Blog Evaluation:

Overall a good experience. Here are some ups and downs of the blog system:
1) It needed to happen. As a young political person, it was about time I figured out what many others have already tapped into.
2) It provided a space to vent or reflect on things you didn't necessarily have the time to do in class.
3) Was more interactive than term papers.
4) I soaked up much more information about the election and really enjoyed the activity leading up to Nov. 7th.

Some downs:
1) Hard to blog about the first two text books and some dry articles.
2) I often wanted to spend all my time making a confusing point into a coherent arguement that made other coursework suffer... sometimes that was true.

So overall a good experience and a recommend doing it again.

For some time now, I've been meaning to put together a coherent rant-type blog in response to Fiorina focusing on all the shades of purple. If most of American's are centrist moderates who are not that involved in politics, I think it is very important to know exactly what the middle means, how it's defined, and can be interpreted differently in terms of impact and where the future of most American's voting behavior lies.

There are he notion that the "center" is really conservative and on the right instead of truly in the middle. I think we touched on this idea in class the other day with charts and bells leaning to the right side more and more. Maybe it is only about definations (i.e. liberal being a dirty word), or maybe it is that liberal policy positions have regressed since the 60's instead of progressed. Probably a splash of both. I think this is an important topic to consider, especially if most of Americans are in the middle (but really more conservative that liberal).

It was very interesting to note that there is more on the political table in terms of issue breadth. Not just economics, but moral issues have become more prevelant. Also, personal issues are on the table more than even in politics.

The book, Talking Right (with a great subtitle) discusses the notion of the language of partisanship in the country and how conservatives have control over some key terms we use all the time in politics. That will be good pundit-type Christmas reading for the entire family.