SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL: UNDECIDED, RIGHT-LEANING, LOW-INFORMATION VOTERS

 🎶  "Please allow me to introduce myself..."  🎶

I think I confessed this before in this blog at some point, but now I can't find it because I never kept the blog index updated. 🙄 Plus, out of embarrassment, I likely buried the lead.  

Today I lead with lead:  In 1972 I voted for Richard Nixon.  (I've just lost 95% of my friends...)

It's campaign season again.  Haven't I been remarkably quiet?!?  Yes.  Because exhaustion and overwhelm and hopeless confusion and despondency can take a toll.  And then....everything changes overnight.

A BRIEF BUT NOT-BRIEF-ENOUGH-FOR-A-BLOG-POST HISTORY:

Joe Biden was elected president in 2020.  Kamala Harris was elected with him as Vice President.  They've done lots of good stuff, relatively quietly.  This "old school" way of governing doesn't have a chance in this digital, online age where the most clicks and loudest outrages steal the spotlight.  But they decided to run again in 2024. 

In the former president we have a master narcissist whose reason for being is to be in the spotlight -- no matter how outrageous the attention-seeking behavior is.  For example, refusing to concede his losing election in 2020 and then fomenting an insurrection against the government on January 6, 2021, when Congress was tasked with verifying the election prior to Inauguration.  Even out of office (where ex-presidents usually disappear into Presidential Libraries and old news clips) he has dominated the media with legal proceedings against him: court cases, lawsuits, convictions, conspiracy theories, racist and sexist proclamations, and more and always more crazy crap spewing forth from his mouth and Twitter account (now X, and/or his own ironically entitled Truth Social media platform.)   Oh and he's also running for president again this year because the current Republican Party seems to have lost its mind and soul to the far-right demagogue of the day.  But I digress...

By June the Biden campaign was fighting the public perception that Joe Biden, at 80 years old, was perhaps not entirely up to the job anymore.  There had been an obvious decline in physical stamina and at times even evidence of confusion and slowness in speech.  So they decided to call for an early debate on June 27 between him and his opponent to put all of that ageist poppycock to rest.  Oops.  Biden had an "off night". Early in the debate, the lunatic one came across as fairly coherent and on-topic while Joe looked and sounded just this side of catatonic.  As the debate went on, Joe got better and the other guy more outrageous, but the die was cast.  Almost immediately there were calls for President Biden to step down.  He refused.  He dithered.  Then a month later, on July 21, he announced he was discontinuing his campaign and endorsing Vice President Harris to carry on.

What?!?  It is unheard of for a politician to give up power and he clearly didn't want to.  But he became convinced that he might lose to the other guy, a disaster for democracy.  He put democracy first.  One hopes his example will inspire others.  One is doubtful.  Anyway...

Harris stepped into the campaign for president like a rocket taking off for outer space.  All the Dems got behind her (no in-fighting for a change) and it's been off to the races ever since.  She's raised massive amounts of money in no time, fills stadiums at her rallies, has a plethora of special interest groups organically Zooming together to support her (starting with Black Women for Harris, Answer the Call/White Women for Harris, White Dudes for Harris, Comedians for Harris, Republicans for Harris, and on and on...).  Voter registration spiked after mega-star Taylor Swift endorsed her and urged her Swifties to register.  The Dem convention was a love-fest of progressive supporters -- including the other guy's former staffers who loudly declare him unfit for office after having worked with him.   I mean, this is great for our side, right?  Not so much. 

As of today, the race is a statistical dead heat.  Which is demoralizing to say the least.  And so...

BACK TO 1972:

As a woman who has grown over the decades into a what I think of as a Pragmatic Progressive Democrat, I confessed at the outset of this post that wasn't always the case.  I grew up in a blue collar, midwestern, manufacturing small city where I knew exactly one Democrat who was super excited when John F. Kennedy visited our town during the 1960 campaign.  Most people I knew were afraid that the Pope would tell him what to do if he was president (our first Catholic president), so they said they 'wouldn't walk across town' to see him.  I was nearly 10 years old in November 1960 when JFK eeked out a win. I didn't really understand politics at all.  I was old enough to know more and better in 1972, but I didn't.  

