VOTERS

From Hullabaloo, Digby quoting writer Chris Hays, who canvassed voters in Wisconsin during the 2004 presidential race:

"These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

To cite one example: I had a conversation with an undecided truck driver who was despondent because he had just hit a woman's car after having worked a week straight. He didn't think the accident was his fault and he was angry about being sued. "There's too many lawsuits these days," he told me. I was set to have to rebut a "tort reform" argument, but it never came. Even though there was a ready-made connection between what was happening in his life and a campaign issue, he never made the leap. I asked him about the company he worked for and whether it would cover his legal expenses; he said he didn't think so. I asked him if he was unionized and he said no. "The last job was unionized," he said. "They would have covered my expenses." I tried to steer him towards a political discussion about how Kerry would stand up for workers' rights and protect unions, but it never got anywhere. He didn't seem to think there was any connection between politics and whether his company would cover his legal costs. Had he made a connection between his predicament and the issue of tort reform, it might have benefited Bush; had he made a connection between his predicament and the issue of labor rights, it might have benefited Kerry. He made neither, and remained undecided."

More here.

Just expanding a bit on yesterday's post.

I'm really starting to believe that whatever constitutes the political selves of most Americans has become so degraded in recent decades that we no longer have a population capable of democracy. Generally, the mainstream media have been hinting at this for years: think of all those silly tests offered by Time or USA Today, you know, the ones where you get to see how your political knowledge compares with high school seniors. Of course, as Howard Zinn used to observe, such journalistic exercises are much more about establishing that journalists know more than the rest of us than about showing where we really are in terms of political expertise. But even if these tests are something of a sucker punch, the overall idea that we have a wildly misinformed or uninformed electorate is right on. That is, that most Americans don't seem to know much about the formal structures of our nation's government is kind of a side show. The real problem is that voters have no real or relevant idea why they're voting on their chosen candidates.

I strongly asserted yesterday that cultural identity necessarily takes the place of rational consideration of issues for most Americans when it comes to voting. I think Republicans are better at appealing to this dynamic than Democrats are, but it probably wouldn't be much better if the situation was reversed. That is, while my lefty ideology makes me prefer the Democrats, the closest thing to a liberal party we have in the US, I don't want them in office just because Americans feel good about them. Rather, I want Americans to think deeply about the fate of the nation and to agonize accordingly over the issues. I want Americans to read every day about current events and political theory. I want Americans to have an understanding of political power, who has it, who doesn't, and why. I want Americans to study economics in their spare time, so they can truly decide when business should win, when workers should win, and when there should be compromise. And weighing the needs of consumers versus the needs of business ought to be in there somewhere, too.

In short, democracy isn't some passive thing, where citizens can go about their lives in their own personal bubbles, ignoring the world around them in order to concentrate on the details of their existences: rather, democracy is active, and requires a relatively high level of personal involvement from its people, study, contemplation, discussion and debate, and sometimes even street demonstration. Unfortunately, we have a society where such things are strongly discouraged, and, unsurprisingly, most people take the path of least resistance.

So, then, what do you get when you have the formal structures of democracy, but a citizenry which cannot or will not participate in a meaningful way? I have no idea what to call it, but it certainly isn't democracy. Somebody or something else runs the country; it sure as hell isn't the people.

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