Category Archives: Random Blogging

The “Good Enough” Voter

It’s a political truism that Labor Day is when voters wake up and start paying attention to candidates and campaigns. But for the sizable portion of the citizenry that doesn’t vote, Labor Day–yesterday– just marks the beginning of fall.

In the run-up to this year’s municipal elections, I’ve participated in a number of conversations about these people who don’t vote–those who just skip local elections, turning out only in Presidential years and those who don’t participate at all.

As part of our upcoming “Electing the Future” project, NUVO and WFYI have focused on those non-voters. The whole committee of sponsors has searched for examples, in order to ask the obvious question: why?

The results have been interesting. Many of the people we found who admitted to never voting were unwilling to “come out” and be identified; they were obviously embarrassed, a response that suggests they know they are evading a civic responsibility. What was interesting is that they had the same excuse as those who were willing to participate in the effort we’ve dubbed “Make Me Care.” They explained that they “didn’t know enough” to feel confident about their votes.

Of course, it’s pretty obvious that many, many people who know very little nevertheless make it to the polls. (Just look at the open-ended responses to exit polls..) But using the excuse of civic ignorance raises a pretty important question, namely, what degree of information is necessary to make one a “good enough” voter?

The ideal voter, of course, would know a great deal about the candidates, the offices for which they are running, and the issues that are relevant to those offices, but very few of us meet that standard. One shortcut–used by a large number of voters–is party affiliation; if you know which political party stands for positions with which you generally agree, voting for members of that party is usually a safe way to express your general policy preferences.

In this internet era, a quick visit to the websites of the candidates will show what issues those candidates believe are important, and their approach to those issues and to the offices they seek.

Ultimately, of course, we all have to look at the candidates and judge whether they seem intent on improving the city (or state or nation), or whether they seem to be waging campaigns that are all about them. What does your gut tell you? Is this someone who wants to do something, or someone who wants to be someone?

Making that determination, and voting for the candidate who seems more interested in and capable of doing the job than in being important, probably makes you a “good enough” voter. And goodness knows, we need a lot more of those!

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The Times They are A-Changing…Maybe

I spend a lot of time–way too much, actually–scanning the news and following current policy debates. Part of that is my job; when you teach in a school of public affairs you are expected to keep abreast of those affairs. Part of it is morbid curiosity.

Anyone who is surveying the current American landscape  can certainly find plenty of reasons to be depressed, and I share many of those reasons on this blog. But here and there it is also possible to detect more positive signs, indications of a counter-narrative to the anti-intellectualism, nativism and fundamentalism that makes sound policy so difficult. (I  realize that many of our more shrill ideologues don’t consider these omens good news…)

If, as many historians suggest, there is a political pendulum that moves America from Left to Right and back again, we may be seeing the leading edge of a swing back from the far, far Right where it has been for several years, back toward the rational center. 

Recently, the Upworthy site posted eleven reasons to be optimistic about America’s future. The list began by noting that, a mere eleven years ago, only one state (Massachusetts) had marriage equality; now all of them do.

For all of the hysteria over the Affordable Care Act–aka “Obamacare”–the number of uninsured Americans has declined over 30%. The teen pregnancy rate is the lowest it has been in 25 years. The smoking rate has been cut in half.  Life expectancy is up.

Unemployment is down, and efforts to raise the minimum wage are beginning to gain traction. The use of renewable energy, especially solar energy, has grown significantly, and a majority of Americans take climate change seriously and want government to address it.

Like previous “Great Awakenings,” the most recent wave of extreme religiosity has abated considerably; the latest survey results from Pew find nearly 25% of Americans unaffiliated. Bernie Sanders draws enormous crowds of voters concerned with growing inequality. Activists have mounted an energetic effort to pass a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. New movements like Black Lives Matter are bringing needed attention to the persistence and consequences of American racism.

Even in the Middle East, there are signs that should encourage us. Reuters reports that thousands of ordinary Iraqis have taken to the streets of Baghdad to protest government corruption and to demand a secular state and an end to Sunni or Shia control of government.

There’s much more.

Genuine social change doesn’t come peacefully, of course. We may be in for a rough time, not unlike the turbulent 60s. But surely, a measure of social unrest is preferable to continued acquiescence with inequality, plutocracy and fundamentalism.

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If You Think Immigration is an Issue Now, Just Wait….

The Donald’s anti-immigration rhetoric and ridiculous “policy” prescriptions–discussed here yesterday–have highlighted the resentment and nativism with which far too many of us respond to newcomers to our shores. It’s embarrassing, but hardly unique to America. Just look at the recent international headlines, detailing Europe’s response to the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

In the wake of those mounting conflicts in Europe, the Brookings Institution considered not just the dislocations and social issues involved, but the reasons for human movement across political borders. (Hint: those reasons aren’t likely to abate.)

