On the Virtues of Showing Up and Paying Attention

[beatrice_otter]

Presidential elections always bemuse me. You know, I get it; it's the highest political office in the nation, and very symbolic, and the President of the United States does have a lot of power both within and outside of the US. But the thing is, he is only one cog in the governmental machine. A very important cog, true, but just one of them. He cannot do his job without the rest of the machine, and the rest of that machine is made up of a) elected officials, on a federal, state, and local level, and b) bureaucrats appointed by those elected officials. Which means that it's pointless to get the guy on top elected--if you don't also elect people to Congress and your state legislature who support the President's policies, he's not going to be able to actually accomplish any of them.

(DISCLAIMER: this post is not aimed at people who want to get involved but can't because of health issues physical or mental, disability, discrimination at the polls, etc. It's aimed at the people who could but don't, or only do some of the time.)

Case in point, Obama's eight years. He has accomplished a great deal, but most of the things he would like to do--including many things he campaigned on the strength of--were not done. Why? Because he had to deal with a Republican majority in Congress that was dedicated to blocking his every move. You may be disappointed in Obama for not accomplishing as much as you hoped, but in order to do those things, he would have needed a Democratic majority in Congress. And why was there not a Democratic majority in Congress? When we elected a Democrat President twice in a row? The answer is simple, my friends. Midterm elections. Those elections in-between Presidential elections for US Representatives and Senators. Very few people vote in those elections, and most of the people who do are middle-aged, middle-class, white people. Who mostly vote Republican. And because all those young hopeful Democrats who voted for Obama (twice!) didn't show up to vote in years when the President wasn't up for grabs, the President they elected wasn't able to accomplish much because we the people who elected him didn't give him the support he needed to do it. And so we bitch and moan about politics and how they don't listen to us and politicians on both sides of the aisle cater to middle-aged, middle-class white men. But you know why they do it? Those guys can be counted on to show up and vote. Every time. They vote consistently, they get heard by politicians. Now, there are a lot of other complicating factors, but that's the absolute bottom line right there.

And it's not just the United States Congressional elections, either. Did you know that your state and local elections also have a LOT to do with the local quality of life, economy, and other services? They do! And your vote counts more in local elections, because the population of your local district is a lot smaller. That's another reason why a lot of Obama's policies got hamstrung (the Affordable Care Act among them): states rejected them. And why did so many states reject them? Because too few of the people who elected Obama paid much attention to the state and local elections, and white middle-class middle-age Republicans did.

Folks, the President is important. We all know that. But if you want things to change in America, you can't just pay attention to the Presidential race once every four years and ignore it the rest of the time, and expect someone else to make sure all the boring bits get done. Because we all know who's paying attention to the boring bits, and we all know what kind of a job they've done. So what can we, as ordinary citizens, do?

1. VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION, ESPECIALLY THE MIDTERMS. This is key. This is the biggie. If you can do nothing else, DO THIS. And take the time to educate yourself about the issues and people--not just the biggies, but the others.  It takes less time than you think, really.  There are a LOT of resources out there to help you learn what the issues are and who is who. The League of Women Voters has an EXCELLENT website that will a) tell you where your polling place is and how to get there, b) who is on the ballot and what their positions are, and c) what ballot measures are on the ballot and what is at stake. It's all non-partisan, purely informational, and it should cover pretty much everything you need to know, and if it doesn't it will give you enough information to google more.  Also, there will be a Voters Pamphlet available at most government offices (including libraries) a few weeks before the elections which has much of the same stuff; if you can't find one in person, you can usually find an online copy on your state's Secretary of State website--googling "[your state name] voters pamphlet" should bring it up.  Usually, a half-hour to an hour of poking around the League of Women Voters site and reading through my Voter's Pamphlet will tell me everything I need to know and more to make an informed choices on everyone and everything up for election.  I write down my votes on a piece of paper which I carry with me to make sure I remember who and what I was going to vote for.
2. CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS ON ISSUES THAT MATTER TO YOU. Even if (especially if!) they're not from your party. And, folks, this is the age of the Internet, which makes it SO MUCH EASIER. Find a political or lobbying group that matches your goals/interests and get on their email list. Most of them will send you action alerts when something is up, complete with handy form letters to email to your legislators. They do all the work for you, you just enter your name and address and email and tweak the thing however you want. I'm on several mailing lists, including my church denomination's advocacy office and several secular ones. Do I email every time there's an alert? Nope. But I do email on the ones that I think are particularly important, and sometimes even call. (And, again, the advocacy groups give you the phone numbers to call and a script to follow, making it as easy as possible.) This is important, because if your legislator shares your views, they know that at least some of their constituents support them in it, which makes them more likely to vote their principles. And if your legislator doesn't share your views, it reminds them that not all of their constituents agree with them, so they should at least consider compromising on the issue.
3. IF YOU CAN, MAKE YOUR POLITICAL BELIEFS KNOWN TO THOSE AROUND YOU, ESPECIALLY IF THEY AREN'T MAINSTREAM IN YOUR AREA. I realize that this is not safe or possible for a lot of people, but if you can, it's important. Many people just go along with what the majority of the people around them do, and accept the caricatures of people on the other side of the debate. Realizing that real, actual, people they know may disagree with the common accepted wisdom may cause them to stop and think about their beliefs. And that may lead them to re-think things. It's no guarantee, but it's a lot more likely than silence. But, again, not everybody can do this for a variety of reasons.

And yes, do vote in the Presidential elections; Presidents are important. But they can't do their job without all the other pieces in place, and we-the-people are the ones who elect the other pieces, too.

This post was largely inspired by hth's excellent post what people mean when they say Bernie Sanders can't get things done. You should read it, there are many excellent points about the role of parties in the general political process and how meaningful, lasting change actually happens.

So right now, with the Congress we have, with the state governments we have, he's useless.  You don't start a fucking political movement from the top!  Come on!  That's not how this happens.  I get the Bernie hard-sell a lot in my very liberal urban enclave of North Carolina.  I admire the passion, but guess what, there's also a Senate race happening on that same primary ballot!  And not a goddamn one of the kids who want to proselytize to me about the Bernie Revolution and how "excitement" for him is going to get young people to the polls can tell me which of the four Democratic candidates for the Senate they support. 

It's a simple question.  When all these excited young people come out in 5 weeks, which of these four candidates is going to help Bernie enact his revolutionary agenda?  Because I'd think you'd want to punch a card for that person, too, but nobody seems to know who they support for that.  I guess they're not "excited" about the Senate race.  Christ, we have a disastrous Republican governor in this state, and no one from the Bernie Generation seems too "excited" about the gubernatorial primary, either.  That should matter a fucking lot!  Remember that Medicaid expansion that wasn't, because it got scotched on the state level for political reasons?  The federal government can't operate effectively without state buy-in, so we can't just flip the Senate and ignore our reactionary state governments.

In other political news, Slate.com reported on what Scalia's death has done to the balance of power on the Supreme Court before he's even been replaced.  And it's inspiring.  This is, actually, in my opinion, the single most important thing the President does: nominate Supreme Court justices.  God willing, Obama will get Scalia's replacement confirmed by Congress before he leaves office, but the next President will probably also have to fill a vacancy or two caused by death or retirement.  For all those of you out there who are passionate about Bernie and hate Hillary, and might not vote for Hillary if she gets the ticket, I beg you: consider the kind of disaster that any of the Republican front-runners would try to get on the Court.

And please go read nicki's post on Hillary's public life over the last 25 years.  You don't have to agree with her politics, but I think most people (even most women) really aren't aware of the deep-seated misogynistic basis for much of the hatred against her that you find on both the left and the right, and they aren't aware of the way she's handled that with grace and strength.

