A Bestiary of Voters – Voters 8 to infinity!

Okay, I’ll just finish this up quickly. I mean, God, right? God!



Voter 8, THE WE-NEED-THIRD-PARTIES-TO-FLOURISH VOTER. “Third parties are our best shot at creating a more varied and open political landscape. We have to do everything we can to support them.”

Well, okay. So long as there isn’t at bottom a dogmatic dream that somehow Jill Stein is actually going to be elected prez. It has to be part of a broad and detailed strategy which admits its risks and trade-offs, not hand-waving in the direction of raising consciousness, appeasing conscience, and matching funds.



Voter 9,  THE LESSER-OF-TWO-EVILS, FIGHT-THE-SYSTEM VOTER. “Obama’s not really a progressive, in the sense that he’s not facing in the way we need to go. But if you draw a line from where Romney says he, is to where Obama says he is, that line is pointed in the right direction. That’s important. There is value in selecting the candidate who presents, even deceitfully, as the relatively more populist, the relatively less mesmerised by doctrinaire neoliberal ideology; that’s the happier outcome within the long, awful blow-out wrangle that the US’s population is trying to have with itself down the years. Furthermore, with Obama in the White House, it’s slightly easier to see the systemic nature of our present peril – at least, to see that things are complicated, rather than blaming it on the personalities of a few supervillains at the top. And finally, on the balance of probabilities, the pitfalls which Obama would create for real progressive political struggle will be less dangerous than the ones Romney would create, though we mustn’t be complacent in that crude evaluation of less danger, and try to work out how the dangers will specifically be different.”

It goes without saying, I hope, that voting is never enough. We are knight-errants, darlings, born into this world to redress wrongs, and the ballot booth is but a shady grove where we betimes do water our palfreys.

How does this translate into voting behaviour? Vote Obama anywhere with a hint of swing.



Voter 10,  THE SUPER-GENIUS, ITERATIVE-PATH-TO-SOCIAL-JUSTICE VOTER. “Every administration contributes to the conditions under which the next is established (nudged and strafed from the sides, of course, by factors external to this development). If Obama wins the next term” [this is just for example – I can’t really do the super-genius forecast!!!], “disenchantment will be so acute by the end of his term, we’ll get far-right theocrat Republican trolls in the White House for the next two to four terms. Whereas if Obama loses, Romney won’t be much worse than he would have been, and in four years’ time true centrist Democrat candidates will have a real shot at it.”

I’m pretty suspicious of this kind of thinking, because it risks being just a bit mad and self-mesmerisingly idealistic, but we should at least train for it, try it out speculatively – with multiple pathways, flow-chart thingies – and then perhaps borrow a smidge of those results for a more pragmatic, incrementalist, "who-knows-what-the-future-holds" kinda approach. At the very least, we should assume that the 2016 and 2020 elections are probably (hopefully not, and it’s probably worth fighting tooth and nail to prevent it, but probably) still going to Republicans and Democrats, and try to map various pathways of ratcheting real progress which take into account specific shifting patterns of control involving changes within the state apparatus, corporations, capital, the big parties, the media and the electorate, and to the relations among them, pace the non-starter non-strategy of hoping that minimal gains made during a period of Democratic ascendancy will not quite be wiped out during a period of Democratic ebb. I don't know how this would translate into voting behaviour.



Voter 11, THE SUPER-DUPER-COSMOPOLITAN VOTER. “I’m not just concerned about 300 million Americans. I’m concerned about seven billion people, plus those yet to be born. We don’t have time to play the long game, to struggle for a permanent shift in electoral politics. All we can do is hope to elect the enemy who will destroy us more slowly.”

