With three months to go before the election, Yahoo! News asked a handful of undecided voters how they’re leaning in the presidential race. Here’s a perspective from one voter.
COMMENTARY | As a 39-year-old Generation-X voter in Tampa, I’m frustrated with this year’s political elections. If there was ever an undecided voter’s club, I’d be the founder. I probably wouldn’t be the president or even the recording secretary of the club because, to be honest, I just dislike politics or maybe I’m just a slacker.
I just hate what politics brings out in people: manipulation, lies and mean-spiritedness. I view myself as an Independent. Sometimes I vote for Democrats and sometimes I vote for Republicans. As an editor and writer for newspapers for many years, I have learned to see both sides of every issue.
Duping the older generation
I am growing weary of all the political rhetoric and propaganda that is aimed toward the aging baby boomer and silent generations. Most of the seniors I know forward emails that make it sound as though Obama is the anti-Christ. Everything is so dramatic about how the end of the world is coming and Obama is ushering it in. They blame Obama for everything, including the fact that it’s harder to get a driver’s license in Florida now without showing a stamped official copy of your birth certificate.
At the same time, the Republicans nominated Romney, a Mormon. I know some conservative Christians who simply will not vote for a Mormon and others who can look beyond his religion.
According to an article on NPR, the silent generation may get loud this year because they are “angrier with politics right now than any other generation.”
Trying to figure out what’s true
I listen to the paid political campaign messages on television, but I can’t always figure out who is behind the messages or whether they are even true. I heard people criticizing Obama for his alleged message to entrepreneurs that “you didn’t build that.” I think he was just alluding to that cliché that it “takes a village to raise a child.” If anything we should be thanking Obama for not using that worn-out phrase.
All he was saying is that we all rely on one another to make things happen. I’m an extremely independent person, but even I have learned that I can’t do it alone.
Wishing government would step back
At the same time, I’d love to be able to vote for someone who could fix the economy, but government officials have a way of making things worse. Ultimately, I want less government, not more government. I don’t need the government to decide what my children take in their lunchboxes at school. Government officials need to “learn their place,” and that’s a boundary that is blurred.
Wouldn’t it be great if businesses came back to America and if the economy was allowed to take its natural course without Fed actions or government “stimulus?”
I might just have to wait another four years for a good Gen-X presidential candidate, unless the world ends before then. In any regard, I don’t feel as though my vote is needed since this is a presidential election that isn’t for my generation.
