The Importance of a Meaningless Midterm
Publius has some good insight:
It’s weird — this election is both meaningless and the most important thing ever depending on your perspective. It’s meaningless because the 2000-through-2004 elections were the really important ones. The consequences of those elections simply can’t be undone. I think there’s a Billmon post on this somewhere, but even if the Dems win, Iraq will still have been invaded, torture will still have been approved, and, well, I could go on. It’s the whole “you can remove the nail but not the nailhole” point.
But in another sense, I think this election is more important than any of those other ones. That’s because if the GOP wins this time, it’s an indictment not of the Dems, but of our political system. In short, a GOP victory means that our political system is broken, perhaps beyond repair.
Just to be clear, my argument is NOT “oh, the mean ol’ GOP is so bad that their victory means everyone is stupid.” In fact, my argument has nothing to do with ideological disagreement with the GOP. In 2002 and 2004, a majority of the public supported the GOP, and so they deserved to win. You may disagree with the result substantively, but you can’t say it was illegitimate. Bush got millions more votes in 2004 after all. If Kerry had won Ohio, the truth is that he would have won illegitimately with a minority vote, just as Bush did in 2000.
What I’m saying is that if the GOP wins this time, it means our political system has become incapable of reflecting majority preferences. Based on every generic poll I’ve seen since Katrina, it’s clear the country as a whole prefers Democrats to take control. If this were a parliamentary vote, the Dems would clean up. But as you channel those preferences through gerrymandered districts, malapportioned Senates, lopsided funding disparities, sophisticated voter databases (i.e., candidates-picking-voters), and a media unwilling to punish those who lie, you get Speaker Hastert and Majority Leader McConnell.
In this way, 2006 has the potential to be far more depressing than 2002 and 2004. That’s because the latter elections maintained at least the illusion of democracy. What I mean is that the silver lining in those elections was that they held out the possibility that you could effect change by changing people’s minds. I think the Dems have done that this time around (with assists from the GOP). But if they can’t take control of even one branch, it calls into question whether the whole voting thing is for show — a legitimizing facade for a system creaking and cracking and growing illegitimate. If incumbents are this safe in this environment, they are safe in all possible environments.
As they say, read the whole thing. To some, this may sound alarmist, but I’m really not so sure. I’m not sure the Democrats need to take over at least one chamber, but they do need to at least come close, and to make substantial gains. If the Republicans win widely, as they’ve been doing for a while now, it basically means that issues no longer have any importance. All you need to do to gain (and retain) power is to vilify your opposition, preferably on non-substantive issues, to make them seem even worse than you, and you’re golden. And the less substantive the criticism, the better, because you don’t want the reaction to your opposition to be reasoned — you want it to be gut-level and visceral. Important issues be damned.
In a way, I’m even more pessimistic than Publius is. On issue after important issue, from abortion to energy to the environment, from education to stem cell research to civil liberties, a solid majority of Americans consistently prefer Democratic positions. Further, the better informed they are about these issues, the more likely they are to prefer Democratic positions. But in spite of this, the Republicans kept winning. And I believe it’s because the Republicans have gotten very good at steering the debate away from the important issues and away from policy, and making campaigns all about personality, and about vilifying your opponent (cf., Cleland’s a “coward,” Kerry’s a “flip-flopper,” Dean’s “unhinged,” etc.). The media (both mainstream and otherwise) have been far too complicit in this, only further complicating the problem.
Further evidence of this: even back in 2004 and before, Democrats generally would handily win in polls between unnamed Democrat and unnamed Republican. It was only when you filled in the names that the Republicans started winning. That’s not about policy, that’s about personality. It means that as a whole, the electorate mostly chose candidates with whom they consistently disagreed on policy. And that isn’t how representative democracy is supposed to work.
From that perspective, I suspect that our democracy is already irreparably broken. In order for representative government to work, for it to be effective and reflect the will of the electorate, it requires an informed electorate. When parties and candidates are more interested in passing the “I’d like to have a beer with that guy” test than they are in winning on the issues (which, for example, Kerry did handily in all three debates in 2004, for all the good it did him), it’s a pretty good sign that the electorate is not well-informed, and that the system is broken.
It’s the ultimate end result of half a century of post-modernism. If your entire society is based on the concept that there is no real truth, only a set of equally valid subjective viewpoints, it shouldn’t be suprising that the society eventually loses the capability for rational though, being driven only by emotion.
I’m rather disgusted in the manner the GOP has casually taken advantage of this problem over the last 11 years, but the core problem is something far deeper than politics and has to do with the very core of what America is as a society.
