I had another post planned for today, but I just saw something in my Facebook feed that made me do a double take. It’s from a post at Down With Tyranny, a blog run by my friend Howie Klein. This post is not his, however; it’s written by Ken, whose last name I won’t share, because he doesn’t share it on the blog.
To repeat: Dems and R's don't "swing" a lump of voters back and forth; they compete for different "independents"
Ken apparently takes issue with the very concept of the swing voter, and asserts the following, in a rehash of one of his previous posts on the same blog:
(I disagree with the assumption) that the same voters, not to be confused with the same percentages, flipped D to R. Some did, no doubt. But to a large extent, it wasn't the same independents in the D column in 2008 and the R column in 2010. An awful lot of the "D independents" from 2008 stayed home in 2010, and "R independents" who hadn't shown up in 2008 returned to the polls in 2010.
Though the above is extremely misguided, Ken then asserts the following:
This seems so clear that I'm astonished how many political "insiders" don't seem to know it. And it's important, because on this misunderstanding rest a whole series of disastrously misguided policy choices. So I was delighted to see one of the smartest writers I'm familiar with, Dave Johnson, tackle this very subject in a "Speak Out California!" blogpost called "The Elusive "Swing" Vote."
Okay, let me stop there for a minute.
This is the problem with many on the left, in a nutshell. “This seems so clear…” doesn’t mean the same as “this is a fact.” You THINK people don’t do that. For some reason, you can’t conceive of people doing that. You can’t imagine anyone voting for Obama in 2008 and then switching their vote to a Republican in 2010. That you can’t envision such a thing certainly doesn’t make such assertions fact.
If we’re going to go anecdotal here, I can tell you that the vast majority of the people I know are “swing voters.” Sometimes, they have no allegiance to either party. Sometimes, they think both parties suck. Quite often, they tend to hold the issues and the person in higher esteem than the party, so they vote for the person they think is most likely to do the best job. Sometimes that’s a Democrat, and sometimes that’s a Republican. It’s also sometimes an “independent” candidate, as Jesse Ventura can attest.
I would also point out that all of his assumptions are based on a black/white analysis of who populates the political parties. I'll get into this more later, but a Democrat in Nebraska is NECESSARILY more conservative than a Democrat in Harlem. Likewise, Republican candidates in most parts of Maryland, where I live, have to be a lot more moderate here to survive. Therefore, this concept of an absolute left-right axis is problematic on any level. This may come as a shock to some, but most races are not a race between Alan Grayson and Rick Santorum. Most races between Republicans and Democrats are between two people who are not all that incredibly far apart.
Swing voters are a fact of life. Switching between Republican and Democrat isn't usually as stark a choice as Ken makes it out to be. It really isn't always a choice between clear good and clear evil. That's the problem with black/white thinking; it clouds judgment.
Here is what Dave Johnson says about swing voters in his post linked in Ken's quote above:
Have you heard of the "Moveable Middle?" This is the idea that there are voters on the left who will always vote on the left, and voters on the right, who will always vote on the right, and then there are voters between them who switch back and forth. They are called "swing voters."
So the idea in politics is that in order to win elections you have to take positions that appeal to these voters, and they will "switch" and vote for you instead of for the other side. This is a fundamental mistake. (emphasis in original)
And here is Ken’s comment on that:
"No voters 'switch,'" Dave insists, which seems to me an overstatement. I'll bet some voters switch -- you'll always find anecdotal evidence of this. (TV reporters seem especially adept at finding them.) But again, voters who switch almost certainly don't account for a significant portion of the "swing" among "independent" voters.
Again, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept “swing” voter that all of them are “independents.” They are not. They run the gamut. George W Bush couldn’t have stolen two elections without a significant number of Democrats voting for him. And do I dare mention "Reagan Democrats"?
I also take issue with the notion that the number of swing voters isn’t “significant.” The number of swing voters doesn’t have to be a huge percentage to make a difference, especially in a national election where the winning candidate usually gets between 51-54% of the vote and the losing major party candidate usually gets between 45-48%. A swing of 3-5% can and usually is enough to decide an election. Does it really seem beyond belief that 10-20% of the population can be persuaded in either direction?
Then, Ken continues to quote Dave Johnson’s post:
There are not voters who "swing"; there are left voters and right voters in this middle segment who either show up and vote or do not show up and vote, and this causes this "swing" segment to swing.
The lesson to learn: You have to deliver for YOUR part of that swing segment or they don't show up and vote for you. That is what makes the segment "swing."