Comments

[the_rck]

I know that, when I was in my twenties, I didn't vote in local elections mostly because I never knew when they were happening. It was the early 1990s. We didn't have a TV, and we didn't get a newspaper, and we didn't have the internet. I don't know if the younger folks now have barriers to finding out about those elections or if they're just not paying attention. I kind of suspect the latter. It's so very easy to find out who's running and what the ballot initiatives are and all of that.

At this point, I vote in every election that I can. I missed one August primary about three years back because my sister suddenly came in from Georgia (two weeks notice, not long enough to get an absentee ballot) and dragged me off to see our grandmother who I hadn't seen in a couple of years. I missed last November's election, and that... Well, I was going to get an absentee ballot because I knew that I was going to be too sick to get to the polls (surgery in August, radiation in October and November), but when I checked the ballot online (I love having that option!), there was one candidate running unopposed for city council and nothing else. I'd voted for her in the primary and was quite content to see her get elected.

My main reason for liking Bernie Sanders is that I think he's pulling Hillary Clinton to the left just a bit. I like the things he talks about as what he wants to do, but... I never expected him to win the nomination, and if he did get elected, I very much doubt that he could implement all of these ideas. I'm pretty confident that, if Hillary embraces some of those goals, she will at least stand a chance of making a start on them. I consider her, as a candidate, to be more likely to be in a position to have an effect on down ticket races.

I agree with my mother and some other folks who I've seen point out that nobody has really pulled out Sanders' dirty laundry yet, and a lot of that is stuff he's said and done as part of the public record. Clinton's has been raked over and over and over. I don't think that there's anything hiding in Clinton's closet that will suddenly burst out and make new people hate her.

I'm on a ton of political mailing lists. There are some I'm not sure I should be on because I can tell from how things are said that the writers are assuming that everyone they're sending to is part of a particular minority group, and, well, I'm a white, cis, het, middle class woman. I don't feel comfortable signing, for example, a petition for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who support the Black Lives Matter movement. I have no clue how I got on that mailing list or how I got on the Latina activists lists or why my state's teacher's union thinks I'm a teacher or...

I'm also pretty dubious about the usefulness of me signing-- this one has come through about four times in the last two days-- a petition demanding that Donald Trump denounce right to work laws. I'm not keen on right to work laws, but I also think that trying to get Trump to do anything of the sort is a waste of everybody's time. I think Hell will freeze over before Trump does anything pro-union. (I would sign something like that to my governor and state representatives and such. They might actually pay attention. Well, the governor probably wouldn't because he loathes unions, but still.)

[beatrice_otter]

Nobody's seen Sanders' dirty laundry yet, and everyone's been dirtying Clinton's laundry for her to try and discredit her for years. I agree with you about Sanders; he's drawing Hillary to the left just as Trump is drawing Republicans to the right (or, more accurately, into racist classist fantasy land).

I wasn't talking about signing petitions--they pretty much do jack-all. I'm talking about mailing lists where they email you about an issue that's on the table in congress, tell you why it's important, and then have a form for you to email your senator/representatives directly as their constituent to let them know where you stand. Those are a lot more effective. I'm on a couple of those for religious liberals, and one or two for just general liberals, though I don't remember the name offhand.

[lilacsigil]

You have so many things to vote for! This was a very interesting read from a different political system. Still, politicians here also chase the middle-aged, middle-class white vote, and voting in Australia is compulsory. Maybe that's still the most predictable demographic even without the turnout issue?

[beatrice_otter]

They do tend to be more predictable and set-in-their-ways, yes, and there is also (obviously) more than a bit of racism/sexism/classism involved. But also: that demographic tends to donate to political causes, more. And when a politician retires or gets defeated and wants to get a job as a pundit or on some nice cushy board somewhere or teaching politics at a college or something, those middle-aged-middle/upper-class whites also tend to have the nicest positions to offer a candidate that they like/approve of. So even when EVERYODY votes, there are multiple reasons to cater to that demographic. But when everybody votes, there is at least one countervailing reason not to cater to them TOO much, because you do need at least SOME response from the rest of the population. If you know that most of the rest of the population isn't going to vote ... well, there's no reason at all to consider their opinions, is there?