Politics

Columnist Chas Carey finds it’s not so easy to create a political candidate without resorting to political tricks.

It’s not that we’re apathetic or ignorant. We want the war to stop. We want affordable health care. We want the campus to expand responsibly. We want a Core Curriculum that reflects the diversity and nuance of the society in which we are expected to function. All of those things are important to us, but how can our actions truly effect change?

Droopy-eyed Columbia Students for Obama returned from the Buckeye state early Wednesday morning after a long weekend of campaigning, traveling through the night so that one campaigner could make it back on time for a 9 am midterm. Despite the inopportune timing as academics anchor most students to their library desks, six students piled into a minivan last week and drove away from the Butler stacks to the Ohio haystacks.

Establishing a national Election Day holiday would remove the financial and employment restrictions that are currently placed on voting and which create a disincentive for millions of working Americans to participate in democracy.

As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

It’s not often that a dictator loses a referendum, but this is the paradox thatthe American populace has been grappling with this week as the lies fed to them by corporate news networks about Hugo Chavez hit reality in an unseemly head-on collision.

With the primary season looming, ubiquitous “Students for...” political groups are abuzz with plans to attract student votes to the presidential candidates that they champion.

As controversial events and speakers have dominated the campus calendar in the last semester, political groups that are not affiliated with the University have maintained a near-constant presence on campus.

Despite our years of political activism, from taking over buildings to sitting in tents, Columbians don’t usually matter in presidential elections.

This weekend, five vans of over 60 Columbia University and Barnard College student activists will head for Lexington, Kentucky as the Columbia University College Democrats launch an army of liberal campaigners into the final days of Kentucky’s gubernatorial race.