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Fri. Nov 12, 2004

Election Lessons Learned, Part 1

I’m pretty late to this particular “party.” I decided to wait until the cops left. I have no real desire to participate in the autopsy of the Democratic Party, nor really offer an opinion on it. I’m also not interested in reviewing the minutia of the Bush campaign’s blitzkrieg, and what it means for the future of the Republican Party. There are hundreds (thousands?) of others who’ve done a superfluously detailed job of those tasks.

All I have to offer is one person’s perspective on an election that had a hundred million perspectives. I can only tell you what this one person learned from the past year or so, a year that left me with no candidate. It’s not very uplifting, and won’t have an iota of impact on whatever happens in 2006 and 2008. The Republican camp currently feels it has nothing to learn, feeling they’ve been the “teachers” in this election, and the Democrats … well, you’ve got to be vested in some way to carve on that turkey. So this one’s mostly for the archives, and maybe some future historian wondering just what the heck happened back there in the Election of 20-Ought-4.

This was the Election of Perceptions. They all are, to a degree. But both sides spent far more effort on trying to alter the perception of their opponent than they did on creating credibility for themselves. And while this effort to change perceptions was driven by the two campaigns, it is executed in the media, and by the media.

And the media was a big part of the story of this election, as charges of bias flew from both sides. It’s my opinion (and has been for decades) that objectivity in the media is a pipe dream. When there are humans involved, no matter how professionally trained and experienced, there will be bias involved. To use the example of the photojournalist, you show bias by the direction you choose to point the camera, by the lens you choose (wide to include background, or telephoto to isolate from background?), by the moment you choose to click the shutter, by the moments you don’t choose to click the shutter, and today, by the choice of files you upload back to your photo editor.

A little here. A little there. There are multiple bias points along the way, and it is simply human nature. Media objectivity is an illusion, always has been, and it’s an illusion that was shattered this year for many. But this is not the same as saying all media people are either liberals or Bush-toadies, or even deliberately putting their bias into their coverage.

The media is often a mirror of our society. That’s why it sometimes shocks us so. And what has our society been this year, if nothing else? Nearly toxically partisan. Why wouldn’t you expect our media to reflect this? Because you think they have a professional obligation to advance public discourse?

Oh, my, how quaint of you. How September 10th.

If you still hold to that notion, then you must feel our media failed us miserably in their “professional obligations.” And perhaps you are right. But I’ve moved on to a much more cynical modern view of the media, a view more in tune with our times. When it comes to Big Media Companies, their only “professional obligation” is to make money, and we should expect no less. And no more.

We should also expect they are [1] filled with people as passionate about our partisan wars as we are, and [2] that such people will gravitate together in Fox-and-NPR-like clumps. Just as we do. Except for a salary. Just as we’d like to, if we could.

I told you this wasn’t going to be “uplifting.”

Another thing the media generates is Conventional Wisdom. Virtual train loads of it. Nearly all of it was DOA, defective on arrival. Howard Dean and his $40 million 50 state campaign simply can’t be beat. John Kerry, with his single digit polling and home equity funded campaign, hasn’t got a chance and ought to just drop out. This election is a referendum on the incumbent. Democratic 527’s, MoveOn, Soros, and others will far outspend the Republicans. If the Redskins lose the Sunday before the election, Kerry will win. Exit polls show a near landslide for Kerry.

All of it meant nothing. Almost all of the Conventional Wisdom was wrong. Yet we hung on every word, and studied every weekly poll number as though it was predictive gospel.

The Conventional Wisdom even now is that this is a 51-48 country. Poppycock. When asked how they identified themselves as they left the voting booth (bottom of this page), 37% said Republican, and 37% said Democrat. But 26% refused to call themselves either one. They said they were Independent.

That’s over a quarter of this country. Nearly a third party. The realities of starting a viable third party from the ground up are rather stark. But I can’t help but be reminded of this little ol’ radio station I programmed in the 80’s. We were outside of the city, with a mere 3,000 watt signal, and no promotion budget. We were up against a couple of corporate powerhouses, long established dominators well positioned in the market. But their respective positions left a huge gap in the market … and we filled it. It allowed us to leverage our puny resources and signal merely by filling a vacuum. An unmet need. And an alternative with a real difference.

As I said, I don’t want to do “party prognostication,” but it seems clear the Republicans aren’t moving to the center, they’re going to the right. And though it is yet to be determined in any way, the chatter so far indicates many Democrats think their party needs to move to the left.

Leaving a vacuum in the center. An unmet need. One that I feel strongly, if not with quite the anguished emotion many do these days.

Because I can find little to identify with in either party, especially in the aftermath of this election. My perceptions have been altered, too. Fervent Democrats and Republicans now seem like cults that put all else … even country … in subservience to that cause. They will abandon the thing they’ve claimed their whole life, their country, because of a 3% win by one short term politician. They will talk about destroying the unity of 230 years because of the result of one Presidential election. They will talk of secession. They will talk of Jesusland, and how every soul who lives there is exactly and stupidly alike. They will go to Ground Zero and commit suicide. They apparently think this raving will convince people … wow, I should have voted for them.

Meanwhile their opponents will gloat, and talk not just of kicking a man when he’s down, but of bashing their head on the curb until their brains spill out (I can’t link that quote, I closed the window in disgust when I read it).

Talk about whacked perceptions. Kerry “won” Pennsylvania by about the same slim margin that Bush “won” Ohio next door, but we now paint one as a Red Jesusland state filled with religious bigots, yet next door is pure pastoral blue, puppy dogs, and butterflies. The factual difference is at most a couple of percent, not a stark red/blue divide. That’s just convenient for the current rhetoric from both sides.

And let there be no doubt, if Kerry had won, the roles would merely be reversed. The content might vary slightly, but the tone wouldn’t. Behavior on either side would be no better. Because what was once a matter of political preference in our government has turned into outright hatred for 51 or 48 percent of our country. And no one even sees that change as a problem. Not one worth dealing with in their own backyard. They’re not quite done digging yet. May never be.

So, I want no part of your political parties. You’ve turned them into cults of strange morals … and don’t even see it. I’ll have nothing to do with them, until they give evidence they’ve regained some shred of rationality and shed the overtones of warfare. While you partisans may feel rejected by half the country, well, my numbers are a lot higher.

But I won’t be moving to Canada. I won’t be calling people “homophobic knuckle-draggers,” or suggesting we should bash the skulls of the losers. I won’t be wasting my time trying to move one party or the other in the direction I might prefer, that’s a task for Sisyphus. However, “I have a plan.”

You see, while others wail about their national discontent, I have a more local issue. And far be it from me to suggest to people that perhaps you should size down your ambitions in the aftermath of this election, but as for me, I intend to go local.

As I detailed last week, I’m facing the return of Cynthia McKinney as my District 4 representative. And I hope to make her represent. As well as my other elected representatives, at the state and federal level. My little project is so local it involves a street in my neighborhood, yet this street has a miles-long problem that daily endangers hundreds if not thousands of working class people. It has cost lives (visual hint). And in the first and second quarter of next year, I intend to publicly and visually hold some feet to the fire on this site. You’ll see the evidence, the letters I write to my state and federal legislators (collectively, a fairly even mix of Democrat and Republican), and their responses as (and if) they come in.

It will be my little experiment in street level democracy. And maybe … just maybe … it will eventually help bring some relief for the people who actually live on this street.

Meanwhile, I’ll wait and see what you nationally obsessed “party people” do, and how you present yourselves in 2006 and 2008. Don’t worry, my expectations are pretty low.