Elections...What a Mess and What to do About it

Anybody see any campaign ads yet?  Yep.  It’s election season, although nowadays it seems that it is always election season.  In this case, we have 39 days left until we know that the next election season has started.

Today I am going to talk about the state of affairs of our political system and reveal who the real culprits are for this mess that our country is in, and provide some suggestions as to how, maybe, we can turn it around.  But first, the mess.

Campaign Techniques

Advertising

We know that our society is in its final stages of decline when we look at the campaigns of those who wish to represent us.  I suspect most Americans are already tired of the verbal beating that we are taking on the airwaves about how “extreme” we are.  We must question whether our politicians have so little respect for us that they think we would actually believe what they are telling us. If I had a dollar for every time a candidate or his supporters were called extreme, well…I’d have a lot of dollars.

Running for office is a marketing and sales challenge to persuade the electorate.   TV campaign ads are a big part of the marketing strategy along with direct mail, robocalls, texting, and emails, The problem for candidates, consultants, political parties, and their ilk is that the voters just don’t want to see it. Not only do we avoid any intrusion on our psyches from campaign related materials, but we take active steps to keep from ever seeing or hearing them.

We record our TV shows so that we don’t have to see any ads much less political ones.  We quickly toss political direct mail in the trash along with that mailer for new windows.  We refuse to answer our phones, get on do not call lists for robocalls, and no one reads the newspaper anymore.  It’s us against them, and if we work at it, we win, and we will know nothing.

In response, political marketing “experts” continue to spend more and more, millions upon millions of dollars to break through to that small group of people who despite their best efforts let their guard down subjecting themselves to campaign propaganda and the risk of being frightened that unless they vote for the featured candidate, democracy is lost, life as they know it will not exist, and the earth will spontaneously ignite into a ball of flame.

Polling

We have even ruined the polling profession.  Campaigns and special interest groups poll during campaigns not because they care what we think, but to raise money.  Have you ever done an internet poll that doesn’t ask for your email address if not money as well?  The addresses are then sold to be used as destinations for Campaign Alerts and more campaign donations, please.

Also, understanding the herd mentality that drives us to be on the side of a winner, polls are used to encourage or depress the vote (i.e. your guy is so far behind that your vote is hopeless) in order to affect the final result. 

News organizations do polling for a different reason.  They poll in order to create content for their programs.  Lacking any real news, they generate their own.  This appeals to the American sports culture which wants to know the score even though the only poll that counts is at the ballot box. This is big business.

We Fight Back- Lying in polling

As in the people’s campaign to avoid all political advertising, the public is also catching on to campaign/polling strategies and have been pushing back by refusing to answer polls or lying to pollsters to screw up their results.  Be honest.  Tell me you haven’t answered a poll claiming to be a gender fluid Pacific Islander. Beginning with the exit polls on election day, pre-election polls have been notoriously wrong.  Those few pollsters who accurately predict an election are lauded as heroes in their professional circles only to get crushed in the next election.  I think the successful pollsters are more of a result of blind chance rather than accurately reflecting the pre-election voting patterns of everyday Americans.

Pollsters are now actually trying to develop algorithms to guess how many people are lying to them and which people those might be. 

Linkage

Another campaign technique is one of linkage.  Don’t vote for XYZ because he likes Donald Trump or worse maybe he doesn’t like Trump, but Donald Trump likes him!  The last time I heard, Trump was playing golf, trying to figure out the rules about classified documents and traveling about the country trying to remain relevant.  Democrats love Donald Trump because it takes the heat off of them.  On the Republican side, an association of horror is with Nancy Pelosi and the new villain, AOC, although right now the Republicans are tying every Democratic candidate they can to Joe Biden.  The logic premise is “Joe Biden is an idiot”.  “Colorado Senator Michael Bennett votes with Joe 98% of the time” (which he does). So therefore…”Michael Bennett is an idiot”…which may be true, but mere association without more, should not be a logical basis to vote for or against anyone.

