Joe Biden Visits Athens Though No Undecided Voters Noticed

I never thought I could hate Kool and the Gang so much until this morning.

Today's trip to the Athens County Fairgrounds was my last venture to a political rally. Plagued with "Celebrate Good Time." I would have chosen the water board over going to the Sen. Joe Biden rally again.

For either a job (I work at the Athens News) or out of curiosity, I have attended four rallies since last February. They have all been for Democratic candidates because they are the only ones who come to the very left Athens County. The most interesting rally, if you would call it that, was when Chelsea Clinton came and someone asked her if she thought the whole father getting an oval office bj would affect her mother's campaign.

I was a fool for thinking Biden's visit to the Fairgrounds would be interesting (though I was moderately interested in the sign language lady standing tall and signing from her podium). I was a fool for posting last night that I would be able to talk to some undecided student voters at the rally.

Those events are for the early voters, reserved for those who have watched Sen. Barack Obama's Democratic National Convention speech from 2004 on YouTube at least 200 times.

After talking it over with my girlfriend, a left leaning independent with a low political interest, I think I have come up with a few reasons why I would discourage anyone from going to a political rally unless they are either paid or bribed with free punch and pie.

One, they love to turn it into "us" versus "them." Athens Councilwoman Debbie Phillips is running for a seat in the state legislature and she is notorious for ranting about how it is our duty as voters to not let a single Republican to win a seat.

Because the Democrats clearly are the one true answer? That would be like a Catholic priest telling everyone to go out and convert everyone to Catholicism right now because that is the ultimate answer.

Second, the music at this debate was awful and annoying. It makes things worse when the main speaker never shows up on time and the opening speakers reiterate the same partisan message over and over again to the droning cheers (enter Phillips, Ohio Attorney General candidate Rich Cordrey, Strickland and Sen. Sherrod Brown).

Third, no one explains anything. Biden kept mentioning why Sen. John McCain will not work, slipping in anti-Republican, anti-McCain and anti-Sarah Palin remarks throughout his speech. These attacks were not nearly as vinegary as those from the McCain campaign, but they are still annoying.

Now to be fair, Biden at least talked to a young audience, making an anecdote to visiting OU and our beloved Court Street (I don't know if I'm buying the whole story though. He said he came because of an OU vs. his alma mata Delaware had a football game. He claimed he was arrested for being in a girl's dormitory, but only saw the first floor. A good story to tell students, especially because he's old and needs to relate to us, but I don't know if it's real).

But what was interesting to me, from listening to what my girlfriend had to say as we waited in the post-rally traffic, was how much television advertising affects her political opinions. For a future post, I am going to look into if that's a trend among young voters and see what some other college students around campus think about this year's advertisements.

Until then, I'll be watching the debate and will post about that tomorrow.