On Tuesday, my friend’s wife had someone campaigning for one of the candidates come to the house. She was a Republican but hadn’t changed her Democratic registration fom when she lived in Philly.
Anyway, the guy asks her to make sure she comes out to support his candidate. She politely said that she was voting for McCain and couldn’t help him. The guy decided to go into a tirade on her doorstep accusing her of every evil under the sun, stopping short of calling her a Nazi. Before she knew it, she had spent a good ten minutes in a shouting match with this guy.
I have never had anyone get this aggressive when campaigning, but I can’t imagine that I would have put up with this for more than a few seconds.
So have you had anyone come to your house and go ballistic because you wouldn’t support their candidate? How long could you put up with it before you reached for the baseball bat in the closet?
I’ve never had a campaign worker do this, but I did have an extremely overaggressive vacuum cleaner salesman come to the door once. After the second time I asked him politely to please clear off (and really, the only reason he got the second chance was because my kids were right there and I was trying to set a good example), I politely informed him that I would now be closing the door and that if he did not immediately leave my property I would call the police.
“Well, Mr. ____________ (remember name on badge) you’ve certainly convinced me, I’m going to vote for ___________. Thanks”. Door closes. Lock clicks. Call made to appropriate party headquarters.
If hand touches door then steel pipe next to door finds a new home.
Now if you had one of those old houses with the standard trapped door under the door mat, you’d be set for life. Have one installed today. My solution is to never open the screen door to see what they want. I close the door right after saying go away. It will give her those extra few seconds to close the main door if they go bonkers.
No, seriously. Unless I wanted to get into a debate, I’d say “No, thanks” maybe twice, then say, “You’re making me even more certain that I would never support your candidate. Please leave or I’m calling the police.” Then I’d close the door.
Frankly, as a supporter of the other side, the best thing you can do with a jerk like this is to get rid of them as quickly as possible – so they can go on down the road, losing support for their candidate with other voters.
“Hey you should support X”
“I’m sorry I’m supporting Y”
“Well then you just a bad person”
“You’ve got a point how about I vote for you canidate for $100”
“I Knew you were a bad person not only are you voting for Y but you take bribes”
“I’m sorry I really see the error of my ways how about you mow my lawn?”
::Storms off in a huff::
With the religious types I just ask them why Jesus had sex with his mom it cuts out a lot of dialogue but they still leave in a huff.
I had a kid from some local church getting upset that I didn’t want to hear his spiel, when I tried to close the door he stuck his foot in it. I was pissed and yelled at him to get the hell off my property. I think this was about the point it dawned on him that I outweighed him by roughly 70 lbs.
As he was backing off the lawn he yelled, “I just want to help you find God.”
I yelled “you’re gonna meet God if you don’t get off my fucking lawn!”
I don’t really mind the Jehovah’s Witnesses who come by, they’re ususally respectful, but this little punk :mad:
I once had a candidate for city council chew me out because I told him that I was voting for a different candidate. I had simply told him that I wasn’t particularly impressed with his track record so far (he was the incumbent), and that I felt that the other candidate had been much more active in his campaign and seemed to better represent my views.
He called me stupid. Straight out.
So I politely told him good night, and slammed the door in his face.
Yeah, way to win my vote, bud. Not that he had it to begin with, but he hardly won me over (not to mention I told several friends in the riding about my experience, just in case they had been inclined to vote for him).
I honestly don’t understand why anyone with half a brain would think this was a good tactic, unless it was some kind of “dirty trick” to convince the public that supporters of [Candidate X] were aggressive, potentially dangerous crackpots and thus blemish [Candidate X] by association. (Which would be pointless in the situation described in the OP.)
The real-life entity whose avatar is Vinyl Turnip generally tends to avoid conflict, but nothing would earn a “fuck you” + door-slam from him faster than some jackoff’s diatribe at his own front door.
I’d also take your wife’s friend’s characterizaton of the encounter with a grain of salt. I am skeptical that she was actually “accused” of anything and any shouting match that occurred would have had to have been mutual. The witness here is not impartial and people are always going to try to spin that damn Democrat/Republican as being worse than they were. She chose to engage in a “shouting match” because she wanted to. Door to door campaigners are coached not to be rude and to move on if people aren’t interested.
I agree that it takes two to tango in these situations – but a well-trained campaigner would have moved on, with nothing more that a polite “We’ll have to agree to disagree on this.” That’s regardless of how rude the householder was. In practical terms, there’s no point in wasting time with a hostile opponent like that: you won’t win any argument, and you won’t win any support, either from the person you are arguing with or from any onlookers. If you just disengage politely, you may at least get sympathy from onlookers.
But, yes, both were probably partly to blame for a shouting match.
Holy crap. I realize he was just some little twerp, but when somebody tries to stop me from closing my door, they go from ‘minor annoyance’ to ‘dangerous religious fanatic’ or ‘strongarm robber masquerading as church person’. I imagine if his foot was well in there, a good shove or hard lean might have broken it. Anybody know if their local laws would regard this as justifiable? I’m not going to the door for a while.
If it was anything resembling teenager or better (aka big enough to do damage) trying to stop you from closing the door could be construed as an attempt to force entry against the will of the occupant. Depending on how far s/he goes in opening that door could qualify for some really nasty charges and or justified violent efforts by the homeowner to repel the intruder in question. If an adult tried this on me they would at best come away with whatever part they stuck in my door being seriously injured, and the police called on whatever was limping away. If they attempt to follow me in, the police won’t arrive in time to save them.