Saturday, October 20, 2012

Fighting For The Female Vote...

...and why it's probably a waste of effort.

This Lunatic has been busy this week, which is why I haven’t been posting. My apologies to all my loyal readers who come here first for diseased commentary, but I reckon that once you know exactly what I  have been doing, you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.

For I have been doing important political research.

You see, it all began when I started really paying attention to all these news reports about poll numbers in the upcoming Presidential election. Normally, I could care less about polls because they are typically useless for just about anything except which brand of dishwashing liquid is more popular than another, Typically, when a newscast or somesuch starts talking about polling data, my eyes glaze over, and I retreat into a sort of semi-conscious reverie in which I become Wolverine, and I’m fantasizing about using my incredible mutant powers – and those way-too-fuckin'-cool claws – to rob banks, and my incredible animal magnetism (complete with mutant pheromones!) to get Salma Hayek out of her clothing and into the sack.


But, I digress…

Anyways, I try like the dickens to not pay much attention to national polling data, especially in the context of a political race, for three reasons:

1. All polls usually skew democrat. This is because only democrats are at home, doing nothing, and therefore have scads of free time to talk to pollsters. Mostly, this is because the electoral triad upon which the democratic (small ‘d’ intentional) party depends are not out working for a living (come to think of it, damned few people are out working for a living, these days). This Triumvirate of Twits consists of Welfare Queens, Senior Citizens, and College Students, i.e. the people most likely to know the least about anything, and who  probably spend the majority of their day getting high, making babies they can’t afford to feed, or praying fervently that they manage to avoid soiling themselves…again.

These are the people most likely to respond to skewed questions, such as “Do you believe that Mitt Romney will throw kittens into meat grinders, burn puppies alive, reinstate the Draft, outlaw public toilets, make Mormonism the official state religion, and cut your Welfare/Social Security/College Loan program, and would knowing this make you more likely to vote for Barack Obama?” in the manner in which the pollster requires them to.

If they don't get the right answers, then the New York Times won't pay for the polling data.

2. Pollsters have to get paid, somehow. One wonders who pays pollsters to do what they
do in the political arena. I mean, it’s easy to see where a pollster’s money comes from if they’re doing research for, say, Proctor&Gamble, IBM, the Chamber of Commerce, or Wal-Mart, but how do they get paid for political polling? Why, in many cases, the campaigns or parties pay for poling operations, and one should never be surprised when a paid pollster comes up with a bunch of numbers that are flattering to their employer. There’s so many polling operations out there, and many of them are suspect, that it’s difficult to know which polls are accurate reflections, and which are not.. Therefore, it's best to ignore them all, and remember the only one that counts is on Election Day.

3. A few weeks ago, I spoke to a pollster, myself. This polling operation took the opportunity to call me at 7 pm, a bad time, as I’m just finishing my dinner, and eagerly awaiting the start of Jeopardy!. Pissed off that someone would ruin the beginning of my nightly routine to ask me a bunch of fool questions about politics geared to a 3rd grade mentality, I deliberately fucked with them, and lied in my response to every goddamned question.

I figure that at least 25% of respondents to most telephone polls lie as a matter of course, for a variety of reasons, including being pissed off by having their enjoyment of dinner, TV shows, and even sex, interrupted by some minimum-wage asshole asking questions, that technically speaking, are none of their goddamned business.

(By the way, Tess and I are supposed to be on that ‘Do Not Call’ list, which, go figure!, politicians have exempted themselves from. In the last few months, we have gotten calls from at least half-a-dozen pollsters, Robo-calls from the two local Congressional candidates, a firm doing research for New York City Reichsfurher….errm…Mayor, Micheal Bloomdouche…errrm….Bloomberg, who apparently is angling to run for another office he thinks he can buy. Which one, I wonder?).

Anyway, the other night the flapping rectums on television were all on about “new polling data which shows womyn beginning to swing towards Mitt Romney”, and the remainder of the program was taken up with talking about the importance of the female vote, and the politics of it, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, and it got me to thinking.

Most of the womyn I know are complete dolts. Airheads. I mean, they may even have college degrees, and hold important jobs, but most couldn’t find their own ass with both hands and a roadmap, and making decisions seems to tie them up into a variety of mental knots that resembles a full-blown menstrual cycle mixed with large doses of Vicodin.

So, I decided to test this premise, this idea that womyn are the all-important factor in this election, for myself. And by the way, I can hardly recall an election in my lifetime where this trope hasn’t been recycled. It’s almost as if the media has this list of stories that it reports on by rote, and every goddamned election year, someone starts talking about the value of the female voter. It’s not as if this is virgin territory, some new phenomenon – like we have just awakened from some decade-long slumber and discovered that womyn can now vote.

