"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919
People wonder how a freedom-loving people decided to vote in Prohibition. The answer was asymmetry. The people who wanted to ban alcohol really cared about it. They were a single-issue voting block.
The gun rights issue is asymmetric. The people who love guns are motivated and intense. Most people who tell pollsters they are OK with gun registration and restrictions care about a multitude of issues. Polls deceive Democrats on this issue because polls miss the intensity of gun owners. The gun issue hurts Democrats.
Democrats are deceived by the polls on abortion, too. Abortion rights poll well, but Roe v. Wade made abortions generally available to highly-motivated people, so there is a relief value for the desperate. Democratic politicians understand there is a single-issue abortion rights constituency with party activists and gatekeepers, but the abortion rights constituency on the ground with voters is a leaky and diffuse. Women--including ones who tell pollsters they support abortion rights--vote their race or political party or their attitude toward taxes rather than their abortion rights sentiment.
A year ago COVID generally worked as a positive for Biden and Democrats. That is changing, again due to asymmetric intensity. The vaccinated and unvaccinated have sorted themselves. People in politically red social and political enclaves get social cues to oppose vaccination. They define it as "losing" and they feel so intensely about it they risk hospitalization and death. They have dug in their heels. The people who approve of vaccinations and vaccination mandates have gotten theirs and are grateful. The issue is largely off the table for them personally.
Republican politicians and thought leaders have worked out a way to thread the political needle. Most say they are "not anti-vax," a double-negative, thereby insulating themselves from accusations that they are kooky fringe. You can get vaccinated if you really want to. They also say that vaccination mandates are tyranny, that asking a person's vaccination status is an invasion of privacy, and that businesses and government cannot discriminate against the un-vaccinated. No passports. No asking. It prioritizes freedom and autonomy over public health. They immunize the message against the concern for public safety by asserting that COVID is generally an overblown fear hyped by Democrats for partisan advantage and pharmaceutical profit.
This is another area where polling will deceive Democrats. That Republican message addresses the asymmetry of intensities. Democrats hear the message that vaccination is a good thing for people who want it--a vague and minimally satisfactory message for multi-issue voters who generally want everyone vaccinated. Vaccination resisters are the ones with intense feelings and they hear what is essential to hear, no mandate. They can stay unvaccinated and interact fully in the community.
The New York Times reported that asymmetry was key in the Virginia governor election, quoting a spokesman for a Monmouth University poll.
The numerical majority may not be enough. Nearly all the 40 percent who are against mandates say it's very important to them. The 60 percent who support mandates, they say it's not their top issue.
Gasoline prices play a special role in America, and this, too, is working against Biden. No other consumer product is marketed so singularly on price. Gasoline prices are in our faces and can create intense feelings.
We are following a short period of extraordinarily low prices coinciding with the collapse of demand during the early COVID shutdowns. The price rise is conspicuous and coincides with Biden's presidency. It tends to define the public mindset regarding inflation. Official explanations, longer term charts, the prices several years ago, and Fed comments are almost irrelevant. It costs me about $80 to fill up my tank yesterday--20 gallons at $4.00/gallon--and my tank wasn't even empty. Eighty dollars is anchored in my mind as a lot of money.
 |
| Sticker added to gas pumps |
I do not expect a bumper sticker to read: "Gasoline Prices are back to pre-pandemic levels!" We see and respond to what is in our faces. This, too, is a problem for Biden
All is not lost for Democrats. Trump appears to insist on staying center stage. He is a single-issue that motivates Democrats. He brings out Republican voters but he brings out a great many more Democratic and Non-Affiliated voters, too. Trump back on the ballot is a high-risk proposition for Democrats. He might win, and in that case it would validate his post-election efforts to overturn the election. But in a single-issue world, the fact of consequences to losing appears to be what motivates voters. That will be how Democrats can frame their case to the voters in 2024: Do you really want Donald Trump back in office taking revenge on the people who didn't cave into his demands to overthrow our government?
9 comments:
Thanks, Peter. Your post this morning clarifies something for me and that is whether or not Democratic Leadership as currently constituted grasps just how serious the Voting Rights issues are, and how intent Republicanszare on seizing power by whatever means necessary, legality or morality be damned.
