this election for Barack and Democrats up and down the ticket.
— from an email I received from the Washington Campaign for Change. Message paid for by Obama For America.
Here is the email I sent back.
I’m on your mailing list because I’m a Washington Democrat. And as a supporter of Barack Obama, I have to tell you how angry this email made me. You have absolutely no right to lecture me about the moral imperative of “doing everything I can do to help Barack” so that I don’t have to “live with the feeling” of being responsible for his losing the election.
How dare you?
My only obligation as a citizen is to vote my conscience. If I don’t vote, fine, call me names. But the pomposity and paternalism of this email enrages me. You are not the keeper of my conscience. And if this message truly reflects Barack Obama’s feelings — if he feels that he has the right to decide when I’ve “done enough” for him — then he’s not who I thought he was, and his presidency doesn’t offer the promise of change that I thought it did.
I’m deeply offended by this message. Whether it comes from the state level of the campaign, or from the national level, shame on all of you for treating Washington Democrats with so little respect.
— My email to the Washington Campaign for Change
I’ll be doing a thoughtful, rational, nonpartisan and encouraging post on November 3, in support of Blog the Vote. I love my country and I think it’s in desperate need of reconnection and healing, and I think we are capable of making it happen. I believe it. But for right now, let me just say that I loathe and detest presidential politics, and I cannot wait for this fucking election to be over.
The only sensible response is, of course, to drink 🙂 So, my love, let’s go to the pub…
Well, then you will have no problem imagining how I felt when I got this
sent to me in an email.
Yes, go de-stress. This not conducive to full recovery…
Holy shit, Jennifer, someone actually thought that was funny?
Jesus screamed and ran. What is wrong with people?
Gag me with a freakin’ spoon. I wouldn’t have been nearly so polite in response, myself. Of course, I haven’t been terribly impressed by Obama, who strikes me as just another corrupt Chicago politician, albeit a bit brighter than average.
Bleh on this election year.
Yes, I guess it’s supposed to be funny. And I talked to someone here at the studio who thinks it is hilarious. I just didn’t see it. It seems weird that there is all of this guilt-tactic stuff out there. I hate that crap. Some marketing guy somewhere told them it works.
I wish they could come up with something better..
A friend of mine got so mad at people who were harassing him to vote here in Canada. He wrote an angry letter on Facebook to everyone at school who was trying to guilt-trip him about “doing enough.”
I hope things improve in the US, as the outcome will affect so many countries. Our election didn’t go too well, you’ve probably heard…
Drinking sounds like a good idea when you are so mad/stressed out you can’t stay in bed. I spent last evening at the pub with friends, gathering/scattering myself.
they must have gotten your e-mail because after daily notes like the one above…I got this one tonight:
Jen —
The next 6 days are going to be the toughest we’ve seen, and I need your support to reach as many voters as possible.
Donate $5 or more today to strengthen this movement for the final push.
This campaign is in your hands.
Thank you for everything you’re doing,
Barack
Kelley:
The bolded portion of your last sentence sums up my feeling every election year. I hate the primaries and I hate election time. It is at this time that I am particularly happy that I don’t pay for cable and have no rabbit ears! The TV’s only purpose is to as a monitor for the DVD player.
I also learned years ago that registering Green Party was the way to go. I receive NO political mail. I even have my phone account set-up so no calls which have caller ID blocked get through (I’m not even sure why I bother with a phone other than my cell, but sometimes it is handy).
I would have been angry that the email as well. I don’t need someone lecturing me about how to vote.
Jennifer D:
I am sorry that someone thought that was amusing enough to send to you.
My only real amusement this year was when I got a phone call encouraging me to vote for Prop 8 (the CA prop which will take away my right to marry). Since the call had caller ID, I made a return phone call and left a nice long message explaining that the household they called had two voters and would both be voting NO. 😀 It was minor I realize, but I did smile afterwards. And I was very polite in my reply.
Sadly, I was not able to go to the pub and drink my grumpiness away (grin).
I wish I’d been more coherent in my email to these folks, but I was pissed, and they really pushed my buttons. I want to ask the woman who signed this email, okay, so if Obama loses, and she wakes up on November 5th realizing that just one time, she went for a latte instead of making another phone call — is she going to go out and shoot herself?
I suspect not.
The thing is, there are many people who will fall for this kind of guilt trip — who believe that they are responsible for a national campaign’s failure if they don’t spend every spare ounce of energy on Obama. And shame on anyone who uses that kind of manipulative bullshit just to fill volunteer telephone slots to call people who are so damn tired of being called by campaign folks that they are ready to hurt someone.