I took it upon myself to test this premise, hitting the streets with a clipboard, that womyn are breaking for Romney, by talking to the chicks I know. I spoke to as many as I could, and tried to get a wide variety of types (housewives, working babes, lesbians, professionals, etc.). You’ll be amazed at what I discovered.

Mainly, I have discovered that it’s probably time we rethink this entire 19th Amendment thingy, and probably attach the passage of a basic IQ test as a requirement for voting. Yeah, I know, that’s sexist and patriarchal and all that other feminazi bullshit, but you’d be utterly shocked at what I found and heard. While it may be mathematically necessary to get as many female votes as possible, when you discover what womyn are thinking (or rather, not thinking) you wonder if quality shouldn't trump quantity.

First, we need to set a few things straight. This is not scientific in any sense of the word…except that if you tried this at home with the womyn in your circle, you’d probably get similar results. Before I asked anyone “who are you voting for”, I had a good idea of the answer I would get because I asked a series of other questions intended to give me some sense of their political leanings, thought processes, and general political knowledge.

Second, my sample size is exceedingly low. I spoke to exactly 36 womyn. They are relatives, friends, co-workers, neighbors, the waitress at the coffee shop, two college broads I met on the Staten Island Ferry wearing Obama buttons, the cashiers at my local drugstore, and one chick with kids in tow at the laundromat. My results may be somewhat questionable in the eyes of a ‘professional’ pollster, but then I figure they’re just professional bullshit artists and so their results seem suspect to me, too. Fair is fair.

Finally, getting the last 14 womyn to talk to me – as I ran out of womyn I knew personally to talk to – was somewhat difficult. Even with my sparkling wit, ebullient personality and boyish good looks, Modern Feminism has turned every man who approaches you into a rape just waiting to happen in the eyes of most biddies.

I did not account for race, or age, as I felt these were unimportant. In general, I found that the younger women were only slightly less misinformed than their older counterparts. Bear in mind that I’m also asking questions in New York City, where democrats outnumber republicans about 3-to-1.

My ‘set-up’ questions were these:

Q: What is your party affiliation, and why are you registered that way?

Results: 24 registered democrats, 4 registered republicans, six (6) did not know their party affiliation, and two said they were Libertarians, and therefore ‘forced’ the register republican, even though they usually voted democrat.

The answers to the second part of the question (most popular): Because my husband/father/mother/family is registered that way, and that’s how I have always voted. Second most-popular answer: because the ________ stands for/against  (insert single issue here). Note: many got parties and stances on issues confused, as when one woman told me, “I vote for democrats because they’re for lower taxes”.

A good many of the democrats were keen to say that they vote against republicans because they ‘cut everything I care about’, often without being specific about a) what they cared about, except in a general way, and b) being able to point to a single instance to back that statement up.

Conclusion: Many vote a certain way out of habit, are easily swayed by those around them, or are vulnerable to scare tactics.

Q: Can you name 5 planks of the democrat/republican party platform?

Results: Exactly 8 womyn could answer this question without attempting to use their iPhone to look up the answers on Wikipedia. Believe it or not, 19 asked me “what do you mean by planks?”. The remainder could only manage one or two responses in the 40 seconds allotted. On the democrat side, the majority of one-plank answers were some euphemism for abortion (i.e. Pro-choice, Abortion rights, Reproductive Health, some disconnected nonsense about Planned Parenthood). On the republican side, the majority of the one-plank answers were either “Lower taxes”, “Cut Funding to ________”,  and one “Kill terorrists”.

I concluded from the answers to this question that women don’t really pay attention to politics, and even when they do, they have little to no idea what they’re talking about, lacking even basic information about the two major parties. They may know personalities, but they don’t know policies.

Q: Can you name any other candidate – besides Romney and Obama -- that ran in this year’s Republican/Democratic Presidential primaries?

Results: Believe it or not, 21 women did not know that there was no democratic Presidential primary, and then the most common response was “Hillary Clinton”. On the Republican side, there was more confusion: John McCain and Sarah Palin apparently ran again, and few knew the names Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, or Rick Perry. Mention Michelle Bachmann, and they’ll tell you that they know who she is -- because she wears too much eyeliner – but they didn't know she had run for a Presidential nomination. Six actually knew there was no democratic primary, and could also name at least one republican also-ran. The remainder couldn't answer the question, at all, and most asked if they could skip it, except for the two who knew Ron Paul.

I've concluded from the answers to this question that women are not engaged in the primary process to the extent that many seem to think they are, or follow politics regularly, if at all.

