People like me are out of touch with the people who are out of touch.
(Please take ten seconds to "Follow" me. You do it by putting your email address in the box there on the upper right. That way you "subscribe" and you get the daily additions sent automatically to your email once a day in the middle of the night. You can unsubscribe any time.)
A simple idea that bears repeating is that the hardest things in the world to see are things that are dead obvious. Oh, you see them, but you don't notice them. (You might have read The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe back in high school. The precious object was "hidden" by being placed carelessly right in plain sight.) This blog attempts to make sense of the 2016 election aided in part by things I noticed by having attended events live.
This morning I was reminded of something obvious by a sentence I read in an article about a guy bemoaning Trump's success compared to Rubio's: "People vote with their heart, not their head. In the case of Mr. Trump, he's hit a chord obviously."
The dead-obvious observation I have is that most people aren't paying close attention to politics, and when they do they follow their heart. Frequently they end up answering polls and voting, but they don't really pay attention. An example from my life: I have typically participated in an office game of filling out brackets for NCAA March Madness. I spend maybe $20 a year. That bet makes me a "participant", but I don't know or care very much. I recall something about Kansas and Kentucky. I have heard of Duke being good. I like the Ducks. I fill out a bracket looking at bookmaker odds, add in some vague recollections and preferences, and am done.
I am a "low information" participant. A lot of people do politics like I do basketball.
 |
| Trump audience: feeling it |
People willing to stand in line for 3 1/2 hours along with me to see Trump in Nevada are not uninvolved. That takes commitment. But it doesn't mean that they are detailed observers of political positions, any more than it would be if I were to spend 3 1/2 hour total to watch a basketball game. I would enjoy the experience probably, then I would go home, still essentially ignorant of the intricacies of match-ups, offensive and defensive strategies, assist percentages, turnovers, etc. My son watches basketball and sees those details and has a podcast about it. Not me. I just see a blur of activity.
Here is what close observers of Blazer basketball sound like: Check it out: https://soundcloud.com/holybackboardpdx
My son does with basketball what I hope to do with politics: make sense of a complex subject.
For people who follow politics the way I follow basketball it is about heart, not head. The two candidates who have big, well established national brands are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Trump. Many voters feel frustrated and impatient over the slow recovery from the financial crisis and the gridlock in Washington. Obama's mild tone, and the fact that he has been repeatedly stymied by Republicans, give an impression of "weakness". What people feel in their heart about Donald Trump: he is strong and fearless and not beholden to donors. The normal criticisms that would attach to him relating to his marriages, his NY values, his intemperate remarks, the un-lovely things he might have done to get rich, his bankruptcies, simply do not matter much. We assume strong, successful people with big businesses did some ugly things to get where they are. There is one big important thing about Donald Trump and everything else is a dull blur: he is strong, fearless, and he will fight for the American common man against threats, foreign and domestic.
He is a "strong man" but normal electoral process can put him there (as they did for Andrew Jackson.) If Americans want a strong, fearless leader to cut through the frustration and shake up the status quo, Trump is the guy.
Hillary. Hillary is same-old, same-old. She is a long-running TV show, on the air in 1992 then on every day, seven days a week, 24 years so far. We saw her as candidate Bill Clinton's feminist wife, as controversial First Lady with her health care proposal, as the humiliated wife, as Senator, as Secretary of State, as author, as testifier in Congress, and now as presidential candidate. We are envisioning 4 or even 8 more years of the show. Some people like the show, some hated it in the past and still do. No surprise, no thrill, but no big danger either. It is like getting a birthday gift of a identical copy of something you already have but have worn out, a replacement used car for example, same make and model. Nice, or rather "nice enough.". It won't be a disaster and might even be pretty good. But there is no sparkle or jolt of joy, nothing to gift wrap.
Insofar as people are looking for Hope and Change, Hillary will disappoint. But she would be reliable, and she is familiar.
There it is: the strong guy versus the familiar woman. There will be people who can describe each of their tax proposals and can describe their policies on health care and student loan revisions, etc., but elections take place on the margins of lightly informed people who decide with their heart not their head.
Does America want a bold, strong, fearless guy, who seems pretty erratic and maybe a bull in a china shop? Trump. Or do they want to settle for tuning the TV back to more of the familiar and sort of frustrating program they have been watching for years, an OK show, watchable, but nothing all that exciting.
No comments:
Post a Comment