In certain ways, this sample-size-of-one stuff is antithetical to what I usually do. But I could not let the convention go by with at
least one man-on-the-street perspective.
My cabbie and I had a
good conversation about politics yesterday night. Interesting guy; he
has a masters’ degree but is driving a cab, and says he knows a lot of
people in the same boat. This is going to sound a little xenophobic,
but one thing I have noticed in Chicago is that the higher the
percentage of taxi drivers that speak English without an accent, the
worse off the economy is doing. Lately, I've had a lot of cabbies who
spoke the King's English.
He’s a swing voter – white, maybe 53
years old, listens to Air America one night, Rush Limbaugh the next. He
isn’t buying what John McCain is selling, and thinks it’s pretty
obvious that he’ll take the country in the wrong direction.
But
he’s yet to be entirely persuaded by Obama. Likes what Obama has to
say. Liked Michelle’s speech. But he feels like he’s heard a lot of the
same rhetoric before, and seen too many politicians who couldn’t
deliver on it. Says he might vote third party instead, or just sit the
election out. He didn’t like the Biden pick, and says a lot of his
customers didn’t either. Reinforced too much of his sense that Obama is
a typical Washington politican, perhaps well enough intentioned, but
like most politicians inclined to overpromise and underdeliver.
He
also expressed a great deal of admiration for Ross Perot, particularly
Perot’s foresight on NAFTA. And this is one that I have heard before –
I had a very similar conversation with a man in Austin, who said in
essence that Perot was the only politician he’d trusted in the last
thirty years.
Perot’s name still has a lot of currency among certain voters, especially here out West. Perot is not any fan of John McCain,
but he’s yet to endorse a candidate. If Perot were to endorse Obama,
that would be a very big deal – bigger, perhaps, than any endorsement
of the general election campaign, save perhaps for Colin Powell. But
even if he doesn’t (and it isn’t likely that he will; Perot made a
fairly soft endorsement of Mitt Romney in the Republican primary), the
Obama campaign ought to invest some thought into what made the Perot
voter tick. I know of at least one vote he’d win that way.
--Nate Silver