Hmm. How does such a position translate into voting behaviour? Wow, it’s tricky. You’d prioritise aid, trade and war. There’s even an argument (I think a weak one) that once in power the porous Romney could become permeable to ideas from foreign states and transnational institutions. You might be swayed a little by that infographic that’s been doing the rounds, about how practically the whole world outside the US is rooting for Obama over Romney. The exception being Pakistan. No max score for you, because: murder drones? At the risk of excessive anchoring, I think I might focus on the energy policies of the two candidates. So again, if such a voter believes the election hangs in the balance, it should probably vote for Obama if it lives in any state with a smidge of swing. In super-safe Democrat states it should vote for a third party. However, if it’s confident of a Democrat victory, it should vote for a third party wherever it lives.

Bonus (non-) voter: THE I-AM-NOT-EVEN-A-US-CITIZEN NON-VOTER. “For some reason I just write lengthy blog posts about the US elections. LOL.” Yours truly! See the earlier blog post, WHY I AM NOT VOTING.

A Bestiary of Voters - Voter 7

THE I-DON’T-HAVE-A-CRYSTAL-BALL AMBIVALENT THIRD PARTY VOTER.

“I’m not indifferent because I really believe it won’t make any difference, or only a ‘small’ difference, who wins the election. I’m ambivalent because I don’t want to contribute to, or can’t even start to understand, the kind of difference it will make. I’m ambivalent because I’m in an epistemological grapple-hold. It would take all my energies to fight it, and I still might not get out.”

 Hmm, seems a little convenient, but okay. I think it’s still no reason NOT to vote – only a reason to vote for a third party. (Even if you don’t really much like that third party).

Cf. Stephen Squib on n+1’s Election Preview: “Someone once wrote that you shouldn’t confuse the process of writing somebody’s name on a piece of paper once every four years and dropping it in a box with emancipation. Voting has a part to play in political life, but a limited one, small compared to the importance of fostering communities based on mutual aid, deploying direct action, and practicing solidarity. In this respect, those who loudly insist on not voting or proclaim its meaninglessness are committing the old misty-eyed mistake in reverse: not voting will no more free you than voting will. And the energy spent asserting that the two parties are identical is only well-spent if it leads directly into building some further form of institutional counterpower. Voting is not an overly difficult or time-consuming process—neofascist suppression tactics notwithstanding—at least when compared to planning a march, a boycott, or any other kind of organizing. It’s really closer to making an excellent banner or attending a meeting, activities that probably have a similar return on investment, as individual expenditures, as a trip to the polls does.”

A Bestiary of Voters – Voter 6

God this is dull!

 

THE GREATER-OF-TWO-EVILS, DEMOCRATS-CAN-CHANGE VOTER. “The Democrats need a wake-up call. They need to lose this election. The next time round, maybe they’ll field a candidate we can believe in.”

Yikes. Sounds suspiciously like a position born of pampered privilege, but from my perfumed palanquin I don’t have a problem with that per se. I’d be interested to hear the details. Presumably the associated voting behaviour would be third party in swing states (“the Democrats need to see they’ve lost the election because their supporters have gone to third parties”), and perhaps even Romney in safe states.

A Bestiary of Voters – Voter 5

Okay, those are the really annoying ones out the way, yippee! Now here are literally millions of voting positions I can just about get on board with. I’ll start with the weaker ones though:



THE LESSER-OF-TWO-EVILS, DEMOCRATS-CAN-CHANGE VOTER. “So the Democrats are a right wing party. But they’re still to the left of the Republicans. And if the Democratic Party can hold the White House for another term, and the one after that, and the one after that, and win back Congress, perhaps it can make the slow crawl from the hinterlands of the right back towards the centre, dragging the Republicans behind them. Perhaps it can start to redefine the language and conceptual and emotional repertoire of American political life, and even start to reconnect it with reality.”

Okay, this was nearly in the other category. I find it vastly implausible, but at least it’s a roadmap. How does the lesser-of-two-evils, Democrats-can-change position translate into voting behaviour? If such a specimen believes the election hangs in the balance, it should probably vote for Obama if it lives in any state with a hint of swing. In super-safe Democrat states it should vote for a third party. However, if it’s confident of a Democrat victory (as if), it should vote for a third party wherever it lives.

