Educating a new voter

Yakov will be 18 before the election in November so he is eligible to vote in our May primary. He registered yesterday through Rock the Vote.

So we have taken on the job of educating him on the local and statewide races. I split up the work between the 3 kids. Every Wednesday at lunch, we sit down and talk about what's happening in the assigned races. Yesterday they were showing me the relevant attack ads and we were discussing their effectiveness. Also we are noting the web presence of the candidates.

Yakov is covering the Senate race in which we are hoping to replace our female Bush-clone, Elizabeth Dole, with someone good. There are 2 main Democratic contestants and a few interesting, if somewhat scary, outliers. I like Jim Neal who strikes me as a good progressive candidate and I am all over progress. The other likely contender is Kay Hagan who is not so progressive. She lost me when she said she would have voted for telecom immunity. Not me. Somebody has to stand up to these people and I want a Senator who will do just that. Since presidential power has been expanded so, I want someone who is willing to stand up to a Democratic president as well. I don't want to elect an Obama-clone or Hillary-clone either. And certainly not a McCain-clone.

I am hoping we will get the opportunity to see these 2 soon. Neal has a major electability problem, he is gay. This is North Carolina, after all. It was only a few years ago that we were listening to Jesse Helms warn us about the "homer sexuals".

Shoshie is following the gubernatorial race. There are a number of candidates and it has been difficult to narrow our focus so far. Yesterday we were comparing attack ads in this race. Each has a website to debunk the other's positions and claims. The funniest was a poem embedded in a blog on Fact Check Perdue. This was posted December 21st and was written in the style of T'was the Night Before Christmas.

More rapid than eagles the attacks, they came,
Trumped up and untrue, they tried to name names;
"He did it, he did it, It’s all Moore’s fault!
.....

And the smoke coming from Bev’s ears looked like a wreath;
For the facts from Roanoke Rapids might have been a little smelly
But they seemed to be pointing to the Perdue campaign’s belly.

This is about Bev Perdue who has been saying bad things about Richard Moore, one of her opponents. Her website is Know Moore. It's not as poetic.

Noach is following the Lt. Governor's race. This one is not very exciting and Noach is, of course, the most enthusiastic political student of the lot. I need to re-assign him before he loses interest. PRM