{"id":6750,"date":"2014-10-11T14:05:35","date_gmt":"2014-10-11T14:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6750"},"modified":"2014-10-11T14:05:35","modified_gmt":"2014-10-11T14:05:35","slug":"a-single-vote-causes-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6750","title":{"rendered":"A single vote causes confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Alison Lundergan Grimes wants to be the next U.S. senator from Kentucky.<\/p>\n

She’s taking on a heavyweight, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.<\/p>\n

Grimes has much to commend her for the job. However, there’s a strangely awkward reticence that is getting in the way. She declines to say whether she voted for President Obama in 2012.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2014\/10\/alison-lundergan-grimes-obama-vote-111766.html?hp=r5<\/p>\n

This is a strange distraction. Come on, Ms. Grimes. What’s the story? Did you or did you not support the president, a member of your very own Democratic Party?<\/p>\n

Politics creates such a fickle environment. Little things like this become big things in a heartbeat.<\/p>\n

In a way, I\u00a0understand Grimes’s reticence. Our votes, after all, are supposed to be done in secret. We cast our ballots with no obligation to tell anyone how we vote. Where I come from, that’s a sure sign of liberty. Voters become “liberated” by their votes, giving them more than ample justification to speak their minds on policy issues and the people who carry them out.<\/p>\n

However, Grimes is running for a public office. That means her life essentially is an open book. The public is entitled to know to what level they endorse another public figure’s public policy stances.<\/p>\n

Thus, her vote becomes grist for comment. It also becomes a target for inquiring minds.<\/p>\n

Her reluctance might have something to do with the president’s low standing among Kentuckians. His approval rating is about 30 percent. Grimes has told at least two newspaper editorial boards — in Louisville and Lexington — that she’s a “Clinton Democrat.” She has declined on several occasions to say whether she voted for the president.<\/p>\n

This kind of clumsiness angers her base, which she’ll need if she intends to defeat McConnell on Nov. 4.<\/p>\n

It’s such a petty matter in the grand scheme. It has become a bigger matter than it deserves to be.<\/p>\n\n

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Alison Lundergan Grimes wants to be the next U.S. senator from Kentucky. She’s taking on a heavyweight, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. Grimes has much to commend her for the job. However, there’s a strangely awkward reticence that is getting in the way. She declines to say whether she voted for President Obama in 2012. … Continue reading A single vote causes confusion<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[65,255,540,2139,2662,3099,5051],"class_list":["post-6750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-2014-campaign","tag-alison-lundergan-grimes","tag-barack-obama","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-kentucky","tag-mitch-mcconnell","tag-us-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}