But my friend doesn't agree about what to do on Election Day. (I had written, "Follow Nike's advice and just go out and vote.")
After losing the elections of 2000 and 2004 (my friend voted for Gore and Kerry), she was made hopeful in 2008 by "Obama's great plans and ideas."
But midway through 2012 she is bitterly disappointed. "Obama has not delivered anything he promised." She says that she is "not going to waste my time to vote this year."
Bitter disappointment is a poignant, personal reason not to vote, and my friend is not the only one who could use that excuse for shunning the poles in November.
But not voting for that reason is equivalent to punishing President Obama without taking the Republican party's deliberate roadblocking into consideration.
The Republicans' oft-expressed Number One Goal has been (and continues to be) to put Obama down and make sure he can't be re-elected. If my friend doesn't vote, she will be rewarding Congressional Republicans more than she will be punishing President Obama.
But I have faith in my friend. I'm sure that she'll see the illogic of her intention not to vote and will show up at the polls on Tuesday, November 6, hoping to give the President another chance (and the Republicans fewer members of congress). And helping to give the nation another chance.
I hope that everyone else suffering disappointment over our government's frustrating stalemate (and I'm one of them) will not reward the obstructionist party in November by refusing to vote for anybody at all.
To do that would not be the first step in taking our country back.
Both parties do, of course, have some faults in common. They're all politicians, as my friend also told me yesterday (and she was using the term in the usual pejorative way of disgust with politicians). Both parties are both timid about making real, substantive changes. They both kowtow to corporate interests (money). And, in the recent partisan climate, they have tended to cancel each other out.
ReplyDeleteStill, though, if we could plot the statistical midpoint of each party on a "left/liberal – right/conservative" axis in terms of its vision and its core values in such things as fairness, environment, public safety, health care, world citizenship, I think we'd see that their points are nowhere near one another on the scale. There's a momentous difference, despite the parties' common faults.
We must let that difference always push us to the polls to vote.
Morris, I agree with your "statistical midpoint" observation, and I plan to vote for Obama in the fall. However, I'll do so with no enthusiasm. The 2009 stimulus was too small. He showed very little leadership and let the House draft it. The Affordable Healthcare Act was another ugly piece of legislation. He let the Senate patch it together without a single-payer provision. He ducked a confrontation with the House at the end of last year and extended the tax cut for the rich, and I'm guessing that he'll do it again at the end of this year. "Confrontation," in fact, is not in his vocabulary. I understand that the House and the Republicans in the Senate have obstructed needed legislation at every turn, but Obama's response has been anemic. The gulf he's created between expectations and actual leadership is one of the greatest in the history of the presidency. There are psychological consequences — your friends decision, for example. If Obama doesn't find some FDR-like mojo and begin exercising it soon, no rational view of the political landscape, like yours, will help. He will lose the election.
ReplyDeleteAs impossible as it may seem to readers of this blog, I have to say I agree with Ken 100%.
ReplyDeleteMotomynd & Ken, because of my frequently agreeing with each one of you individually, it will seem fully possible to my readers for me to agree with both of you together on this occasion—which I do, 100%.
ReplyDeleteKen, my friend says she enjoyed your comments. She says you're absolutely right. You gave the reasons she decided not to vote this year. "Obama didn't fight at all. He gave up too much on the health care bill...In his first year in office, he didn't do much even with a Democratic House. He didn't close Guantanamo Bay. He didn't clean up Wall Street, but hired some of its people who had hurt the US economy...Instead of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, he sent more...I don't have any reason to vote for him!"
I can only hope that she will, in the end, nevertheless join the three of us in voting for Obama. Not to vote would be equivalent to voting for Romney.
She has no more reason to vote for him than we do.
I'm going to pretend to enthusiasm on the assumption that Obama has learned his lesson: Trying to be bipartisan with ideologues doesn't work, they must be confronted. If confrontation works to win his re-election, he will ride into a second term reinforced to continue confrontation and achieve some of the things we've all four hoped.
But if too many voters "reward them by punishing him," that won't happen.
A reader (Tom Lowe) commented on Facebook: "Problem with that stance is—according to the recent studies I've seen—most people get their information from TV these days. So acting on this reasonable principle, post Citizens United [?] means ceding the advantage to Fox News and the Koch brothers. See Frank Rich's current column on the New York Magazine website for the counter argument."
