I went to the Las Vegas Gay Pride Festival today and bought a couple of “Beat Bush” buttons and put one one. I forgot I had it on when we later went to our local casino and was I was kind of amazed at the response!
Our waiter at the upscale Italian restaurant said, “glad to see you wearing that. I hope he loses this time.”
Later, playing a video poker machine and in my own little world, I happened to hear a guy say something to his wife and he dragged her over and pointed to my button. The two of them looked like the typical couple who would drive a beat up pickup truck and live in a shack next to the Unibomber. The husband grinned and said, “we hope that asshole gets his butt wooped.”
A little later the cocktail waitress stopped, asked if I wanted a drink and I said no thanks. She saw the button and said, “I just registered to vote last week so I could vote for Kerry.”
But the best comment came from a little old lady who came over and sat next to me and played the slots for awhile and got a 4 of a kind ($60) and then said, “I saw your button and thought, that is someone who is going to bring me some luck!”
She told me she voted for Bush last time, and is not going to vote for him this time.
Granted, this was certainly no scientific poll and I am sure there were some people who probably were hoping I would lose all night and trip on the steps on they way out of the casino…but I was more than surprised to see so many varied types of local Las Vegans make a point to come up to me and let me know Dubya might not be able to count on Nevada this time around.
There is Something going on out there that hasn’t registered with the pollsters yet.
I called my Mom on Mother’s Day. She says that she and all the people she talks to are disgusted with Bush. She’s retired, so we’re talking elderly folks in general. Usually vote conservative. Plus, many of our family members are ultra-basic Christians. (Fundamentalists are too liberal for them.) It sounds that Bush has lost a large segment of his core supporters.
But it’s a long way to November and there’s a lot of electronic voting machines out there.
I have an “Anyone But Bush” bumper sticker on my vehicle. I get honked at at stop lights and people give me a thumbs up. They roll down their windows to ask me where they can get one, too. What’s so remarkable about this is that I am usually driving around Clarksville, Tn, home of the 101st Airborne. These are the family members of soldiers and they proudly display the American Flags and “Support Our Troops” and they also want “Anyone But Bush.”
Mr. Bush seems to be having some trouble retaining some of the people who voted for him in 2000. I work in a small-town supermarket in North Idaho, which is about as Republican as you can get. I am amazed at the number of my customers who have negative things to say about Bush and his handling of the war. We shall see if this bit of progress lasts until November.
I don’t mean that sarcastically (it looked that way once I posted) – I’m serious. I’d get one of those stickers, but I live with a die-hard Republican, and until I’m out of the house it’s just not worth the arguments. The only thing the two of us have agreed on concerning Bush is that I hate Bush as much as he hates Clinton.
But it’d be just STUPID to blame a bunch of infantry types for the asinine orders being handed down to them from on high. I hope they can all come home soon, I really do…my little brother’s in the Air Force, and while he wouldn’t be getting near a front line short of WWIII, I can at least halfway imagine what it must be like for people who have family over there right now.
Being a reasonably patriotic American does not mean turning into sheeple that do whatever Bush wants and never complain about it, no matter how much he’d like to think so.
It was a close race last time. Everybody expects it to be a close race this time. That’s not a surprise to anybody. Thus, you’ll find Kerry supporters everywhere.
Also, Bush people generally won’t engage you, upon seeing the button, out of respect for political differences on one hand (for most people) and a weariness for political argument on the other.
When I wear my Bush buttons, I get the same reactions, even in very liberal Northern Virginia and Washington, DC. It’s natural. Don’t predict an election on it.
You seem to think that people who spend a lot of time in Las Vegas tend to be liberal politically. I have no proof of this, but I suspect that just the opposite is true. I think that people who are frequent gamblers tend to be politically more conservative than average. (I mean by the term “frequent gambler” someone who spends a considerable proportion of their income on gambling, not just those who are completely bankrupting themselves.) But I have never seen any statistics to that effect. Can anyone cite any statistics one way or another?
I specifically say “liberal politically” (as opposed to “conservative politically”) because I want to distinguish this from many other uses of the terms “liberal” and “conservative.” I mean the standard things that distinguish those who generally vote liberal as opposed to conservative. I include both cultural political liberalism and economic political liberalism as parts of political liberalism and cultural political conservatism and economic political conservatism as part of political conservatism. But I am only talking about what they vote for, not what they privately do, either culturally or economically.
I realize I’ve mashed together a bunch of different issues in making this distinction. And, yes, I know what libertarianism is and I know that there’s no necessary connection between cultural political liberalism and economic political liberalism. Any thorough study of what the political beliefs of frequent gamblers are would have to study the correlation of gambling to each of the many issues that make up the distinction “liberal/conservative.” Again, I haven’t seen the statistics on this so I would very much like to hear from anyone who has.
I was talking with my (almost retired) mom yesterday about this and that, and the subject of gas prices came up. She said, “Yeah, well at least Bush’s buddies are getting rich off my money. That jerk.”
“What?”
“Bush. He’s a jerk.” And that was all she would say about that.
Now, I don’t want to debate the whole idea that Bush=high gas prices, but hearing my mom call someone a jerk is about as rare as hearing the pope fart, and just as unexpected. Yay Mom.
Are you kidding? JPII is a notorious gasser! His nickname around the Vatican is “Poot John Paul”! His favorite gags include SBD’s while swinging the incense ball around, the old “One Leg Lift Blast” and flipping up the back of his robes while letting an exceptional Ripper.
They say when he was elected (or whatever they do), that wasn’t just ordinary white smoke comin’ up the chimney!
Overheard in the public restroom: “That’ll leave a skidmark all the way to the treatment plant!”
