Each work day, I listen to one or two podcasts as I drive to and from the university. My go-to podcasts each morning were the FiveThirtyEight specials. In the end, Nate Silver and his team were correct: the election followed the polling data and there were only a handful of surprises (which weren’t statistically “shocking” by any metric).
The Republicans deserved to lose the House. I wanted to post on that before the election, but work and family left little time for sleep — much less the long list of blog posts I wanted to write this semester.
What does my “I’m too busy to blog” whining have to do with the election and politics? A lot, actually.
Compared to most people I know, I am a political junkie. I listen to podcasts, watch some (declining amount) of cable news-talk, and read voraciously about history, politics, and economics. Yet, I’m disengaged from any activism and don’t have any passion for any current leaders.
Self-identified (and mistakenly so) Democratic Socialists are passionate, at least within already progressive congressional districts and Democratic-leaning states. They cannot answer realistically how they would pay for any of their ideas and they seem primarily motivated by jealousy and envy… but they are motivated. They are the Phoenix of the Occupy Wall Street movement, ironically supported by the wealthiest of progressives.
Donald Trump’s base is also passionate. Sadly, many are motivated by fear of everything unfamiliar. They are not conservatives or libertarians or classical liberals. No, the Trump supporters are “social conservatives” in the old Dixiecrat version of the phrase. They are afraid of becoming a minority and afraid of the nature of the United States is changing too quickly. These are not deep thinkers from any intellectual tradition, nor are they led by an intellectually curious president.
Most Americans are neither extreme. Statistically, we remain a nation of centrists with conflicting and inconsistent views of government. We hate taxes, we like the perks we receive. We hate Big Government, while often looking to government to solve problems. We are a muddled nation, and so the passionate fringes with strong ideas end up battling it out while the majority bounces along.
I’m opposed to socialism (the economic model, as opposed to general social welfare policies), and I’m definitely opposed to and offended by Trump and many Republicans who share his fears and paranoia.
And so, I voted half-heartedly. I voted for people from three parties and wasn’t pleased with any of my choices. I wasn’t glued to the television late into the night and I was neither happy nor sad with the results.
I’m glad we have a divided federal government. We only seem to have oversight with divisions of power.
Sadly, the Republicans and Democrats I would not support are the most likely to remain in office because we’ve sorted ourselves. The centrists in the suburbs are drifting slightly to the Democrats. That might change if the Democrats drift too far left.
In the end, my daily life doesn’t change much based on the power brokers in Washington, D. C.
It is my township, borough, county, and state that maintain the government services I encounter daily. For many voters, that’s the case. The federal government becomes an abstraction, onto which we cast our biases.
The federal government is broke, but neither party has a plan for restricting spending, raising revenues, and preventing eventual problems. Neither party is realistic about international relations. Neither party is realistic about much of anything if you listen to their campaigns. And once in office, the status quo is largely maintained, no matter the team in charge.
Health care is the one large exception, and even that change has been less radical than expected.
When you look to both parties and conclude they are both spending us into oblivion, making promises that cannot be kept, it is difficult to feel good about the state of national politics.
The Republican Party deserves to implode. The Democratic Party is on the verge of its own civil war. In both cases, the passionate few are driving the parties away from a true national majority. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fate of the California Republicans spread across the nation. And then, the Democrats will decline in registration and loyalty, too.
We have loud, obnoxious, toxic politics that appeals to core voters while driving the rest of us to streaming video services on election nights.
Of course, I know I’ll be following along from now until November 2020, and I’ll likely keep following elections after that. There’s some part of me that’s waiting for the radical centrist leaders I can support.
Can you be a passionate moderate?
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