I finally figured out what bothered me so much about the alternately dismissive and combative attitudes toward HRC supporters* on this site during the primary: by belittling someone else's argument, you lose an opportunity to understand what really shapes their choices.  It's a bigger question than incivility and effectively winning an argument, which is important but has already been discussed in depth.  It's also about missing an opportunity to really know the "enemy."

As we head into the next phase of this race, there seems to be a movement building that's focused on McCain-hate.  While I fully support efforts to identify and take advantage of McCain's weaknesses, what I'm arguing  right now is that it's also critical to talk about his strengths.  I understand much less about his strengths than I do about his weaknesses, and that frankly scares me. 

If we want to convince people to support Obama, it's necessary to be able to answer the question "why do people actually want to elect this guy?" first.  I'm not saying that we're likely to see McCain supporters show up on this website with a genuine interest in sharing ideas and perspectives; but most of us know plenty of people in our "real" lives who are planning to vote McCain and with whom we'll talk about politics sometime between now and the election.

As the SF election-watch party was winding down last night, I found myself talking with some of the other attendees about McCain and Bush.  And it was really easy to lapse into thinking of both of them as useless tools.  The problem with that discussion, as one voice of wisdom suggested, is that none of us were the people who would have considered voting for McCain or Bush, and to see either them through our own eyes leads to an extraordinarily inaccurate picture of how the rest of the country views them.

As I mentioned above, I don't have any insight -- yet -- into the world of Replican and swing voters -- so please consider this post a request for stories and perspectives from the people in your life who are McCain supporters or potential McCain supporters.   LisB has written a couple excellent, informative posts on her family's perspective -- so please, be inspired by her example and tell us about your experiences!

*The same goes for the dissmissive and combative attitudes toward Obama supporters, though I found that to be less of a problem, simply on numerical grounds. .