THE IRRATIONAL SWING VOTE

From Hullabaloo courtesy of Eschaton:

"Undecided voters aren't as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We're giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man's house, she still couldn't make sense of his decision."

And

"Increasing political interest won’t be easy, however. One suggestion has been for schools to conduct more classes in civics or American history, but the link between the number of such classes taken K-12 and informed citizenship is extremely weak. Get-out-the-vote campaigns in the mass media have also been popular, but the people who most need such encouragement don’t read newspapers or watch the news on TV. “Kids Voting” programs may benefit some, but they tend to be too few in number around the country, and their effects are generally minor.

Tne possible solution is deliberative polls, as suggested by University of Texas professor James Fishkin. The 2004 ANES found, for example, that persons who reported discussing politics with family and friends were significantly better informed than those who eschewed political talk. It is likely that political information and political discussions are mutually reinforcing."

Click here for the rest.

Unlike the true moderate, like my buddy Matt, who is informed and thoughtful, the undecided vote, or the swing vote, or the mushy middle, whatever you want to call it, is wildly uninformed, and politically naive. Sadly, these are the people who tend to make the difference in deciding elections--even sadder, this tends to make party leadership, traditionally, take their base for granted in the misguided drive to appeal to these swing voters, our current President serving as a major exception, although come election time, he's all "uniter not a divider." It is a sick and twisted condition, indeed, that political morons hold the fate of our nation in their thumbless hands.

Anyway, I agree that increasing political interest in the general population is the key to ending this bizarre situation, but I disagree with the notion that schools are unable to help. The problem with schools is twofold. First, the structure and moment-to-moment reality of public education is authoritarian. That is, we unthinkingly teach children an ideology that is anathma to democracy. It is no surprise that political apathy, and therefore political lunacy, results for most of the population. A radical shift in our approach to education could easily teach Americans to both value and participate in our democratic institutions.

Second, history, government, economics, and civics courses are some of the most boring subjects taught in the schools. And it's not because those fields are inherently boring: it's because we don't really teach them. That is, I've learned from writer and education critic James Loewen that these courses are generally treated as bland and glorifying pro-American propaganda--US history becomes the story of a great nation that's always getting better; aren't we so great? Who the hell can be interested in that? The reality is that these subjects are wildly conflicted, full of contradictory views and marvelous debates. That's interesting, but the schools avoid the good stuff, the stuff that would make people better and more motivated citizens, for fear of controversy.

So the schools, as they are now, are, indeed, incapable of solving this mushy middle problem. But that could change, if there were enough demand.

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