John Lacny asks why the exit polls can be trusted about the reasons for people's votes if they didn't predict the vote itself accurately.
Of course, these polls are no more accurate, and possibly less so, than the pre-election polls, if you take their numbers literally. But no one who has observed the political situation for the last few years can deny that "values" (a code word, as everyone realizes, for a series of reactionary anti-personal-freedom values) are a prime reason for the Bush victory, along with the continuing fearful reaction to 9/11 (referred to by the short-hand word "terrorism"). By their nature, we can't get precise numbers about such political themes, but I don't have any doubt that if the Left can't deal adequately with them, it will be driven further and further off the U.S. map.
Just keep in mind what we all probably saw on TV: the map colored completely red, with a few fringes of blue. That's the political reality. It wasn't caused by vote frauds --- not 3 3/4 million votes worth of fraud. It wasn't caused by what the "ABBs" said or did about Nader -- as John Thornton rightly points out, he was irrelevant. It was due mostly to the fact that Karl Rove is indeed a tactical genius. He said after 2000 that not enough evangelicals turned out, and his job was to get them out in 2004. Guess what? He succeeded. He's not just a boob who has a history of playing silly political tricks, as a lot of folks on the Left have pictured him -- he's a very shrewd politico. Let's start taking our enemy seriously, for Pete's sake.
But we need to consider carefully what all that red means. (Keep in mind, of course, that a lot of that red tide is an illusion caused by the fact that many Bush states have large areas but very small populations. I'm seriously thinking about advocating not only abolishing the Electoral College, but also the Senate. What we need is a unicameral legislature, based solely on population.)
As I see it, this "Red Kingdom" breaks down into 2 concentric circles. The smaller one in the middle encloses folks like Bush, Rove, and the really hard-core religious Right. No way in the world that we are going to convert those guys. Between that circle and the larger one, though, is a much larger "fringe" group which follows the lead of the core but is not nearly as fanatical. Remember that the actual percentage of the radical religious Right in the population is rather small. The people we need to relate to are these fringe folks, who can be moved away from the core if we talk and relate to them effectively. This means not ridiculing them or spitting at them; they feel that the "liberal elites" tend to treat them with condescension and disrespect, and they are right about that. No wonder they resent it.
To reach them, I think lefties have to become much more comfortable with their own emotions, with the "touchy-feely" realm. This fringe conservative group largely speaks in religious language because that's what they're used to, but what they're really talking about is their fear of a rapidly changing, apparently hostile world, which they feel they need a strong Dad like Bush to protect them from: planes plowing into skyscrapers, Americans and others getting beheaded one after another, the prospect of marriages that upset their whole picture of family life.
The Left, on the other hand, is full of policy wonks who seem to have no emotions at all -- only computers grinding out "issue statements." Ph. D.s who are too much into their heads to recognize the fears and insecurity of the average American, or the extent to which they themselves may share some of those anxieties, and who therefore cover up their feelings in an insincere way that ordinary people can smell like a dog smells its dinner.
Certainly we need the wonks to crunch the numbers, but we shouldn't allow them to be our spokespersons to the public -- it frightens the caca out of people who are defensive about their educational attainments in the first place. Nothing is more anti-working-class than spewing out reams of policy statements at them. Working class people hate that stuff -- it reminds them of the "experts" that their bosses hire to impose Fordism on them, and of the union bosses who do the same.
Listening this afternoon to the concession speeches of Edwards and Kerry, I was impressed that the kind of public face we need resembles the former much more closely than the latter. Edwards is certainly a scoundrel in lots of ways, and one would be foolish to believe that he is serious about this "son of a mill-worker, Two Americas" BS. But the style he uses is precisely what we need, rather than the convoluted, condescending style of a Kerry. I have always regretted, by the way, that someone like Paul Newman or Warren Beatty never followed Reagan into politics.
At any rate, we have to first establish a relationship of trust with the mass of American citizens who now feel that they can only trust Bush and his band. Do something to make those folks trust you -- treat them like actual human beings, have a beer or two with them, whatever is necessary. Help them solve some of their real-life problems that are making their lives hell -- not just write fine rhetoric describing those problems. We can do this without giving up our "far left" principles -- we just need to find the right language to talk politics in. Study Thomas Frank and George Lakoff for some hints. (I was glad to hear both of them being interviewed by NPR News today -- perhaps that means that they are at last getting some attention.)
The Right at this point is much smarter than the Left about how to use the media -- operating on the level of symbols, myth, and metaphor. There is a long tradition of the Left which concentrates on "just the facts" -- intense muckraking, pointing to social ills, shaking fists at the monstrous System. Harangue, harangue, day and night. Some of that is fine, but we tend to overdo it by a country mile.
Also, let's give up once and for all the idea that the "youth vote" and the rappers will save our asses. What we probably need is a new slogan: "don't trust anyone *under* 30." We keep expecting the kids to pull our bacon out of the fire, probably out of fond memories for the '60s, when we were those kids. But that doesn't work these days -- they are waiting to follow our lead, not the reverse.
And to those who feel that the Democratic Party is bankrupt and needs to be destroyed or dumped into the garbage can: Who knows? You may be right. But before I agree with you, I need to hear a lot more details about what's going to replace it, and how we're going to get whatever that is. I frankly don't believe that Lenin holds the key to "what is to be done" now, and neither do well-meaning but inept groups like the Greenies. It's easy to vent your rage against the abominable Democrats, and I appreciate that on a day like today a lot of people can't do much besides vomiting their disgust. But in the long run, we need a lot more thinking.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________________________ It isn’t that we believe in God, or don’t believe in God, or have suspended judgment about God, or consider that the God of theism is an inadequate symbol of our ultimate concern; it is just that we wish we didn’t have to have a view about God. It isn’t that we know that “God” is a cognitively meaningless expression, or that it has its role in a language-game other than fact-stating, or whatever. We just regret the fact that the word is used so much.
— Richard Rorty