Newscoma

Yesterday at lunch, the groovy chicks at the office all decided to go out and have lunch. We are a diverse group, conservative, liberals, a couple of blue dogs and two women who are pretty apathetic about politics as a whole. Everyone was there.

I bring this up to say that real people do talk about politics and can be civil about it. It was a good, very open-minded conversation even if we had to agree to disagree on a couple of items. But during the luncheon, the main thing we talked about was the process of voting for president. I would say that roughly four of the eight of us are political junkies so it was interesting to have a conversation about how delegates work and electronic voting (it was agreed on both sides of the political spectrum that we all wanted a paper receipt of our votes on primary and election day which I thought was interesting.)

The other thing we did was talk about the debunking of myths about the candidates. The slanderous and damaging emails about Barack Obama’s spirituality which we all have received (that are weighing on the minds of a couple of them which was good that we had the opportunity to say “Hey, this is spin to damage him”), we had one huge John Edwards fan talking about why she was very disappointed about him “suspending” the race and we discussed the public image in comparison to voting records and that going and reading the candidates issues on their own websites is something we recommend doing for each of these guys on the ballot.

The ages ranged from 62 to 23 years old.

I know this will shock you but I listened and only added my perspective when I was asked. Sometimes it’s best to take a moment and hear that, although there will probably be different candidates supported in the group at the polls, we all believe that our votes still make a difference.

Just an observation.