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• Friday, September 12, 2008 02:17 PM

  lets hear more about the issues and less horse races

  I know it's by now standard procedure to report on a campaign by going out and asking "voter-on-the-street (or in this case, country-lane)" questions about who a particular demographic supports and why.

  But wouldn't journalists, including Salon, do the country a bigger favor if you told us where the candidates stood on issues important to those voters-on-the-street?

  Ask the voters what's important to them, then tell us what policies and opinions each candidate has expressed that would address their concerns. You could do that by demographic niche, if you're stuck on that "getting out to the people" approach.

  My point is, the only poll that matters is on Nov. 4. News organizations like polls and voter surveys, because they like to be ahead of the news; they'd like to be able to report it before it happens. A little of that would be fine, but do we really need all the stories about what this person in rural America thinks and what that person in the stands of a PeeWee football game feels, and on and on?

  Polling this year has been particularly unreliable because there are so many new voters. (How about a voter-on-the-street survey of folks who register to vote as a result of one of these rallies or street canvasses? I'd be interested to know why those eligible to vote and didn't in earlier elections would register this year.)

  Lets get back to the issues. Just list each side's votes/records/statements on issues. You could package it according to what you have found is important to interesting niches, like veterans or union members or voters under 21 or new parents or the World War II generation (the few left). Then let all us niche voters surprise you in the big poll in November.

  If every news organization did something like that, or at least shifted focus just a tad, we might have the best informed electorate within memory (except, maybe, for the WWII vets, who might remember an electorate that read newspapers, back when newspapers reported as much news as they did sports box scores.)

  —lagibby Read lagibby's other letters
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