ReplyDeleteI told Tom: "Technically, my second suggestion ('Ignore the campaigns, don't watch advertising') covers this, seeing as how Fox News is essentially political advertising."
Ken, have you read the Frank Rich piece? As far as I can tell, his most recent column there is "Nuke ’Em: Why negative advertisements are powerful, essential, and sometimes (see 'Daisy') even artistic." I haven't read it yet but plan to tomorrow.
It's bed time here on the East Coast.
I just finished reading Frank Rich's column. It's actually an exciting read, makes me look forward to seeing whether any Democratic attack ads (which are without doubt going to be aired on TV in the coming months) will rank up there with LBJ's "Daisy" ad or Bush Sr's Willie Horton ad.
DeleteIt's also an exciting read for its reminder of how vulnerable Romney is to being attacked. A better way of looking at Romney's weaknesses—for someone advocating that we ignore political advertising (that would be me)—is that voters who do ignore the advertising in favor of simply seeking out the best information available about the candidates will have a good chance of deciding to vote for Obama.
Moristotle, it will be interesting to see if either party puts its money into getting voters out to support their respective candidate, or if they basically try to steal the election by discouraging would-be independent voters from becoming actual voters. It has been proven that negative campaigning works, but what is overlooked is the question of why it works. Is it effective because it drags down a candidate, or because it discourages independent voters and leaves the deciding votes to the hardcore party loyalists who will show up and vote Democrat or Republican because that is what they always do regardless the candidate?
ReplyDeleteNegative ads may be particularly effective in this year's election due to the lack of excitement about either candidate. Many Democrats, and independents who normally lean left, feel the same as your friend: Why bother to support Obama? And can we really expect "tea party types" and others who lean far right to get excited about Romney?
In the Obama-McCain election barely half the eligible voters bothered to vote. Given the baggage Obama is now carrying compared to then, and the lukewarm interest in Romney by conservatives, it is reasonable to assume this year's election will attract much less than 50% of eligible voters.
Which begs the question: What is the best thing someone can do to help their candidate get elected? Is it better to talk up the election and increase voter turnout? Or is it better to talk down the election and discourage turnout? If you discourage four voters on the other side, but you still vote, that is possibly a bigger win then encouraging four voters on your side. With each side probably spending more than $1 billion on this year's election, and with each weighing the pros and cons of negative ads versus positive, the upcoming months may be the best time yet not to own a TV.
Motomynd, I'm glad that you started off with "it will be interesting," for that reminds me that one of the important things that political campaigns are to Americans is entertainment. And we do hope the entertainment will be interesting.
DeleteIn this spirit, I've just posted a "mission not impossible" urging the submission of ideas for Democratic attack ads, to be judged by Moristotle's readers toward determining the best idea(s) for possibly forwarding to the Obama re-election campaign.
Interesting dichotomy you seem to pose: Either a political party tries to get citizens out to vote for its candidate or it tries to steal the election, which would seem to indict the use of attack ads as thievery.
However that may be, I don't see that dragging down the opposing candidate can't also encourage independents not to vote for him (but to vote for your candidate instead, as a better alternative in the context of the ad). I mean, if the attack successfully (and perhaps even accurately) labels the opposing candidate as incompetent or untrustworthy or dangerous (in contrast to your competent, trustworthy, safe candidate), wouldn't that constitute a moral appeal to citizens to vote for your candidate?
Another interesting thing (perhaps a dismaying one) will be to see whether you are right that we should expect an unusually low voter turnout in November. I of course (and you, too, perhaps) certainly hope for a better turnout than usual—even if it takes negative campaigning to achieve it.
I don't think that your final questions (about discouraging their turnout or encouraging yours) have a general answer. It depends, not only on the election in question, but also on the extent to which the techniques for discouraging their voters and encouraging yours can be relied on. It depends on so many hard-to-control things.
I'm sure you're right that most negative ads will not be worth watching. Many (perhaps most) of them will be disgusting. But I hope that Obama's will be more effective than Romney's. I even hope that at least one of Obama's (and none of Romney's) will be even better than the Clint Eastwood ad for Chrysler during Super Bowl 2012, or even achieve "Daisy" status.