Crabby Republican Rubs Elbows with "Poor Old People"

Talking Points Memo's David Kurtz provided this YouTube clip of Fred Barnes complaining of early voting. Fred decries the crowded lines of "poor old people" that cluttered the polling place he went to for absentee voting in downtown Arlington, Virginia. He had a reason to vote absentee, he says in his condescending way, because he was going to be in New York on Election Day, but these "poor old people" hadn't a good reason. He can read their minds, evidently. Also, a lot of stuff happens in the last days of the election, and Barnes doesn't want these "poor old people" to miss the stuff that might change their minds at the last minute. (You know, the last little bit of dirt that someone digs up to throw at one or the other candidate.) His mind, of course, is too fine--or fossilized--to change.

Listening to Fred Barnes reminded me of years ago when Tom liked to watch the McLaughlin Group when that half-hour program aired on Friday evenings on the local PBS channel. Fred Barnes, John McLaughlin, Eleanor Cliff, Pat Buchanan, Tony Blankley, and others would spend the half hour on little news bites, yelling at one another. Although the show was sometimes entertaining, I couldn't stand the raised voices and the typical partisan responses. In retrospect, that show seems tame compared to the vitriol of talk radio and the political hackery of many television pundits today.

Update: I do realize that more voting machines are rolled out for Election Day and that the fewer voting machines created problems for the unprecedented turnout in early voting. For instance, Clayton County, Georgia, had 50 voting machines available for early voting, while 500 will be available on Election Day. However, even though approximately 35% of voters in Georgia participated in early voting, lines are expected to be long on Election Day, too, with some election officials worried that they won't have enough machines for the turnout: "Fulton, Clayton May Extend Voting Hours on Tuesday," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, by Megan Metteucci, November 1, 2008.