That's a solid point not lost on many Republicans that Trump's refusal to relinquish the spotlight can be an excellent motivator for Democratic and moderate/independent voter turnout. In 2024, that is. It's not going to affect the likely Republican landslide in 2022.
Abortion and gun control in a way are two sides of the same coin. The battles are fought on regulation, but by abolitionists and absolutists on both sides of each issue, who believe that any marginal "loss", however reasonable, is an intolerable step towards total defeat.
That status quo to date leaves us with the Mississippi case before SCOTUS this very day. Just as the Rittenhouse and Arbery cases followed facts and law, not spin, my prediction is that a plurality led by that worldly Jesuit John Roberts will functionally preserve Roe v. Wade.
Yesterday I saw an unusual sight: a big pickup truck with a big sign on the back saying, TRUMP LOST! DEMOCRACY WON! It looked like it had been broadsided, and I couldn't help wondering if it was before or after the sign was put up.
Political violence is hardly new in this country, but to my knowledge, this is the first time a major political party is actually aiding and abetting it. This holiday season there's something to be grateful for: we still have a republic, if we can keep it.
Peter, I think your observations reinforce the fundamental unreliability of polls in determining how people are likely to decide or act.
How do you think SCOTUS's ruling on Mississippi will affect single-issue conservative voters who otherwise find Trump repugnant?
We have a ferocious red/blue polarization. A big component of it is individualism vs communitarianism.
Individualists don't like being told what to do. That's why you often see the Gadsden Flag in red areas. Communitarians have different feelings. You often see this sign in blue areas.
Neither side is going to successfully impose its views and feelings on the other side. Epithets like "racist" and "snowflake" will fly past each other in opposite directions, accomplishing only increased rage on both sides.
We need to stop it. The scorn, the snark, the contempt, are not helping.
Michael--
I think you are quite correct in general terms, but unfortunately American politics has proven to be just about what Saul Alinsky predicted a half century ago. 24/7 advocacy news, the internet and social media have only encouraged and reinforced sloganeering surface or binary thinking.
I don't cite Alinsky in a partisan sense, because his (this) profound insight is cross-partisan and taken up since by the likes of Lee Atwater. Alinsky reasoned that the old marketplace of engaged debate construct was hopelessly outmoded, especially since the 1960 TV election, and via ads such as the "Daisy" ad which sank Goldwater. 1968 cemented it.
His thesis is that most adults have formed their worldviews by early adulthood and only a few will ever vary substantially therefrom. Productive, respectful interface is a canard. Elections are about winning the comparatively apathetic or indifferent independents and moderates. Such folks are most persuaded by figuring out what or whom they do NOT want to be associated with. Hence negative ads and attacks are the best use of money and time. Sad, but true?
Low Dudgeon –
That’s true up to a point, but it’s gotten worse over time so I’m not convinced it has to be this way. Reasonable people with intact critical thinking skills can be convinced by facts, and I believe there still are some.
What we’re currently experiencing goes far beyond red/blue polarization. Most Republicans support Trump, in spite of – or perhaps because of – his attempt to overturn the election. That isn’t polarization, that’s anti-American.
Most of those refusing to get vaccinated are Republicans or Republican leaning. That isn’t individualism, that’s oppositional defiant disorder – something they’re supposed to outgrow in grade school – and it’s killing people.
What we have here are an inordinate number of people in denial of reality. It doesn’t bode well for our offspring.
The passive Democratic message means lack of involvement. The pumped up phony exaggerations of the Republican parody party tries and tries to hit the hot buttons of nasty class. Who really speaks to the real anger and fear of a shaky economy, dying dreams of the young and the very old , and the $ divisions of class and racism? In this country, authentic caring, authentic speech is pretty hollow. We go to war on false premises and end them without any accomplishments. The one long sales promo of capitalism has butchered the earth and yet we still have enough money to sit in front of the internet streaming one clip after another, yawn and pop a diet soda. The big ideas replaced by the next clip about caring for your lawn. When your job, your kids, your wife’s job , your home is threatened you will listen up. Democrats need to scream to the fear. They are not committed, it seems to me.
Post a Comment