Distraction

Distraction is another technique to secure votes or in this case keep from losing votes.  Look, this is a basic life skill. 

“Mom!!  Billy hit me!”

Distraction…

“But Mom, Andy said a bad word!”

Get the point.  In politics, it’s

“Mom!!, We’re having crushing inflation, I can’t find a place to live, and gas prices are too high!”

Distraction…

But Mom, “Andy wants to ban abortion, lost the monopoly game and won’t admit it, and zie called me by my wrong pronoun!”

As an aside, and a personal point of privilege since I write this column, should we really care whether Trump or his friends accept the results of the 2020 election?  Biden is the President.  He was inaugurated on January 20th, 2021.  He’s signing Executive Orders, cutting our oil and gas reserves, letting our cities burn.  How much energy do we want to expend to get Trump to utter the words “I give up.”  He lost. Let him go and forget about him.

I know there are other techniques that we could discuss here, but the bottom line is this is a big mess, it is big business, and it costs a lot of money.  It is estimated that all the races in the 2020 election cycle cost $14 billion.  We could do a lot of healing the sick, clothing the naked, and feeding the hungry for that kind of money.  (I seem to have heard those words somewhere before). 

What To Do

Now we are getting to the point, and I warn you, it may hurt. Look in the mirror.  As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” (old Walt Kelly comic strip reference). While we blame the political parties, politicians, dark money groups, special interests…i.e. other people, (and they are bad), we are the real culprits, and they are merely the result of us allowing and rewarding this nonsense for all these years. 

It has taken a long time to get this bad, and it will take a while to get better.  It will never be perfect, but I not suggesting that holding our Government and its elected officials accountable to the people is a hopeless task. To encourage you, let me share that we are not starting on this quest at the bottom.

We are disgusted, and ready for a change which is the first step. While we have not traditionally punished the parties for nominating inferior candidates, in Colorado, massive numbers of voters are abandoning the Democrat and Republican parties to become Unaffiliated.  We have open primaries where Unaffiliated voters can vote in either party primary for candidates who can ignore party nomination structures and get on the ballot through petition which has already made things more interesting.  Other states have moved to rank choice voting to break the either-or choice that we have been faced with in the past. I am not sure, yet that rank choice voting is a good thing, but it shows that the people can and are pushing back to create a better pool of candidates from whom to pick.  We are just getting starting.

The People Need to Be a Special Interest Group Too

Right now, our representatives are for the most part responsive to only to the “groups”, left and right.  For example, we have the environmental lobby, the Chambers of Commerce, the unions, social justice organizations, religious freedom groups, homeless advocates, the bureaucracy, and a dizzying array of organizations all armed with money and lobbyists who get paid every day to influence and claim the time and attention of our representatives.

We need to make our politicians realize that the people are a special interest group too.  I understand that the concept of representative government is that we elect someone to think about things, so we don’t have to, but that system isn’t working.  If we care about how our lives will be ruled, we have to engage.

Trump for all his faults, and he has many, tried to break that structure by representing what he thought individual Americans wanted.  He came from outside the Republican Party, ignored the groups, the bureaucracy and the media going directly to the people.  He won in 2016 with this strategy and then lost in 2020 as he lost his way with his ego and personal conduct. Trump was defeated in 2020 but his 2016 strategy was not.

It is a basic principle that our elected politicians work for us, but we aren’t being very good managers right now.  We are not clear enough about what we want or expect.  In this election cycle, all polling has said that the most important issues are inflation, the economy, education, and crime. (For this thought, please ignore what I said about polling and lying above.)  Nevertheless, we are being distracted by climate change, gender equity, and January 6th which are at the bottom of our national list of priorities.  It’s like having an employee off doing his own project when you and the company need him to be doing something else.