In the Federalist Papers, Madison wrote that it is important that government be responsive to the will of the people, but not their passions. I think sadly our entire political class is primarily focussed on indulging passions, and the costs are turning out to precisely what Madison predicted they would be.
“Democrats generally would handily win in polls between unnamed Democrat and unnamed Republican. It was only when you filled in the names that the Republicans started winning. ”
Sounds like you found the root of the problem to me
In a country that is often described as polarized to a historic degree, I’m not convinced that we have an “entire society … based on the concept that there is no real truth, only a set of equally valid subjective viewpoints”. I believe that ideology is prevalent today, and most people are unwilling to even explore the possibility of an alternative point of view being valid. You see evidence of this on this blog. I claim that the majority of people that post here consistently and unflinchingly defend either the left or the right position on virtually every issue.
Personality does play more of a role than it did pre-electronic communication because it was very difficult to project personality in the past. At least for state-wide positions and certainly for President. Only a guy running for mayor of a small town would be able to display his personality to a meaningful percentage of the voting public. Oddly, I think that dynamic has been reversed since the 1960 Presidential election. A major Presidential candidate can have media coverage beamed into every living room of the potential constituency, but for most voters, the candidate for District 23 of the Maryland State legislature will only be a name and maybe a couple of statements on a 4 X 8 glossy flier. So I agree that that personality plays an important role in Presidential elections (not that it should, but rather that it does) and then to a rapidly diminishing degree as one moves down the power chain.
“If Kerry had won Ohio, the truth is that he would have won illegitimately with a minority vote, just as Bush did in 2000.”
So winning by upholding the Constitution is illegitimate? That’s a strange philosophy for someone who purports to support the Constitution. Bush won the majority of the electoral college vote in 2000 and 2004. How is that illegitimate?
Uncle:
Sounds like you found the root of the problem to me
All kidding aside, that’s absolutely true. The root of the problem is that American elections seem to be 90% about the person, and only 10% about that person’s positions. This becomes even more stark if you remove the single-issue voters (those tunnel-visioned bastards [*ducks*]) from the equation.
My mother, actually, is a perfect example of the problem. She’s pro-choice. She’s a member of the WWF (the wildlife protection people, not the wrestlers). She supports embryonic stem cell research. She’s socially liberal on most issues. But she pays almost no attention to politics. And more often than not, she votes Republican. She voted W in 2004 because “Kerry lies.” She heard that on TV somewhere, so it must be true. Basically, my mom is this woman. Incidentally, she regrets that vote and admits as much.
(For the record, my father canceled out her vote, voting for Kerry based on the much better-informed view that “Bush is an asshole.” And since Kerry won their state, my mother’s ignorance of the issues didn’t do real harm … this time.)
Fred:
Bush didn’t win in 2004 by upholding the constitution. He won despite not upholding it. But I think what you meant is that he won according to the rules set out in the constitution.
Probably giving your comment more credit and attention than it deserves, but it’s important to note in what sense Publius is calling such elections “illegitimate.” Setting aside the 2000 election for a moment, had Kerry won in 2004, that election would have been constitutionally legitimate, but it would have been democratically illegitimate. And I mean “democratic” in the small-d, majority rule sense of the word, not in the big-D, having to do with the Democratic Party sense.
It bears repeating that a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that the United States is a democracy, but in point of fact, it isn’t. It’s a representative republic, and in both the Senate as well as in presidential elections, the representation is malapportioned. Rather than “one person, one vote,” you have a situation where one person in California in effect gets the equivalent of 0.85 votes, while one person in Wyoming gets 3.2 votes.
Tg: “But I think what you meant is that he won according to the rules set out in the constitution.”
Fred: Of course that’s what I meant. Isn’t that what I said? Nothing gets past you. Why would you introduce your extraneous remarks about Bush?
The only way a person is legitimately elected under our form of government is by the rules set out in the Constitution. If he were elected strictly by a majority vote and the rules set out in the Constitution were ignored, then he would be illigitimate.
Bush’s win in 2000 was illegitimate because it was decided by the Supreme Court in a blatantly partisan manner(ignoring that Bush’s brother was the governor of Florida, where it also just so happened that 10s of thousands of legal voters, the majority Democratic or Democratic-leaning, were removed from the voting rolls…also questionable numbers of over-votes[someone voting for more than one candidate] in Democrat-leaning districts]), in such a way they decided that the ruling would have no precedent, another rarity(if not an outright originality).
“Bush’s win in 2000 was illegitimate because it was decided by the Supreme Court”
Yeah, another one of those Constitutional niceties that should be ignored if things don’t turn out your way.
