Political Cold-Calling Can Bring Up Interesting Issues

I may be rare, but I often take calls to my cell phone from numbers I don’t recognize.  As a result, I’ve wasted quite a few seconds of my life here and there disconnecting robocalls, but remarkably, they sometimes produce intellectually stimulating conversation.

As an example, I got a call the other day from a campaign worker for Mike Stoker, a candidate for state assembly in California. She began our conversation:

Can I count on you to vote for Mike Stoker (shown here) on election day?

Me: No. I’ve never heard of him. What should I know about him?

Stoker rep: He’s a conservative Republican.

Me: Well, that’s a deal-breaker right there.

Stoker rep: Aren’t you in favor of small business?

Me: Are you kidding?  Are there people who are against small businesses?

Stoker rep: OK, but don’t you think they’re over-regulated?

Me: In general, no.  In fact, what type of idiot thinks that the hundreds of different industry sectors in which small businesses operate are all over-regulated?

Seeing that this was going nowhere, she gave up.  She was polite, but she recognized that there were greener pastures to be found elsewhere in her database.

My take from this is that many if not most voters believe in gross over-generalities like the one that she was trying to exploit with me.