Poster in GD lays it out re Honesty in Politics

[blm]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2496130

I do believe THIS will be the essential difference in the 2008 campaign.

[StoryTeller]

1. I agree

The toughest part I think will be convincing people that the "Honest Candidate" is indeed truthful and honest. A lot of people I talk to--my Republican friends and family, mostly--have the attitude that they're ALL lying, so you can't trust any of them no matter what they say. To me, it comes across as a defense mechanism--they know their Republican reps have lied to them, so in order to save face and shift responsibility off of themselves for supporting these people and being taken in, they try to blanket all politicians by saying they're ALL like that.

The problem is that then they don't listen to any of my attempts to refute this idea. They say, "Well, sure, of COURSE he says he's telling the truth. And you believe it?" or "Well, I'm sure there's a lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know anything about."

So on one hand, they say politicians are all liars. And yet on the other hand, they assert that we have to trust politicians anyway because we don't have all the information that the pols do.

How do you break through this sort of crazy reasoning? How do you help win back real trust, and not just face-saving, don't-have-any-other-option sort of trust?

[blm]

2. Tell them to check the congressional record....does a lawmaker have a

RECORD of uncovering corruption? Battling secrecy in government? Working so MORE government documents are released to public view?

[ProSense]

3. You hit the nail on the head!

You are right, it is a defense mechanism, but if the person will not listen to reason, then what can be done?

This is what I believe is the biggest problem going forward. "They are all the same," and that belief has been reinforced by the past two years. For example, the MSM has regularly denounced election fraud as a conspiracy theory (at least until recently), yet look at this article in today's NYTs:

Democrats Fear Disillusionment in Black Voters

Snip...

Mr. Walters said that episodes of voter suppression that were dismissed in 2000 as unfounded recurred in 2004 and were better documented because rights groups dispatched thousands of lawyers and poll watchers. In addition, the first national data-tracking tool, the Election Incident Reporting System, offered a national hot line that fed a database of what ended up to be 40,000 problems.

“All of a sudden after 2004, these weren’t just baseless or isolated incidents,” Mr. Walters said.

The type of misleading letter sent this month to 14,000 Hispanic immigrants in Orange County, Calif., threatening them with arrest if they tried to vote, was hardly a first. In 2004, similar fliers appeared in predominantly black neighborhoods in the Pittsburgh area, on official-looking letterheads. The fliers said that because of unusually high voter registration, Republicans were to vote on Election Day, and Democrats were to vote the next day.

more...

These voters aren't relying on the MSM to validate their belief, and they are disillusioned.

One person's perspective (from a conversation):

Republicans are racists (look at George Allen and what they did to Harold Ford)

Harold Ford is a black candidate, and I would vote for him, except why the hell is he supporting Lieberman, that guy should be run out of the Senate for supporting the Iraq war.

Just because a candidate is black means nothing. Lynn Swann was my all-time favorite player, but as a politician, he's lost his damn mind.

Some of the things some Democrats support I don't agree with, but if someone listed the values Republicans claim, and itemized the relevant issues, then matched them up against the Democrats' stance, no black person in their right mind would vote for a Republican.

Those machine's are rigged anyway, look how cocky Bush has been acting!

____

That's one AA's perspective (fortunately, this person did listen to reason, and obviously isn't about to vote Republican). If I hear similar complaints that nothing will change and they're all the same, from family members and strangers (non-AAs), I know there is something to it.

The fact is, people are listening to the MSM, but a growing number are forming their opinions based on other sources of information, and this doesn't necessarily mean the blogs. It could be from personal accounts or the experience of a person close to them.

This is sort of rambling, but this is the thing that bothers me as much as media bias! People know the two parties are different, they're just not convinced that they're working hard enough to change the status quo that keeps screwing up their lives!

On edit: We constantly talk about people in the real world, well the issues are complex and a lot of voters will simply go out and vote for Democrats, but this time the anger and disillusionment is at an all-time high. People really want to see change!