The "Didn't Vote" Party Wins Again

I almost never watch cable news, but I did last night in order to catch the election returns.  As the pundits' jaws flapped I kept noticing how they were trying to parse the "public mood" with this vote.  These pundits have one big problem: they're focusing on the voters.

What about the people who didn't vote?  Not only do they outnumber the number of Republican and Democratic voters, they outnumbered all voters period.  This means that yet again, the Didn't Vote Party swept the midterms.  It amazes me that elections which will determine all kinds of policy and will have a profound effect (especially on the state level) on so many people saw much fewer than half the voters show up.

This is what the commentariat ought to be discussing.  These are the people, not the voters, who ought to be polled, since they are the dominant group.  Why don't they vote?  It should be a simple answer, but I am willing to bet that it's actually multi-faceted in nature.  Do they just not care?  Is disillusionment part of that?  Is politics so nasty and godawful that so few want to take part?  Are they just apathetic numbskulls who can't be pulled away from cat videos and reality TV?

We ought to know, since our nation's voter turnout numbers are an embarrassment.  We lag behind dozens of other nations, so here is a case where America is truly an exceptional nation.  If we were a real democracy, and not a sham one, the last election would have been invalid because so few people bothered to vote.

I must say, it took a lot of effort to get to the polls, since my enthusiasm for the election was so low.  It's hard to blame people for not showing up, except for the fact that their apathy keeps our broken, corrupt, crappy system in power.

The Empty Election

There's an election tomorrow, and for the first time since I've been able to vote, I've thought long and hard about skipping it.  I won't, mostly because there's a movement afoot to deny the vote and to make politics so wretched that nobody votes.  I certainly don't want to let thebastards win.  The big question is, of course, who the hell am I actually going to vote for?

The sample ballot I got in the mail was rather uninspiring.  Here in New Jersey we don't vote for state level elections in even-numbered years (which insures low turnout for those elections, but that's another piece for another time), so I don't get to vote on anything related to state politics.  When it comes to the senate I can vote for right wing Republican (no chance) or Cory Booker, a Democrat who never met a banker he didn't like.  I read the League of Women Voters guide for my local House race, where I discovered that the incumbent Democrat didn't bother to send in a response, and his Republican challenger had multiple typos and grammatical mistakes in hers.  There's a mysterious third party candidate called "Dark Angel" (no joke) on the ballot who actually has some good positions on student loan debt (his big issue), so he'll get my protest vote.  Donald Payne, Jr is the incumbent.  He got his seat as a replacement after his dad died in office, so I will also make it a vote against nepotism as well.  In one election, that of Essex County Executive, I might actually vote for a conservative Republican to deny my vote to incumbent Joe DiVincenzo, a machine boss who despite his party affiliation has been a major Christie ally.

The choices in this corner of New Jersey seem to mirror those in the nation at large.  Voters can go for radical conservative ideologues, or for milquetoast Democrats who still do the bidding of corporate interests.  The outcome of the Congressional elections isn't really that meaningful to begin with.  If the Democrats hold the Senate, Republicans will continue to keep it from working.  If they win, the president will just have to get his veto pen ready.  Apart from the insane yet feasible attempt at impeachment that a Republican Senate might try, I don't see much changing here either way.

Despite the seemingly low stakes involved, millions and millions of dollars are pouring into these races, and in many states Republicans are doing their best to manipulate the outcome by limiting voter access.  You can't put a price on power, I guess.

The national news media, in their usual stupidity, has latched onto the easiest and shallowest explanation for a strong Republican election: that Barack Obama is unpopular.  Never mentioned in this is that Republicans are even less popular, but the moderates who voted for Obama will probably be sitting this election out.  In any case, it's not just Obama who's unpopular, it's the whole stinking, rotten, corrupt system.  I don't know anyone, conservative or progressive, who has any real faith in it.  We are going through the motions of democracy, but have long ago left it behind.  As I've said before, America is in its Brezhnev period where the empire limps on, zombie-like, even though nobody really believes in it or its ideology anymore.  This empty election, so full of sound and fury signifying nothing, is as much proof of that as anything.

Democrats Are Taking A Knife To A Gun Fight in 2014

This year is an election year, and a crucial one.  The 2014 election will determine the Congress for Barack Obama's last years in office, and gains by Democrats could help break the logjam of Republican obstruction.  Despite this fact, the Democrats don't seem to be doing much collectively to win.  The president's state of the union address this week was a case in point, since he greatly dialed back his vision, pulling away from gun control and income inequality.  It was not a speech that rallied his base.

Contrast that with the Republicans.  While that party is having some internal convulsions (just witness the four separate responses to the state of the union speech) it is working hard to lay the groundwork for  victory.  As conservatives discovered in 2010, low turnout in mid-term elections means having a motivated base is hard to beat.  The GOP rode the Tea Party wave into major gains that year, and since then have put Capitol Hill in a filibustered lock-down.  This year they are playing the same strategy by emphasizing abortion to get conservative Christians to the polls.  The wave of voter suppression laws around the country will also heavily dilute Democratic turnout, absolutely essential when fewer voters in total will be casting ballots.  Add to that the post-Citizens' United money train flowing from the Koch brothers and the like, and the Democrats could very well be roadkill.

Of course, the Dems did better in 2012, but that's because a presidential election brings out a broader spectrum of voters, and with the Republican obsession with ideological purity, swing voters were not as willing to trust them.  Many of those voters will be staying home this year.  The Democrats have also been saved by the Republicans' manifest dysfunction.  They nominated candidates like Todd Akin, forcing them to lose Senate seats that they should have locked up.  Essentially, the Democrats have been lucky, and still seem so passive that they are just hoping the other side tears itself to pieces rather than rallying their own base or making major moves to capture the attention of other voters.

The Democrats have been a truly spineless party of late.  For evidence, just look at L'Affaire Chrisie.  The governor had been engaging in all kinds of well-known shenanigans, but many Democrats were willing to play ball with him for their own power and gain.  (Just look into the whole Belleville senior citizens' center scandal.)  During last year's election I was flabbergasted at the number of Democrats who would so willingly support a man from the opposing party, much less a man who had attacked important Democratic constituencies with his policies.  Now that the reality of Christie's corruption is being uncovered, these folks are suddenly coming out against him.  Had the bridge scandal not erupted, many of those same Democrats would still be kissing Christie's ass right now.

I am glad that the president showed some fire in his speech and is committed to using executive powers to further his policies, but he does not seem to be offering those on the Left much succor.  He has expended the most energy recently defending a health care law that progressives thought was inadequate and defending domestic spying that his base and many of his opponents are incensed about.

If Democrats don't get annihilated this fall, it won't be because of their efforts, but because of the insanity of their opponents.  The Republicans seem to be getting smarter about this, but might have an intraparty civil war on their hands over taming the Tea Party.  If that civil war doesn't break out, expect Democrats to get buried under a landslide come November.