Do you answer the door when hawkers and solicitors come to your house? Perhaps you pretend not to be home until they go away. Do you politely tell them "No thanks" while shutting the door or do you slam it shut with a "Not interested!"?
Today I opened the door to the "Working Families Party", a new political party in Massachusetts, according to the young man. He plied me with information about a new campaign apparently sponsored by labor unions like the CIO. His list included all manner of union locals and labor groups. I told him I was a member of the teachers' union and that most of the positions on his paper seemed consistent with the teachers' union's positions, which I contribute to and generally support.
Almost straight away he hit me up for money. Who does that? I mean, I know he's knockin' on doors with a schedule to keep, but who gives money on the spot to a political party they've never heard about. Maybe some see the affiliated organizations and figure, hey, it's all good.
Anyway, after a brief discussion about the differences between technical voting arrangements in Australia in the US and Australia, I told the guy I was happy to keep giving $20 out of my weekly paycheck to the teachers' union, which works on the same issues, instead of this unknown new group.
But doesn't the teachers' union support the Democrat Party reflexively? Is it doing enough for working families - the apparent focus of the guy on my doorstep - or does the union "merely" concentrate on the needs of teachers? With tens of thousands of teachers in Massachusetts alone, surely that's a lot of working families.
Perhaps these new guys deserve a chance. God knows Mass. is a political monopoly. The last exciting thing to happen in Massachusetts politics was the Bill of Rights in 1791, and we have Rhode Island and Delaware to thank for that. [OK, legalizing gay marriage was exciting for some]. As I closed the door after the guy, I thought to myself, I'm going to visit their website - check them out. Oh, and when I become eligible to vote in the US I might even vote for them.