One “take away” from the lengthy and somewhat abstruse paper:

Consider the potential effects of the recent IPPCC projections of a 4 degree Celsius rise in temperature expected by the end of the 21st century in the absence of aggressive mitigation. Then agricultural lands would be displaced by 1,000 km from the equator and sea level would rise another 70 centimeters by the end of the century, or about 3.5 times the rise in sea level over the past 150 years. This would put in jeopardy the 44 percent of world population currently living within 150 km from the coastline. Abstracting from other likely disastrous side effects (acidification of oceans, loss of biodiversity, possibility of life collapse), can we adapt to such changes? Since 72 percent of the population and 90 percent of world GDP is located on 10 percent of the Earth’s land, there is ample room for people to move if they are allowed to.

Translation: climate change is going to motivate massive movements of people across the globe. We can accommodate that movement physically, but unless something changes current highly protective attitudes about national sovereignty–unless we rethink the reflexive tribalism that currently motivates policies about immigration– political accommodation and assimilation will be much more difficult.

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You’ve REALLY Got to Hate Brown People….

Politico recently calculated the cost of Donald Trump’s oh-so-realistic immigration plan. It came to 166 Billion dollars. (Billion with a B.)

I guess when you’re rich and delusional, a billion here and there isn’t daunting, but really– are the Republicans who are cheering Trump on really prepared to pay that much money to deport the people who–among other things– are picking their vegetables?

Here’s Politico’s breakdown– the price tag for each of Trump’s immigration policies:

• Mass deportation: $141.3 billion
• Triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers: $8.4 billion per year
• Building the wall: At least $5.1 billion (not including yearly maintenance)
• Nationwide E-Verify system: $2.15 billion
• Visa-tracking system: $7 billion
• Mandatory detention: $1.7 billion

These are just the cash outlays; the total doesn’t include the higher prices of produce and other economic “hits” to an economy that depends much more on the exploitation of undocumented workers than we–or The Donald– like to admit.

This is only one of Trump’s spectacularly stupid positions, of course.

Although it is really difficult to choose a favorite idiocy (and increasingly difficult to distinguish satire from reality), my favorite to date has to be this gem, uttered during an interview with Bill O’Reilly (who, next to Trump, actually looked reasonable): in a discussion of the Fourteenth Amendment provision granting “birthright citizenship” to children born in the U.S., Trump said that the Fourteenth Amendment “would never hold up in court.”

Putting aside the obvious–Trump doesn’t understand the difference between a Constitutional provision and a statute (or the operation of the American legal system, with the exception of bankruptcy law)–this effort by nativists to eliminate birthright citizenship has been embraced by a number of Republicans. Including Indiana Governor Mike Pence when he was in Congress.

A recent interview with WRTV included discussion of Pence’s sponsorship of the “Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009,” a bill to “redefine” birthright citizenship to prevent children born in the U.S. of immigrant parents from being considered citizens. (Fortunately, like virtually everything then-Congressman Pence sponsored during his tenure in Congress, the bill went nowhere.) Most Hoosiers had been unaware of Pence’s assault on that part of the 14th Amendment until Trump’s antics focused attention on the issue.

As for Trump–I don’t object to the spectacle of an yet another un-self-aware, self-aggrandizing, self-parodying jerk running for President. What freaks me out is that this one is currently leading the GOP pack.

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An “Extra Long” Campaign…”

Okay–I am seriously considering a move to Canada.

A good friend who recently vacationed in Vancouver thoughtfully brought me a copy of the Vancouver Sun. The paper was thick with news and commentary, making me nostalgic for the days when we, too, had a real newspaper, but that wasn’t the reason for the gift.

The reason was the headline–first page, above the fold: “Long campaign officially on.”

Long, in Canada, is eleven weeks. Actually, that is “extra long”–an opinion piece in the same paper was titled “Harper bets extra-long campaign will favor Tories.” A few lines are illuminating:

With the longest federal election campaign in our modern history now grinding into motion, despite the electorate being mostly still in flip-flop and barbecue mode…

Harper’s decision to opt for more than twice the minimum 37-day length for a campaign held hints for what’s ahead….

Saturation media, especially web video, de facto makes this more a popularity contest than any previous election in our history…

Contrast that to the nonstop coverage of an American election that is fourteen months away. Here in the US of A, we are already being “saturated” with reports from the Iowa State Fair and the results of New Hampshire polls; partisans are already training their guns on opponents and digging for scandals. Obscenely rich power brokers are launching SuperPacs and spending unthinkable amounts of money to elect people who will preserve their government subsidies and tax loopholes.

And unless we can crawl into a cave somewhere, we won’t be able to escape any of it.

It is highly unlikely that the additional year of campaigning will make us a more deliberate or informed electorate than Canada’s. It’s more likely to make us crazier.

Canada has universal healthcare, great public transportation and short election campaigns. Sounds like heaven to me…

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