A recent conversation with a taxi-cab driver my mother:
She: “I got a flyer in the mail, let me read it to you. It’s about the congressional candidate [ed: David McSweeney]: he’s pro-torture, he supports wiretapping, he’s against abortion in cases of rape, incest and to protect the mother’s health, and he supports drilling in Lake Michigan.”
I: “Drilling for what? There’s not actually oil under the Great Lakes?”
She: “It doesn’t say. But what a jerk. ‘Paid for by Melissa Bean for Congress.” So…”
I: “That means that Melissa Bean’s campaign sent it out to show what this guy is against.”
She: “So I should vote for Melissa Bean?”
I: “I certainly hope so.”
She: “Whether she’s the Democrat or not.”
I: “Anyone who supports wiretaps and is against choice is most certainly a Republican. And hey, you’re not pro-choice.”
She: “Well…I don’t like it.”
Followed by a conversation where I effortlessly convince her of the wisdom of unfettered abortion rights.
The point is this: my mother lives in the Illinois 8th District. It is solidly purple – a place where a pro-torture, pro-wiretaps candidate has an uphill battle, but gay rights and abortion are considered icky (hyper-moderate Bean took the seat away from a 26-year incumbent). Not for nothing is this one of the most significant races in the 2006 elections: the 8th is a perfect model of a swing district. And my mother is a perfect model of the typical 8th District citizen.
I’ve known her my entire life, and I know that she has internalized the right-wing talking points on abortion. “They use it like birth control, think of the innocent life.” And while I would like to take credit that my amazing rhetoric swung her, I think it has more to do with something else.
Most Americans don’t follow politics. They are not partisans or idealogues, and do not give much thought to why this is good or bad, the first argument that reaches their ears is the one that takes precedence.
But some narratives trump that. Nixon did in 1973. And Bush is doing it now. Nobody with insurance cares any which way about universal health care, outside of the blogsphere and Beltway; but they care very much that “the president is spying on us.” And because political belief is to most people fundamentally arbitrary, it can be changed for arbitrary reasons.
In my mother’s case, she has turned over a lifetime of staunch anti-abortion belief because she doesn’t want to be caught agreeing with Bush on anything. No ideology, no logic drive her. Her political worldview is informed solely by her dislike of the president.
I put it forth, that my mother is not rare in this, and in fact represents a majority of the American electorate. Voters simply do not understand how politics work – notice above that my mother did not realise that her representative was a Democrat – and issues boil down to a question of charisma. Conventional wisdom in the abstract, but shocking to witness it in action.
This is why I have hope for the coming election. The Democrat strategy is to make the midterms a referendum on national politics, and this will work; but it will not happen naturally. There needs to be a constant message that Bush = The Republican Party. And I’m pleased that I see that very message happening. Not consistently, and not always well, but it is a simple and easy message that resonates not with the voters’ sense of moral rightness, but with their hatred of having the wrong friends. The election is high school, and we need to make sure people realise that Bush and the GOP are part of the same loser pothead clique.