[lbo-talk] Okay so maybe camping out in the Zocalo isn't such a great idea...

[Michael Pugliese]

http://www.google.com/search?q=john+judis+non-voters+piven
Q: The non-voting majority, and what explains this why, I mean the apathy, the
indifference, the feeling that (inaudible) and the role of money (multiple
conversations; inaudible)?
LEONE: Either or both of those would be very helpful.
JUDIS: I'll do money and Ruy do (multiple conversations; inaudible)?
LEONE: For the mic money and non-voting majority. Go ahead, do money.
JUDIS: The answer is yes, (laughter) (multiple conversations;
inaudible) to vote. The
answer was yes to both. Money – the fact is the Republicans have an inherent
advantage in terms of money, and because of their proximity to business. So
really what we have to be arguing in a sense is that the shift is going to be so
profound in the country that it will favor Democrats in spite of that kind of
inherent advantage that the Republicans have.
Q:
Do you really believe that?
JUDIS: I believe that it's significant enough, sure.
TEIXEIRA: OK, in terms of the issue of turnout, I have studied this issue fairly
extensively, and as far as we can determine in terms of why so many people don't
vote, it doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with rejecting the
system the way it is
or feeling like the policies of either the parties are class biased.
It's a general sense
that as you say, politics doesn't have much to do with me, a certain
lack of interest
and involvement in politics, lack of awareness of what's going on,
there's just lots
and lots more people than there used to be who just can't get it
together to follow
politics enough to have enough motivation to show up at the voting booth. And
that's why you have increasing numbers of non-voters even as the process of
voting itself has actually become quite a bit easier.
FUCHS: Can I just comment on that quickly?
TEIXEIRA: I just want to finish my comment. But that said, and even though the
party of non-voters has been disproportionally contributed to by poor and low
education people, most simulations and analyses that have looked at
the effect of
this non-voting suggest it contributes a pro-Republican bias to the voting pool,
but it's not a huge pro-Republican bias. It depends on the election,
but you know
in a close election, any close election, if everybody turned out, on
average it would
typically favor the Democrats enough to maybe tip that election, but most
elections aren't that close. So you can't use the extent of non-voting
to explain
much about macro average political outcomes, and that's why you can't explain
the old conservative republican majority on the basis of non voting; and the new
democratic majority will arise in our view despite the level of non
voting--maybe
it will hold it back by six months or something.

LEONE: Esther on the non-voters?
FUCHS: I was just going to say quickly, Francis Piven did a revision
of her book on
why Americans don't vote and she argues something somewhat different than that
which it has a significant impact on the ability of the Democratic
Party to create a
majority. And non voting is really an indictor in my mind of the
failure of parties,
and the decline of parties because there is no intermediary mechanism to bring
people into the electorate, the machines with their dysfunction's
really did pull in
new immigrants, did incorporate people into the political process, in some ways
taught citizenship even if it was related to patronage. And people learned the
habit and the value of voting and all of the public opinion data – are
very strong
and they're very, I think, unnerving, and I think Katrina's point the
party of non-
voters is a very important one because people are more and more disaffected from
the political system in the sense that they think it – voting has
nothing to do with
making change in anything that's important in their life. I think that's a very
important trend in American politics that neither party is addressing
right now in
any serious way.
LEONE: Thank you all very much and thank you for (applause).