Every count of the votes in Fla showed Bush winning. The Supreme Court kept the partisan Fla Supremes from stealing the election for the Dems.
Fred:
The only way a person is legitimately elected under our form of government is by the rules set out in the Constitution.
According to the letter of the law, that’s true. But public opinion matters in such things. Had Kerry won Ohio, and thus the election, while losing the popular vote by several million votes, a good chunk of the American public would view those results as undemocratic, and therefore illegitimate. And if history teaches us anything, it’s that when the population of a country doubts or rejects the legitimacy of its leadership, Very Bad Things happen.
Every count of the votes in Fla showed Bush winning.
But we’ll never know for certain, because an official recount was never completed.
The Supreme Court kept the partisan Fla Supremes from stealing the election for the Dems.
The Florida Supremes weren’t going to “steal” an election for anyone. They were going to require recounts to be completed. The Bush Campaign had sued to stop this from happening. If what you’re saying about vote counts is actually true, then there was nothing to lose by allowing the recounts to finish, and in fact, Gore supporters would have had no legitimate reason to gripe. Instead, the US Supreme Court unceremoniously halted the recount, and decided the election on partisan lines.
But I guess “activist judges legislating from the bench” is okay when they do it in your favor, huh?
“According to the letter of the law, that’s true. But public opinion matters in such things”
Good liberal response. Ignore the law. Let your heart guide you.
This seems facile and elitist to me. Do you really think most people are so stupid that they regularly vote against their convictions? I don’t. I think that people will say they support or oppose all kinds of things, but when it comes time to pull the voting lever, their true convictions come out. Even if your data were correct, why would a response to a canned opinion poll serve as a more accurate measure of one’s views than a rubber-meets-the-road vote at the voting booth? Maybe the opinion polling methods are the problem. If a survey fails to predict voting behavior, it’s an inaccurate survey.
But regardless, I don’t think the claim that opinion polls consistently show that voters favor Democratic positions is true. The reality is that most Americans prefer mediating positions that neither Repulicans nor Democrats typically promote. Most Americans do not prefer abortion on demand, nor do they prefer unlimited stem cell research on discarded fetuses — but neither do most Americans prefer absolutely restricting abortion or stem cell research on fetuses.
Moreover, contrary to your argument, the more informed people are, the more likely they are to realize that both parties are mostly full of crap. I would grant that a certain level of education tends to correlate with leanings toward the Democartic party, but I’d suggest that has more to do with socialization in the academy than with the issues.
I think the problem you identify has more to do with the polarized two-party system than it does with any cult of personality. Do you really think Dubya has such a winning personality? He’s no Bill Clinton, that’s for sure. I’d much rather have a beer with Bill than with Dubya.
Finally, as to Kerry and the Presidential debates, I guess that depends what you mean by “winning” a debate. If you favored Kerry’s views pre-debate, you’re likely to conclude that he won, and vice versa. I don’t think either Bush or Kerry convinced anyone to change any of their substantive views as a result of the debates. This is because Presidential debates are more about sound bites and party platforms than they are about anything meaningful.
David:
Do you really think most people are so stupid that they regularly vote against their convictions?
No, but then I never argued that they were. What they are, however, is ignorant, and that’s a very different thing. And I’m not so sure that it’s that most people are ignorant of the issues and where the candidates stand on them. Instead, it’s a combination of two things: widespread ignorance and widespread apathy.
Don’t believe me on the ignorance front? Start stopping random people on the street and asking them to name, say, the Attorney General. I think you’d be shocked at how many people couldn’t. And again, I don’t think this is because people are “stupid,” it’s because by and large, they don’t pay attention. And what little attention they do pay often does more harm than good, because our news media is so terrible that there’s little chance of any actual useful information getting through. (But how about that TomKat baby Suri, huh?)
Factor in our remarkably low voter turnouts, and you can see how the government we get could easily be quite different than the one most Americans would want, especially if a disproportionate number of the ones who abstain from voting fall on one side of the spectrum.
But don’t take my word for it. Look at the polls. On most issues, a solid majority prefers Democratic positions. And yet we don’t have Democratic leadership, and haven’t had it for some time. So either Americans are voting against their preferences in large numbers, or large numbers of people who hold the majority positions are staying home, or the polls aren’t an accurate reflection of where Americans stand on the issues.
The reality is that most Americans prefer mediating positions that neither Repulicans nor Democrats typically promote.
Here, I disagree. There’s some truth to that, but it’s not as if both parties are equally far away from the typical American. On stem cell research, for example, the Democrats are far closer to the American mainstream than the Republicans. Ditto for issues like civil liberties, health care, the environment, etc. Believe me, I realize the Democrats are far from perfect on these issues, but that doesn’t mean the Republicans aren’t objectively worse.
