I feel intensely frustrated, watching election coverage. I have located one source of that frustration (there are many): the fact that we pretend elections are about the issues that are being discussed by the overly-cosmeticized talking heads on TV.
So what that there are multiple videos showing Sarah Palin actually supporting the maligned “bridge to nowhere” project, despite repeatedly claiming she has always been a staunch opponent. So what that there is similar evidence showing her boasting about the considerable river of pork she kept flowing into Alaska while Governor. And who cares about her using her government position to enforce personal grudges. Or the multilayered hypocrisy of using her own motherood to further her campaign, supporting intrusive big-government oversight of everyone else’s motherhood, referencing her evangelical Christian beliefs and standards as evidence of her electability, and then insisting that her daughter’s un-evangelically Christian pregnancy is off-limits for reporters. And speaking of reporters… she’ll only do interviews if she’s guaranteed to be treated with deference. Does that count for debates, too? If Biden says something non-deferential, does she take her ball and go home?
Then there’s McCain. It’s almost a sin for mainstream media to question the finer details of his military record (many parts are inspiring, but some iz not so graet ackshully). It also seems a little unpopular, on the big news shows, to ask the very legitimate question of whether McCain’s record (especially the POW treatment he mentions pretty much every time he gets in front of a microphone) is actually relevant to his qualifications to be President. And then there’s Mr. Straight Talk Express’s refusal to answer questions he doesn’t like, and his penchant for using the police to remove troublesome folks who disagree with him (or who are suspected of planning to disagree with him, or who are suspected of photographing or otherwise documenting said police-powered removal) from his “town hall” meetings and… um… national conventions. I guess this is the freedom Senator McCain was fighting for, all those years ago.
I could go on and on, but I’ll skip straight to his latest ad, claiming that Obama supports sex ed for preschoolers or something. Of course it’s either a serious misrepresentation or a flat-out lie, but so what?
Now, I realize that was pretty one-sided. I didn’t say any of the bad stuff that is probably true about Senator Obama, or the even-more-bad-stuff that is almost certainly true about Senator Biden. But I don’t know much of that stuff, since I crossed over to the dark side have become more liberal in many of my political leanings. I know a few things, of course: Obama isn’t as 100% anti-earmarks as he has claimed. His political experience (though not as pathetic as Palin’s) is not as great as some other candidates’. He has played hardball politics behind the scenes while playing Mr. Nice Guy in front of the cameras. And Biden? Well, he’s offended people on both side of the political divide (which kind of makes me wanna like him…).
In a sense, none of this matters. Why? Because the issues are, I submit, not the primary reason most people vote the way they do. I don’t have research to back this up, but I’d lay good money on it: People vote mostly because of identity. The issues matter to some people a lot, and to most people a little, but the big factor is identity1. We vote because voting is both a demonstration and a reminder of who we are.
The commonsense model of how people decide whom to vote for might be like this:1. Investigate issues
2. Investigate parties/candidates
3. Vote for best match
Or something like that. And that’s how it should work. The world would be a better place, if it did. But it’s backward, if you’re looking at how things actually work. Here is how I think people really vote:
1. Self-identity. You know, a knowledge of who we are. This knowledge is often implicit (not conscious), and it’s not as firm as we’d like, most of the time. It also involves, perhaps paradoxically, a heavy dose of ongoing awareness of who our social group is, and what their attitudes and opinions are. Most of us work very hard, daily, to maintain the support and approval of our social group (whether near or far away, physical or virtual), and as a result we absorb their attitudes and opinions. This includes both the positions we take on many issues, as well as our ideas about which issues are important, and how to even frame discussions about the issues.
2. Identity confirmation. Ay, here’s the rub. We’re much more concerned with reassuring ourselves of the validity of our cherished ideas of who we are, than we are about the so-called issues. So, we look for candidates who validate our sense of who we are. If we are Republicans, we look for Republicans. If Democrats, we look for a Democrat. If we see ourselves as fiscal conservatives, we find a candidate who makes us feel like a fiscal conservative. If we think we are environmentalists, then we’re gonna vote Green.
Everything after step 2 is a bit of a shameful (but fascinating) mess. Remember; it’s entirely possible to become doggedly supportive of a candidate with no knowledge of issues, whatsoever. So, we engage in a process of selectively ignoring information that makes our already-chosen candidate seem less than ideal (because we identify with that candidate), and paying attention to information that boosts our favorite. What’s more, we filter not only our information, but our sources of information. We stop hanging around with, or conversing with, people who don’t think our candidate (or party or philosophy) is the cat’s pajamas, spending our time, instead, with people who agree with us. This naturally restricts the kinds of information we have access to. We are careful about where we get our news. Liberals generally don’t watch Fox, and conservatives tend to get fed up with MSNBC (and they certainly would never watch Democracy Now).
See why the issues are irrelevant? Even if you could strap conservative voters into dentists’ chairs, tape their eyeballs open, and show them the video evidence of Sarah Palin contradicting her stump speech claims, the opinions probably would not change. Because it’s not about whether she is telling the truth or not, and it’s not about whether she’d be a good Veep (or, heaven forbid, President) or not. It’s about how her supporters feel about themselves when they think about supporting her, and evidence of misrepresentation is unlikely to change that.
The same goes for all the candidates. It takes very little imagination to picture these same mental/emotional processes happening with the die-hard Hillary supporters who would rather see a Republican in office than Barack Obama, or Obama’s own starry-eyed consumers of his message of (perhaps just a teensy bit unrealistic) Hope and Change, or John McCain’s minions, who seem to imagine a new Golden Age of American Prosperity, if only we can get a tough military guy who claims to be a maverick into office. And Ron Paul? No imagination at all is required to envision the rabid, information-independent support from his camp.
Disagree? Fine. Tell me about it. But make sure your alternate theory accounts for this phenomenon, at least: voting patterns and party affiliations “clump together” geographically and organizationally (i.e., within professions), somewhat independent of social class, ethnicity, and other obvious demographics. If people “voted the issues,” this should not happen.
So, even if we elect the person I think gives us the best chance of not flushing ourselves completely down the toilet in the next 4 to 8 years, I firmly believe I have somewhat accurately outlined the individual voting process.
And that’s why we’re screwed.
- The psychologically astute reader will note that I ripped this off from Tajfel & Turner, and that this whole rant is an application of Social Identity Theory [↩]
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