Any Democrat politician who thinks that any conservative will vote for any Democrat, no matter how far right they move, is learning the wrong lesson. All that does is cause your voters in that swing segment to turn away from you, and stay away from the polls.
Though Ken agrees with this, the above is the most incredibly simple-minded analysis I have ever seen on swing voters.
Yes, it’s true; a number of swing voters DO stay away from the polls quite often, if BOTH candidates are unappealing, or if both have pissed them off, or refuse to discuss the issues that matter, or any number of other reasons. Republicans count on this sort of thing, which is why they “go negative.” It’s also why act stupidly when we go negative back at them. It’s what they want; when we go negative, we FEED the right wing’s strategy, and make them giddy. The best way to guarantee Republican victory in any election is for the left to trash Democrats.
But while that “stay away” demographic represents a significant portion of the voting population, it’s certainly not the whole story. In fact, the above defies common sense. Have some liberals become so immersed in their own ideology that they can’t even conceive of anything except in terms of “left” and “right,” politically speaking? The middle is the middle, and while some lean to the right or left, in that they don’t relate to either extreme, the fact of the matter is, most of the people in the political middle see both sides, or see neither side, and think for themselves.
Is it really so hard for some to imagine that there are people who vote for the man, and not the party? Well, I hate to break it to liberals like Ken and Dave, but they represent a significant number of voters, if not the majority. Right now, I cannot vote for a Republican, because to do so gives the wrong people too much power. But why is it so difficult to imagine that some people put principle ahead of ideology?
This is why the progressive side of the political debate is standing on the sidelines; a significant portion of us don’t understand how voters think. The fact that we have two liberals – and at least one of them is of above-average intelligence (I don’t know Dave) – suggesting that a voter who will switch between parties from election to election is a rare commodity demonstrates our problem.
Let me point out a few things:
- The number of potential swing voters exist in greater numbers than the left and right wings combined. (Note I said “wings,” and not “liberals” and “conservatives.”)
- Conservatives vote for Democrats all of the time; this the problem with conflating the definition of “conservative” and “right winger” and not noting a difference. One of the reasons we have Blue Dogs in Congress is because Democrats have no choice but to appeal to conservatives in many districts around the country.
- Democrats move right because that’s where they perceive their base of support to be coming from.
That last one is really important, and it represents the greatest barrier to developing the progressive majority we all claim we want for this country. There seems to be a sense that, if progressives bitch loudly and consistently enough from the political fringe, politicians will come over to the fringe to see what is wrong, and to give us what we want to make us happy. Unfortunately, like believing that swing voters are largely a fictional concept, so is the idea that politicians will ever venture to the far left to win an election.
Politicians naturally gravitate to the side that SUPPORTS them. If you think about it, such a thing is human nature. If someone doesn’t like me, they don’t like me; I don’t worry about it much. The reason is simple; there are many others out there to choose from; I can waste my time trying to figure out why people who don’t like me don’t like me, or I can look for people who think the way I do, or whom I might get to think the way I do.
Political candidates in this country have to get 50% of the vote plus one. That means they have to appeal to the greatest number of people. Both major candidates have a base that they must appeal to, and they have to add on to that without alienating too much of their base. Unfortunately for liberals, while the Democratic base includes most minority groups, it doesn’t include white liberals for the most part. Why, you ask? Because they don’t get any SUPPORT from white lefties. Apparently, we’re only happy voting for candidates who say everything we want to hear, without exception, and that’s not a level of support that politicians can feel comfortable with. So, they move to the right because they need support they can count on.
If you want the politics in this country to move to the left, you’ll have to start supporting politicians when they move in that direction, even if they don’t move far enough or fast enough for your tastes. Moving forward at 10 miles per hour certainly beats moving backward at any speed.
If progressives are ever going to have political success, at some point we have to learn how the political system actually works. The far left and far right are both small minorities in this country, and the political MIDDLE determines who wins and loses elections. And the people who actually determine the winner are swing voters. And there are a lot of them. There truly are a lot of voters who don’t care who’s in charge, as long as they do their job right.
The fact that many liberals (Ken and Dave are certainly NOT alone) can’t relate to anyone who isn’t completely ideologically motivated points to the single most significant problem with the progressive movement to date; we don’t relate to the average voter. If we can’t imagine what it must be like to simply want competent leadership in the government, without regard to their underlying political leanings, then we will never be able to gain the majority we need to move us in a progressive direction?
It’s time to stop overthinking “politics” and start thinking about people for a change.