UPDATE: For an example of a thorough development of such a position, cf. Christopher Glazek at the n+1 Election Preview. Here's a longish excerpt:

"Frustrating though it may be, this election is about the past four years, not the next four. It’s about ratifying the hope of November 2008, protecting the change enacted in March 2010, and rolling back the counterrevolution unleashed later that year. These goals may appear modest, but the effort has cost billions of dollars and has left almost no room for error.

On foreign policy, could Obama have ended the drone program or brought American troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan with greater haste? Not without blunting the Democrats’ newfound national security edge, an advantage that would have delivered the White House to John Kerry in 2004 if he’d had it.

During the financial crisis, could Obama have nationalized the banks, as he did the auto companies, instead of bailing them out? He couldn’t have. TARP was unpopular enough at the time, but not nearly as unpopular as the government’s purchase of GM and Chrysler. The auto rescue, though, is now bearing indispensable electoral fruit; nationalizing the banks would have risked transforming Romney’s image from greedy financier to hero of the resistance. Could Obama have done more to prevent climate change? In fact, the administration’s new fuel efficiency standards for cars do more to combat global warming than anything done by his predecessors—and the achievement depended on circumventing the legislative process through executive order. Could Obama have done more to transform Americans’ views of social justice? The President can’t flip a switch to end bigotry, but polling suggests he did roll back prejudice in the one place he really could: support for gay marriage has increased among African Americans.

On these and other issues, from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to mortgage modification to Palestine to the Supreme Court, the electoral evidence suggests that the President has pursued the correct priorities with nearly as much vigor and almost as much success as our system allows. If this realization leaves the left feeling deflated after four years, its discouragement may recede after eight, when a new—and probably worse—regime will come to power. We do not live in the best of all possible Americas, but we do live in a country whose politics, despite our disappointments, are getting better with each painful victory."

A Bestiary of Voters – Voter 4

THE PEOPLE-CAN’T-HANDLE-PARADOXES NON-VOTER / THIRD-PARTY VOTER. “Wake up, fellow Americans. The founding fathers didn’t foresee the rise of mass membership parties. They didn’t count on the domination of elections by money and by modern media technologies. The American Constitution just doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. [Or some variation thereof.] This is true, but it’s hard! It’s a big leap for most folks to believe it! How will folks ever make that leap if the person who’s telling them goes ahead and votes anyway? Me, I put a premium on the exemplary quality of my actions! People won’t believe me that the electoral system is broken, that there’s no real difference between the main candidates, if I go ahead and vote for one or the other anyway.”

Okay, so this is a little better. But I think we all have a tendency to overestimate the wider social power of the norms we apply to ourselves as individuals. If you really are placing a premium on the exemplary power of a certain principle, you ought to consider how those around you may reinterpret and adapt that principle. You ought to consider the implications of that principle moving through myriad minutely-differentiated social, cultural and institutional contexts.

That sounds a bit obscure! Maybe this is better – you ought to ask yourself, “Who, specifically, am I hoping to persuade? Who have I persuaded so far?”

And of course, you have to have interim goals. For example, in the case of a no-vote or a spoiled ballot, and urging others to follow your example, sometimes the strategy seems to be to erode the duopoly’s democratic mandate. Okay, you may admit, the ways in which elections are funded, covered in the media, and finally determined fully demonstrate that there already is no mandate – but perhaps a mass no show, if it were ever achieved, would . . . what, exactly? UPDATE: Well, this is a start I guess!

It wouldn’t stop government, that’s for tootin’. If you need an example of laughingly easeful governance without mandate, examine the UK over the past two years. The Coalition has treated government like some horrid little Oxbridge picnic-cum-swimming expedition, and democratic mandate like the swimming cozzies they forgot to pack on purpose for that extra fruity frisson. With respect to education, for instance, the British public incontrovertibly elected many more MPs promising to oppose tuition fees than promising to support them, and yet the British public now must pay tuition fees. With respect to healthcare, the Conservatives, despite not even holding a half the House of Commons, have managed to do literally the opposite of what they pledged to do during their campaign – and they haven’t even had to rely on some kind of specialist expert mandate (the medical profession has on the whole fiercely opposed the reforms), to plead changed and extenuating circumstances, or to look awkward or abashed.

