I’d like to echo the sentiments expressed by David Sedaris in a recent New Yorker article, “Undecided.” I am as astonished as he that people can still be undecided between John McCain and Barack Obama. Beyond the fact that they’re both politicians, they are very dissimilar. If you can’t find something by now that pushes you towards one candidate or the other — even if it’s a primal gut feeling you get by looking at them or maybe you’ve gotten close enough to smell them — that should be enough to go on.
I was thinking about what I would call “progressive Catholics” yesterday. How do you reconcile a political conflict with your religion? (Even if you have seen Bill Mahar’s Religulous?!) That is, if you believe in Obama how do you reconcile that he’s pro-choice? Or if you believe in McCain because of a specific issue, how do you reconcile that he may simply continue the mediocrity of the past eight years?
That is just a limited example that could play out a thousand different ways if you change the player and the inputs. My point is that you have the right to vote. You are allowed to have an opinion. Don’t waste either on being undecided. Make a decision and live with it. If it turns out to be wrong, you’ll probably get another chance. Or at least you can complain about something for the next four years and know that you actually partook in the process.
Or, as David Sedaris writes:
To put [undecided voters] in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?