By Keish Kim | New Organizing Project blogger
Part of our series of bloggers on what the elections mean to them.
It’s election season y’all! The big 2012 presidential election
Campaign colors have been everywhere, and although I don’t own a TV, I am sure there had been a plethora of candidate advertisements. After all, both candidates did push their voters for every dollar they can get.
For the past few weeks, the highlight of the election has to be the presidential debates plus one vice presidential debate. Ideally, these debates are suppose to inform undecided voters by expanding on policy platforms the candidates could not do in a 2 minute ad or limited campaign trails. Frankly, that’s not how it went in all 4 debates. And maybe the key word here is “ideally”. Political debates have become more of a stage act and it never seems to expand on anything. What you can get out of them are catch phrases keen to produce mass amounts of memes and hashtags for the social media. #bigbird #bindersfullofwomen and the most recent #horsesandbayonets.
Although it is amusing to laugh at these comical pieces of the debate, they allude to the pressing issues that the President will have to address in the coming 4 years. So how can we, while retaining some humor, break down and highlight the key parts of this year’s election?
Here are some blog posts that make the election fun and enjoyable (in no particular order) :
1)
#binderfullofwomen was a statement Mitt Romney made in the second presidential debate. While it’s funny to laugh at, the larger issue around women’s rights are pressing. Other than equal pay, the issue around planned parenthood and contraceptives are at stake.
I thought this blog post made it comical (gif) and easy for anyone to understand why Romney’s “binder full of women” was problematic and how it reflected his stance on women’s rights.
2) This blog http://shortformblog.com is a little bit hard to navigate but their political commentaries are punny and informative.
A post I thought was clever was a short infography looking summary of what the popular internet pundits thought about who won the debate
http://shortformblog.com/post/34145455332/who-won-the-debate#1mqmD8z32a9iymvh.99
3) Mitt refers us to his website to explain how he’d pay to grow the military.
The American Prospect did a clever job animating gifs to sum up each debates, including the vice presidential debate. They were so funny, it’ll be a shame if I don’t share! https://prospect.org/article/horses-and-bayonets-and-gifs-oh-my
But they also have a more in-depth posts on different campaign topics https://prospect.org/topic/elections/2012
4) Pew Research center tumblr (yes they have a tumblr!) also had bunch of interesting easy to read charts and graphs demonstrating the impact of social media and young voters for 2012 elections
To expand your knowledge of issues concerning this election, there are really countless of independent sites and political criticism for both sides. What is important to remember is that beyond the punny gifs of horses and bayonets, binder full of women and big bird comments, it alludes to critical issues of nuclear weapons and militarization of the US, women’s rights and budget cuts concerning public institutions.
Other sites you could visit!
http://colorlines.com/2012-election/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/election.html
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/can-americans-agree-on-anything/431/
And if you have other suggestions, please let me know!!
Until then, stay informed and go out to vote
In the words of Bob Schieffer’s mom