Q: Next, I showed them a piece of paper that had the images of 10 prominent local and national politicians printed on it, and asked them to identify them by name  I also asked the to identify them by party affiliation. The ten were:

President Barack Obama
Vice President Joe Biden
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Sen. Chuck Schumer (Douchebag – NY)
Former democratic Congressman (and Blackberry pervert) Anthony Weiner.
New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomdouche. (I-NY)
Former NYC Mayor, Rudy Guiliani (R-NY)
New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie (R-NJ)
Mitt Romney
Paul Ryan

Results: Everyone knew Obama and Hillary, naturally. 25 could not name Joe Biden. Only four knew Charles Schumer. None recognized Weiner…until you reminded them of what he did with his privates over the internet. Then they were all weirded out.

On the republican side, Everyone knew Rudy, mostly because he’s a local legend. Half could not identify Bloomberg, their own Mayor. 30 knew Romney, 12 knew Ryan. Nineteen could not identify Christie. An amazing number of womyn, when shown Biden’s picture, thought he was John McCain.

A good number of my respondents (14) got more than 70% of the party affiliations incorrect. Twelve managed 60% correct. 8 managed 70% correct, but only 2 managed to get all the party affiliations right, even if they could not name the individual, which was strange.

I've concluded from the responses that women have very short memories. Which is probably why all television newscasts are forced to put someone’s name and party affiliation below their picture.

Q: What are the most important, to you, issues facing the nation right now. Answer  on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being “Most Important” and 10 being “Least Important”. The issues are:

The Economy
Foreign Policy
National Debt
Education
The Environment
Healthcare
Entitlement Reform

…and just for fun….

The proposed Outright Ban on Contraceptives (which, of course, is not an issue at all)

Results:
1. The Economy
2. Education
3. Healthcare
4. The Ban on Contraceptives
5. The Environment
6. National Debt
7. Foreign Policy
8. Entitlement Reform

Only three (3) womyn asked “What ban on Contraceptives?”.

Conclusion: Considering that the womyn asked rated the fake issue (ban on Condoms) higher than the National Debt, and the reform of entitlement programs dead last, womyn are at least credulous, at best, and fucking retarded, at worst. One asked (the one I know to be a lesbian) “Why wasn’t gay Marriage on the List?”, and I replied, “Because it isn’t important enough to be on it…”.

Which pissed her off mightily, but she’ll be back and all smiles and sunshine when she asks me to feed her fucking cats and pick up her mail, again, the next time she goes on vacation. She always is.

Q: What is the main quality you believe a good President should have?

Results: I got the following responses (not in any particular order, most-popular, only): Good-looking, Empathy, Common sense, Charisma, Good listener, Good father/husband, Well-educated, Sophisticated, Knowledgeable.

Follow-up Question: So, who did you vote for in 2008?

Result: 27 said Obama, 1 said McCain, the remainder said they did not vote at all.

Conclusion: Some of these adjectives apparently mean something else to womyn, but who the fuck knows what, exactly. Notice that a good many of them evoke the vision of a President as substitute husband/therapist, rather than as the leader of your country.

Q: Who will you vote for this time, and Why?

Results: 20 said Obama, no matter what. When pressed for reasons, most could only feebly answer either ‘free’ healthcare, some form of the ‘soaking the rich’ trope, or ‘I don’t like republicans’. Five (5) said they would vote for Romney. When asked why, they say because someone they know is out of work, lost a house, or is otherwise in dire economic straits, and they think Obama doesn't have a clue as to how to fix those problems. Eleven said they either didn't know, or weren't motivated to vote at all this year.

Conclusion: Find those five Romney voters, buy them a dozen roses, and make sweet, passionate love to them in that sappy, fucking gay Harlequin Romance way they all dream about, an then make an actual effort to call them the following day to say what a  beautiful experience it was for you, and how it brought tears to your eyes just thinking about it again.  Shoot the rest.

So, is this really what it all comes down to? Are these the people the two campaigns are finding themselves having to fight over; the confused, the uninformed, the intellectually lazy? If so, we’re in deeper shit than I thought.

Now, I’m going to get a lot of static for being unnecessarily harsh on womyn, but I could really give a flying fuck at a rolling donut. I made an effort to find out what these broads were thinking, and why they thought the way they did. I found out, and if the results tend to embarrass the fairer sex, then so be it. Not my fault.

I want you to know that these are the people – certainly not representative of ALL womyn – but apparently the sort is prevalent enough, that some say might very well decide if we get four more years of Vacationer-in-Chief, or a breath of fresh(er) air.

And I find that prospect to be totally fucking frightening.

Note: You'll notice that I have used the feminist-preferred 'Womyn" throughout this screed to refer to what we real men call "A Walking Life Support System for a Vagina", or "That Person Who Brings Me Beer and Dinner".. That's so my e-mail won't be quite so hate-filled.

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