A Nation Divided
I’ve been writing essays about American politics for over five years. Throughout that time, our political world has grown more divided; with a greater chasm between the left and the right. Like the 1850’s leading up to the Civil War, our nation is polarized. The two sides are hardened in their views, and conversation between the two more and more dissonant.
We see it in elections, where a narrow electoral margin in a state like Florida marks an incredible swing in policy. Republican Ron DeSantis won the Governorship in 2018. He defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum by around 30,000 out of well over 8 million votes cast. In other eras, DeSantis would have seen the narrow victory as a message to govern “from the middle”.
But in our modern times, DeSantis determined to govern even farther from the “right” than he ran. Current Florida actions over LGBTQ and abortion rights and immigration all put the Sunshine state on the extreme right of American politics. Elections do have consequences, but what an extreme from a result of less than one half of one percent. How different would a Gillum governorship have been?
Old Equation
It used to be political short hand: forty percent will vote for one side, forty the other, and how the ‘swing voters” in the middle, the twenty percent “undecided” voted, would determine the election. The battle of campaigning was in winning the majority of the twenty percent – ten percent plus one. That’s the “old school” of politics. In the Democratic Party a successful candidate would “tack” left in the primary, to appeal to the middle of the Democratic base,. Then he would “tack” back to center in the general to gain the “10+1”. A Republican candidate would do the mirror opposite, “tack” right in the primary, center in the general.
But our current politics seems to be less about the middle. Or more correctly, the “middle” has changed. So many voters are single issue voters, those who vote only about abortion, or guns, or one of the “fake news” issues like Critical Race Theory. It makes it so difficult to find a “middle” for a candidate to “tack” towards. So many don’t. They simply double-down on their base. They hope that their forty percent will show up more than the other side’s forty percent, and that the middle will “wash-out” in between.
It’s proven to be successful – in the Virginia Governor’s race in 2021, for example. The “right” forty percent showed up, the left’s did not. And it certainly mirrors our current lack of a “compromise” middle candidate, or a new “middle” political party.
Outside the Box
But there’s a whole other “outside the box” model of electioneering. In the biggest turnout election in American history, just two years ago, over 158 million voters went to the polls. But that’s still short ten million voters who were actually registered to vote. And even more, it was eighty million short of the total number of adults eligible to vote. So there’s a huge block of potential votes that are beyond the usual parameters of traditional American voting and campaigning. And, while that huge number of Americans don’t vote, they often are counted in the polling that we look at to determine where the nation is going (or how to target a campaign).
So here’s another question. If a campaign could tap into the great mass of Americans who don’t vote at all, what difference might that make?
Who’s Right?
The Democratic left believes that, since the vast majority of non-voters are “working class”; an appeal to their economic interests might convince them to add their voice and vote to the political “fray”. That is the strategy of the Democratic Socialists, who are convinced that there is a way to reach that great untapped resource of voters, and get them to the polls. And maybe they’re correct – at least, the political right seems to think so.
Because the strategy of the right seems to be to make sure those un-registered voters find it most difficult to register and vote. The more complex the system can become: identification, voting precincts, time to actually cast a ballot, and just general “hoops” to jump through; the less likely someone is to be convinced to be a “new” voter. The right-wing strategy seems designed to keep those non-voting “working class” folks from voting. So maybe they DO know something that many of the rest of us don’t acknowledge. There is a great untapped voting resource, and if it is reached, it will go left, not right.
It makes logical sense. If the “right” thought that the mass of non-voters would vote for their causes, then they’d make sure that everyone, every single one, would get to vote.
Not So Stupid
There’s a television advertising campaign for investing in digital currencies. In one commercial, the comedian Larry David portrays a member of the American Constitutional Convention. When the idea is agreed to that every citizen will be allowed to vote – he takes exception. “Every citizen, even the stupid ones?” he cries out, just before he leaps for the parchment document to try to tear it shreds.
It seems that this may be our future argument. One side, the side “on the right”, is using voting law restrictions to say – “No, not the stupid ones”, because they fear that “stupid” is on the left. The other side, “on the left” is saying “yes, everyone, even the stupid ones, and they’re not so stupid”. And at least one political party, my party, the Democratic Party, still seems hellbent to govern from the middle, on the old model of American politics.
That’s the model I grew up and campaigned with all my life. But maybe we need to ask – is it time to be “radical” and demand that everyone, all 240 million of us, get to vote (yes, even the stupid ones). Finding a way to motivate those potential voters is the key. Because that vote will represent the greatest common interest of America.