Moreover, contrary to your argument, the more informed people are, the more likely they are to realize that both parties are mostly full of crap.
True, but again, they’re likely to be a lot closer to Democratic positions than Republican one. Here, things like the Estate Tax, the environment, etc., are really good examples. (A year ago or so, I linked a study that showed that the more people knew about the details of the estate tax as implemented in US tax code, the less likely they were to support its reduction or repeal.)
Do you really think Dubya has such a winning personality? He’s no Bill Clinton, that’s for sure.
But Dubya didn’t have to run against Clinton. He had to run against Gore and Kerry, both of whom (especially the latter) often come across as wooden. I think Gore gets something of a bad rap in this department, much like Dole did in 96, but the point is, Dubya had a lot more “folksy charm” — especially pre-Katrina — than either of the opponents he had to face. That shouldn’t be all that important, but sadly, it is.
I guess that depends what you mean by “winning” a debate.
I mean winning a debate in the ways anyone wins a debate: by having better knowledge of the subject at hand, by seeming more confident, etc. Most neutral observers scored all three debates (especially the first and third) for Kerry. And it’s not about convincing people like you and me, who have already made up their minds. It’s about convincing the undecideds, those who could lean either way. Unfortunately, most of those undecideds aren’t paying attention anyway (cf., my above remarks about ignorance and apathy…).
I’d much rather have a beer with Bill than with Dubya.
But not a cigar, I’ll wager!
*ducks*
Well, now it seems you’re contradicting yourself. Which is it: (1) people are knowledgeable and prefer Democratic positions, but vote Republican at the polls because of some cult of personality; or, (2) people are ignorant and vote Republican despite their expressed preference for Democratic positions, because they’re too dumb or star-struck to vote for what they believe in? You can’t really have it both ways.
I’ll grant you that many people are ignorant and apathetic, and that electoral politics would look much different if that weren’t the case. But then, the pre-election surveys you cite also probably would look alot different if people were informed and engaged. The same dumb and apathetic people who don’t vote or vote “wrong” are the people responding to the pre-election surveys.
There’s no reason to assume an informed and engaged electorate would run towards Democratic positions. They might as likely run towards “conservative” positions on many things if they cared enough to make an independent investigation of the facts. Or maybe people would start to realize that the two main parties have become a farce and we’d see a genuine third way political movement.
At the end of the day, it still sounds to me like you’re saying “if people don’t vote the way I think they should this election, democracy has failed.” Democracy is bigger than that.
David:
You can’t really have it both ways.
I don’t have to have it either way. For one thing, in many cases people are ignorant of the candidates positions on various issues. And that’s quite intentional on the part of the candidates, frankly. For another, the Republicans have been very good in recent years at finding the one or two issues where they do fare better than the Democrats, and (with media complicity) making the election all about that. Gay Marriage is a fine example of this, which is why it keeps coming up in election years and disappearing otherwise.
Anecdotally, I have several friends (not to mention my mother, see above) who are pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-stem-cell-research, and don’t oppose gay marriage who voted for Bush. They do so because to varying degrees they were either ignorant of Bush’s actual positions on those issues, or because (in more cases) they thought that Bush’s stated positions on those issues were just election-year pandering and that he would never really act on any of that rhetoric. Most of these either viewed terrorism (cf., issues where Republicans generally do better) or taxation (what can I say, they’re not very good at math) as the defining issue, and voted based on these.
Finally, I really think it’s both disingenuous and completely beneath you to continue conflating “dumb/stupid” with “ignorant.” The two are not the same.
The same dumb and apathetic people who don’t vote or vote “wrong” are the people responding to the pre-election surveys.
Are you sure about that? I have no idea whether or not that’s true. Polls generally reflect the opinions of the public at large, whereas elections are concerned with the voting public — a very different animal, frankly.
They might as likely run towards “conservative” positions on many things if they cared enough to make an independent investigation of the facts.
I don’t doubt that this is the case. Crime and punishment would be such an area, I suspect.
Or maybe people would start to realize that the two main parties have become a farce and we’d see a genuine third way political movement.
Thanks, I needed a laugh.
Seriously, what third party is substantially better than the two big ones we have now? The Greens? I doubt it. The Libertarians? Certifiably insane. And that’s the problem. Third parties can’t get any support because there really aren’t any good third parties; that is, the third parties that exist are even farther from the American mainstream than the big two. Unless you see the Green Party’s “hugs for terrorists” plank catching on any time soon, or a massive LP-style push for guns for everyone and unrestricted immigration…
At the end of the day, it still sounds to me like you’re saying “if people don’t vote the way I think they should this election, democracy has failed.”