I don’t mean “what exactly?” as a snarky rhetorical question; it’s a genuine plea for super-specificity. Who stops voting first? At which elections? What happens next? How do the big, well-funded parties understand what’s happening? How do they respond? Who stops voting next? Etc.!

More later!

A Bestiary of Voters – Voter 3

C’m’ere, li’l’ voter, Lara won’t say anything bad about you . . . HA! GOTCHA! THE GREATER-OF-TWO-EVILS, FIGHT-THE-SYSTEM VOTER. “Elections aren’t a mechanism for change. That’s what grassroot movements are for! America needs a wake-up call. We’ve suffered under Obama, but we’ll really suffer under Romney. The worse things get, the stronger our movement will grow.”

I have no sympathy whatsoever for this little voter. It seems to me to rely on a romanticised and uninterrogated idea of immiseration. But immiseration does not encourage solidarity, let alone the growth and co ordination of a mass movement, except under specific circumstances which do not prevail in the US today. That’s obviously a little sketchy and dogmatic but I don’t want to waste too much time on this one! PS: Ya wanna make somethin’ of it, huh buddy? Send me the link & I will endeavour to respond judiciously & with shrewd charm and perspicacity.

UPDATE: Cf. e.g. Marco Roth at the n+1 Election Preview, considering then ditching such a motive: "A little demon of an old leftist located in some attic of my mind whispers to me that a Romney win might, after all, be the very thing needed to galvanize a true socialist revolution in this country. If the non-union white working classes, or white formerly-working classes, who will continue to vote for Romney in flocks could finally be led to some kind of consciousness of how they screw themselves, time and again, through their continued immiseration, it might be better than four more years of Obama’s faux-liberalism. But the “it must get worse before it gets better” argument comes too easily to those who don’t really have to fear they’ll suffer the worst. I’m not on food stamps. I don’t live in a coastal flood zone, or on land earmarked for gas drilling. Instead of the old line, I’m trying to cultivate something I’ve started to think of as “post-democratic” subjectivity: my meaningful political actions will not occur in the voting booth."

A Bestiary of Voters – Voter 2

THE EXPRESSIVE VOTER / NON-VOTER. “I’m not going to take up some kind of instrumental stance about my vote. I’m going to vote the way I vote [/I’m not going to vote] because that’s the kind of person I am. It’s how I roll. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it any other way. [For instance: I couldn’t bring myself to vote for a murderer.] [Sometimes add: witty and irreverent justification for candidate preference.]” I suspect all these people may secretly be assholes.

A Bestiary Of Voters – Voter 1

Hiya, my apes with apricot eyes!

I’ll start with three four positions I can’t really get on board with:



THE AMBIVALENT NON-VOTER / THIRD PARTY VOTER. “Obama and Romney are both as bad as each other. I don’t want either of them to be my president. So there’s no way I’m voting for either of them.”

See my last post. I think this specimen is all kinds of dumb. Neither candidate is offering to fight for what we deserve as human beings. But who wins has implications for the conditions in which we conduct that fight ourselves.

Preferring one outcome over the other need not undermine fierce opposition to both those outcomes, and to the system which insists on them as the only legitimate outcomes.

Nor should such a preference be conflated with “oh well, at least he’s not as bad as the other guy” defeatism, nor with closing down the imaginative and organisational space in which the really meaningful alternatives ought to flourish. In fact, I suspect the really meaningful alternatives become more meaningful, more minutely concrete, when we develop them in the context of the highly probable triumphs of the status quo in the medium term – when we don’t stake too much on rhetorically downplaying the probability of those triumphs. A kind of simplified, sloganish way of putting all this might be: if I have a chance at influencing who one of my arch-nemeses is going to be, I should take it. More later!