Yeesh.
If Obama loses, it will be either because more people voted for McCain (okay, I know the electoral system is not quite this simplistic, but I’m just ranting here, okay?), or because the Supreme Court stole another election. That’s the math. Given how much time and money has been spent campaigning, and how much coverage there’s been, enough people are aware of the candidates’ positions to determine the outcome of the election.
In my opinion.
Or maybe it’s just that I intensely dislike being manipulated.
Kelley, have you by any chance seen one of these?
I briefly considered trying to “customize” one for you, but decided it wouldn’t be funny, especially in your presently depleted state.
I agree with you completely about the creepiness of that e-mail you got, and I think it says something about the people who wrote it that it may never have occurred to them how creepy it is. That evangelical mindset of so many Obamafans (“Are you saved? Have you been washed in His Blood? I would hate to think of you suffering for all eternity instead of sitting at the feet of His throne”) annoys me whenever I encounter it. But I’m usually on the offensive anyway, telling them why their candidate is evil (but yes, a lesser evil) and giving them such a hard time that they don’t get a chance to break out the hymnbook.
Kelley,
You seemed coherent enough to me. Fuck’em. That’s the old school Democratic bullshit at work there. My gripe with the two parties has always been one of understanding responsibility. The Republicans think government shouldn’t help anyone who can’t help him or herself, so they don’t bother. The Democrats used to think people are essentially helpless without them. Both viewpoints are bogus (and no, they wouldn’t actually come out and SAY it that way, but hell.) This was the guilt game deluxe. Gotta admit the video sent to Jennifer would have caused me to find that person and rip his lungs out.
Duncan, your link didn’t make it through for some reason, but I’m wondering if it’s the same customizable video that Jennifer linked to in Comment #2? If it’s that, or anything like it, then your instincts are right — I wouldn’t find it funny in the slightest, even without the virus.
Humor is such an interesting thing. So personal, so varied, such an immense spectrum of what a human being can consider funny. How it binds people together — both in the context of groups or “tribes”, and in personal ways. I know that shared humor (and shared notions of what is not funny) are one of the great ties between me and Nicola.
And it’s so easy for one person’s funny to be another person’s offensive or hurtful. I think that’s actually the problem I have with the video Jennifer got. I would find it hurtful if someone sent it to me.
Hmm. Always so much to think about.
I’m not sure what happened to the link, Kelley, but yes, I think it’s the same one: singling out one person for blame if McCain were to win. It’s the same kind of guilt-tripping as in the e-mail you received. It’s almost funny — I like the woman whose vitriol gets bleeped, for example — but really, the trouble with it is that it can’t make up its mind whether it’s supposed to be funny or to make you feel bad for not worshipping Obama.
I’ve been attacked often enough by Democrats who are furious because I view their candidates as lesser evils rather than Great Hopes — I first noticed it in 2000 — and I wonder where they got the idea that abuse is the best way to win someone’s vote. Guilt doesn’t work on me very well either.
See what you think of video, if you have a chance. It’s brief and it beats most political advertising I’ve seen, though after I first saw it the first thing that occurred to me is that Nader is older than McCain.
BTW, did you notice that that video was paid for by moveon.org? And it was sent to me by some other group called truemajority.org. I must’ve signed some online petition thing or something for them once. I’m off their list now.
My friend that liked that video and sent it on to people (not me) passed this email on to me. It was in response to her sending it to her friends. I thought it was interesting to hear their thinking on it:
“Subject: Don’t let your friends lose the election.
Dear CNNBC viewer,
Wow. Thanks to people like you, this nonvoter video has now been sent to over 6.3 million friends. It’s going out to more than 30 new people per second.
Research shows that this kind of social “nudging” is extremely effective. So we’re aiming to reach 10 million people before Election Day—only a few days away.
Can you help by sending this video to a few more friends today?
http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/taf.html
Studies show that by far the best way to get people out to vote is to convince them that (a) everyone else is voting, and (b) everyone will know if they don’t vote. This video does both—with a smile (or smirk, in some cases).
It takes just seconds to send, and it could be the thing that actually pushes a friend of yours to the polls.
Click here to send more personalized videos to your friends:
http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/taf.html
Thanks for all you do.
–The CNNBC team

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. “
I like
this technique better.
That was careless of me. I didn’t realize I was including all of their stupid links….