It has nothing at all to do with how I think they should vote. It has everything to do with the apparent disconnect between their stated political preferences and the candidates they collectively elect. If my views were the ones in the minority, then it would be a failure of democracy if people continually elected people with views similar to mine.
Another contributor to the problem, alluded to above, is that at the end of the day, we only get to vote for one person. I may prefer this guy on issue A, while I like her better on issues B, C, and D. If A is my most important issue, I wind up electing someone who disagrees with me on three quarters of the issues. As I noted, the Republicans have been very good at finding and exploiting “Issue A.”
“Another contributor to the problem, alluded to above, is that at the end of the day, we only get to vote for one person.”
Maybe you need to keep the tradition of Democratic Mayor Daley of Chicago alive and push for multiple votes “Vote early and vote often” and have all your dead democrat relatives and friends vote for the people you want elected. It’s the Democrat way.
Fred:
Is that really the best you can do? Tossing out irrelevant insults?
OK, since your reading comprehension is about as good as your sense of humor, I’ll spell it out for you, trying to use small words as I go: I wasn’t suggesting that we ought to be able to vote multiple times; I was suggesting that people who prefer candidate A on this class of issues may prefer candidate B on another class, and candidate C on yet a third class. They may, for example, prefer a Republican candidate on national security issues, but prefer a Democrat on environmental and labor issues, and maybe even prefer a third-party candidate on still other issues. But you don’t get to vote for one person to be in charge of security, with another in charge of the environment and still another in charge of, say, regulation. You only get to vote for one person to be in charge of all of those things. For anyone but a blind partisan, the person they’d put in charge of one of them is not necessarily the person they’d put in charge of the others, so they have to make some serious compromises.
Hey, Doofus. I comprehended what you said. Where’s your sense of humor? It was a good opportunity to take a shot at Democrats well-known propensity for voter fraud. Lighten up.
not to mention my mother
Well, if you’re mom is the example, that settles it!
the Republicans have been very good in recent years at finding the one or two issues where they do fare better than the Democrats, and (with media complicity) making the election all about that.
Maybe, but that surfaces another flaw in your original premise: general opinion surveys don’t often account for the relative importance of various issues or for the strength with which people’s views are held.
Why is it illegitimate for someone to hold “Republican” views on terrorism and abortion, for example, and to hold those views so strongly that they weigh more heavily than the same person’s “Democrat” views on social security, welfare, and the environment? It’s not just a simple “3 Dem issues against 2 Republican issues” thing is it? You might disagree with how some people weigh various issues — maybe the environment is more important to you than abortion — but democracy is about people being free to weigh things as they each see best, right?
The bottom line is that your original argument fails. There is no vast right wing conspiracy making people vote en masse against their true convictions. People by and large are voting their convictions, although their choices are severely constrained by the two-party system. Your problem is that the Democrat movers and shakers hold those convictions in contempt when it comes to issues where there is a nexus between religious ideals and public policy, such as abortion.
Seriously, what third party is substantially better than the two big ones we have now?
None. If I were redoing the thing from scratch, I think I’d opt for a parliamentary system. Lots of small parties that need to band together and form coalitions on particular issues. Your idea in response to Fred regarding referenda actually is a pretty good idea too. Given today’s technology, we could easily hold national referenda on important issues. We could even have a sort of “open source” government, with policy proposals coming directly from the people rather than allowing the parties to serve as gatekeepers. Why not?
[cheap shot]
I can’t believe I’m being lectured by a guy who can’t keep “your” and “you’re” straight.
[/cheap shot]
And it grossly overstates my argument to state that I’m claiming some huge, far-reaching right-wing conspiracy. At present, the Republicans are, in fact, better at gaming the flaws in the system than the Republicans are, but if it were the other way around, it would be no less anti-Democratic.
I’m working on a follow-up front page on this post to try and further hash out this discussion.
[...] David Opderbeck takes issue with the arguments I made in this post. Quoth David: This seems facile and elitist to me. Do you really think most people are so stupid that they regularly vote against their convictions? I don’t. I think that people will say they support or oppose all kinds of things, but when it comes time to pull the voting lever, their true convictions come out. [...]
tgirsch, since you opened up the cheap shot subthread, I got a real kick out of “read herring” in a recent comment, and even you contributed “flushed out in greater detail.”
Ted:
I often flush out the details right after I flesh the toilet.
I have a well-read herring next to my toilet. It is so worn there is precious little flesh left on it.