Issues or Values
I canvassed yesterday against Proposition 85, which would require parental notification before abortions and then went with that group to watch the debate between Schwarzenegger and Angelides.
The people I talked to were overwhelmingly opposed to 85, as you would expect in SF, but the voter lists we had were pruned to just women Democrats and a few “other”s, so I suspect we got a biased picture. The whole process was geared toward turning out the base, rather than opening any sort of dialog or changing minds. Now, maybe abortion is too polarized an issue to try to change minds on, but parental notification seems like enough of a wedge issue that we should be seeking out those on the fence.
The governor’s debate was extremely interesting politically. I disagree with most of the issues the Governator has pushed, with the significant exception of the recent CO2 emissions law. And yet I disagree more with Angelides’ apparent philosophy toward politics. Several times, Schwarzenegger mentioned the idea of giving back to society. And when asked, “What’s the one thing you regret doing in office?”, Angelides weaseled out by complaining about deficit spending, which I would be surprised if he had any authority over. Schwarzenegger’s answer wasn’t perfect — he admitted a mistake in strategy rather than a mistake on an issue — but he said he’d learned that he needs to work to bring people together instead of trying to go over their heads.
So, we need to escape from partisan politics and convince people again of the importance of giving back to their communities. But we also need to fix the important particulars. In this election, it seems that I have to choose between the two and, right now, I’m leaning toward the larger goals over the particulars.