We don’t have to burn the cities down or storm the Capitol, but we do have to take the time and effort to learn what is going on and to express ourselves to our representatives and candidates. We need to tell them respectfully and thoughtfully what we think on an issue.   When they don’t listen, we need to gently chastise them. When they continue to ignore us, we need to replace them, and when they do good, it wouldn’t hurt to let them know we appreciate it.  This is just good management.

Many of us think that our voices don’t matter, but I would suggest that they do.  Despite the stereotype of the self-centered evil politician, the majority of representatives on both sides are basically decent people trying to do what they think is right, and these people can be influenced by public opinion.  Everyone wants to be liked especially our politicians. What the constituents say may not be enough to change every vote, but it will make our representatives question themselves and over time provide moral support to fight against party orthodoxy or institutional pressures.

What Kind of Candidates Should We Pick?

This starts by us selecting the right candidates.  For us, we need to decide first what kind of person we need in office.  I would suggest that we need people of competence; (Now, that’s a novel idea!). We need those kinds of people who have the intelligence to examine issues, create solutions and be able to sell their rationale to their fellow legislators, and generally tell the truth. (There are no saints.) Look, I didn’t say anything about policy or party.  If we can find people of courage who are intelligent, tell the truth, and are motivated to serve the country rather than themselves or their friends, the policy will work itself out.  We need statesmen, not politicians.  They are there.  

On policy, I understand that sometimes our leaders are going to make mistakes, but the person I am looking for is the one who can come forward and say “From what I was seeing, this appeared to be the answer, but ya know, it didn’t work out that way.  I was wrong, and I think we need to try something else.”  Shutting down the entire country for COVID for an example.  For me, I am not looking for an apology, a resignation, or for our representatives to publicly prostrate themselves before the masses.  If they could just go, “did my best.  Didn’t work out.  Let’s try this”, that would be my candidate. 

Our candidates should also have practical job specific skills.  Can they understand what a law is and what is says?  Do they know how government works?  Do they have any kind of experience?  You might be fine if you are a first-time candidate who is new to government, but inexperience is not anything that a job applicant should brag about.  I am not looking for someone like me.  I am looking for someone who is better than me.

As a result, we need to buck up our candidate selection skills.  I am not suggesting that we have to watch every TV ad or read every piece of direct mail or campaign email.  However, we should look at their claims to see if they meet the criteria of intelligence, ability to create solutions, ability to work with others and not be a liar.  If a candidate or his allies lie in his campaign literature about himself or his opponent, he is going to lie to us and perhaps he is not up for the job. We should give him a pass.  Don’t let him off the hook by letting his allies do the dirty campaigning.  They all know each other.  I understand that these Independent Expenditure Committees and PACs are not supposed to coordinate with campaigns, but if a third party gets out of line, a candidate can let them know to stop it or if they don’t stop, he can publicly condemn them. If he doesn’t, then that lie is his.

Try to determine how will he vote in the future.  This is difficult for candidates who don’t have a voting record, but for incumbents, if they claim they are independent, moderate voices, but vote with Joe Biden 98% of the time, you can reasonably assume that your vote is a vote for Joe Biden and the candidate is just a party pawn.

What if they both don’t measure up?  Pick the best one of the choices available and hope for better next time.  It’s a long journey.

What else can we do?  We can read a lot but don’t accept anything as gospel.  Examine it critically to see if it passes the common sense test.  We can talk to our friends, particularly the ones who pay attention and who have already passed the don’t lie test.  Who do they recommend and why?  Then just don’t take their word for it but put it up against your own experience.  Does this make sense?

Don’t give up

Finally, make yourself a stakeholder and don’t give up.  It’s a long haul and a good country to save.  There are those who have engaged in revolution to establish our free country, those who have died in a civil war to keep us together, those who settled the west, went to foreign shores to fight fascism, and keep the world safe for democracy.  There are those who have survived floods, drought, depression, and disease.

This is our turn, and it is far easier. In order to save our way of life and preserve how we govern ourselves, all we have to do is work to convince our representatives to represent us.

Finally, don’t quit the system, and quit your bitching. The problem is us, and we can fix this.