Your help and votes in the last race were well appreciated. However, keeping the Bush stickers on your car at this late date can be construed as gloating in victory or asserting a sense of moral superiority over those you consider unworthy of holding office. Not nice emotions, at all.
Similarly, those who keep Kerry stickers on their car, or even worse, Gore stickers, demonstrate an unwillingness to acknowlege a hardfought victory by the other side, or a need to assert a sense of moral superiority. Either way, it comes from a similar place as those motives that drive those Bush bumper branders, and is equally ugly.
Elections come, and then they go. The fact that they go is perhaps their greatest redeeming virtue. Even if folks aren’t happy over the election results, they ought to accept them and move on. Taking off the stickers would be a healthy sign of this.
There have always been people who left their stickers on for far too long after an election. These people in the past were, invariably, cranks and assholes. The fact that so many more people are doing this now indicates to me that more and more of us are exhibiting these unpleasant personality types now.
There is a time and place for everything, and I submit that Kerry and Bush bumper stickers have no place in July of 2005. Decency and civility demand that you at least update the reading material you make available to your fellow drivers.
Better get some Goo Gone. You’re going to fucking need it.
I think you’re underestimating the sheer power of human laziness. The slobs (and there are many of them) who leave their Christmas lights up until to July are not… um… gloating about Christmas, are they?
But they come right back, and in a real hurry, too. Some might say they *never * end.
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Are you suggesting we’re *not * in a partisan debate mode at the moment?
When bumper stickers actually went on bumpers, and bumpers themselves were easily-scrapable chrome, yes. Now, those dumb enough to put them somewhere other than on a corner of the rear window don’t dare scrape, or the car will look even worse with a paint gouge than with a sticker that still expresses an opinion.
Doesn’t work all that well. Get some Tar and Bug Remover from the auto parts store, or even some Carb and Choke Cleaner if they still have some in back. You need some actual petroleum distillate for that job, not some sissy orange juice extract. And think harder before you stick another one on.
I had a Kerry sticker on my car for a short time. I was sure to apply the sticker to my jeans to get a little lint on it before applying it to the bumper of my car. It makes removal so much easier. And the sticker was off my car and in the trash on November 10.
That being said, a friend of mine still has a Nixon/Agnew sticker on his car. But it takes at least 20 years for political bumper stickers to move from “tasteless” to “funny.”
Are you suggesting we’re *not * in a partisan debate mode at the moment?
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“Will you please get rid of that Gore Bumpersticker?”
“But this can be used for any Gore…Lesley Gore, Thomas Gore. Even as we speak, Gore Vidal and his group of fanatics are cosolidating their power!”
Heck yeah. I’d rather see hateful fundie spew stickers than old election stickers. Although it comes in handy in determining who I’ll cut of in traffic.
I never understood the concept of putting a campaign sticker on your car in the first place. Who in the world would be influenced by that? Am I suppossed to be encouraged to vote for the candidate that the nice cars support or the ones that get good gas mileage? It always just struck me as an invitation to get your car keyed by 50% of the onroad public.
lieu, the bumper sticker, like the yard sign, is a very effective campaign tool for what it actually does. It does not exist to change minds, rather it helps keep your own supporters excited and motivated.
Fine and dandy, and I have put bumper stickers on my car. Especially for local races, I feel they can make a difference. But when the race is over, the bumper is cleaned off.
I agree. Never attribute to political gloating what can be attributed to apathy.
I went through a period where I owned 5 cars in 2 years, all used. I never bothered to scrape off the olf bumper stickers. If you didn’t know about my car history, you’d think that my passions had changed from saving the whales to supporting the NRA overnight.