When you say "spin," they think "spin cycle"

Okay, I really do have things to do today, but before I hit the road...

There's a great piece on "the undecided voter" at The New Republic. [My thanks to Safe As Houses for pointing it out.] You have to register, but it's worth it. It's almost got a sort of anthropological participant-observer feel to it: what I observed from my time living with the tribe. Christopher Hayes spent the seven weeks preceding the election in Wisconsin talking to undecided voters, and here he writes about what he learned. Among the gems: undecideds view politics like laundry, an onerous chore that they put off until they have no more clean socks.

Here's a slice:

But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to.... At first I thought this was a problem of simple semantics--maybe, I thought, "issue" is a term of art that sounds wonky and intimidating, causing voters to react as if they're being quizzed on a topic they haven't studied. So I tried other ways of asking the same question: "Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last four years?"

These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

You know, I used to teach composition (argument, rhetoric, etc.) and American literature in Wisconsin, and it is only this morning that I really am grasping what a tough task that was.