In 1972 I was 21, newly married, and had been working in the office of a steel fabrication plant in my hometown since I was 18.  I was focused on playing house in my tiny newlywed apartment, making chicken fried streak in my new olive green Sunbeam electric frying pan, and bowling every Wednesday night on the "Ladies League" of my workplace.  I was aware of, and peripherally flirted with, the whole "hippie" thing for a minute in 1970ish.  But I had not gone to college out of high school, so that was not really part of my blue collar world.  My world was my office where men were the bosses, women sat in a "typing pool", pantsuits for women were a new thing and slightly scandalous, and grown men flirting and oogling me was a daily occurrence.  I smiled and felt complimented one day when one guy approached me and asked me to stand up and turn around slowly for him so he could 'check out my dress' as something he might want to buy for his wife.  Sure.

All I really knew of the 1972 election was that I could finally vote.  That seemed cool.  I was an adult!  And I was a Republican.  Whatever that meant.  Mostly for me it just meant that my parents said they were Republican and had voted for all the Republican presidents, as did every other adult I knew.  So I did too. Yay!  Talk about low-information voter.  

I know now that Watergate was already a scandal in the making, that Nixon was already suspect in nefarious goings on.  I know now that with a bit more education, exposure to the wider world, and any curiosity at all beyond my own self-centered life I could have clued in to the error of casting my vote for the "crook".  I did not know any of that.  I didn't pay attention.  I didn't care.

A year later we moved from our conservative home town and into Chicago.  I worked in a university-affiliated teaching hospital, started college at 22 years old, and met people from all over the world. My political sensibilities matured considerably, almost over night.  I finally started to know what I hadn't known about the world -- and myself (hello, feminism.)

CURRENT EVENTS:

It seems impossible in today's world to be so sheltered, disinterested, and uninformed.  Those, like me, who follow politics daily and in great detail, who are passionate activists and champions of progressive values like compassion, inclusion, fairness, equity, etc etc have a hard time believing there could be anyone without a strong conviction about this election.  The choice is so incredibly stark.  

But, the undecideds and "independents" will determine the outcome of this horserace.  The true blue Dems will vote; the MAGA devotees will vote.  Others, who have tuned out the noise, have no interest or understanding of how their everyday lives are dramatically impacted by who wins, may or may not vote.  If they do, maybe it will be an impulsive vote, a vote based on some vague affiliation with one party or the other with no real commitment to that party's values and visions.  Maybe as a lark they will write in their own name, or Taylor Swift's.  That vote will "count" too -- as a vote stolen from a viable candidate, possibly skewing the outcome.

I could get on my soapbox here about the sacrament of voting, of how our country has fought wars to ensure our democracy, about how securing voting rights for women and black folks was a battle with many victims.  To ignore, to throw that way, to denigrate those sacrifices with indifference is a sin.  And yet....didn't I do the same?

I have been doing all I can this campaign season to Get Out the Vote.  Yes, I've sent money to my preferred candidates and have done some local candidate support activities like sign waving and leafletting.  I've talked to everyone about my support of Harris and why.  But mostly my efforts (voter registration, Get Out the Vote postcards and letters to swing states) have been non-partisan.  I love democracy.  I love encouraging an informed electorate to just please VOTE!

When I explained this to my 9 y/o granddaughter she astutely observed, "But what if they vote for that other guy?"  And I had to say, in all honesty,  "Yes, they might.  But if they really and truly think he is the absolute best person to lead and represent our country, well, I have to still urge them to vote."  I want a free and fair democracy.  I will work for it.  Now that I know better.

And I will proudly wear my "Read, Think, Vote" baseball cap along with my "Harris for President" t-shirt.

At least, that's the view from here...©

Song reference in title and first line:  One of my fave Rolling Stones songs, "Sympathy for the Devil" (which no doubt most of you were cool enough to recognize).   Not that I think low information voters are the devil exactly, but uninformed voters (like me in 1972) can elect a devil.  Beware.  Be informed.  Be for democracy.

Photo Credit:  From the internet; not sure who to credit, but thanks.

(P.S. I don't know how history will unfold.  If we retain a democracy with freedom of the press at all, my dear grandchildren, you may read about all of this in your history books.  If not, well, history may not be even close to the truth at all.  Autocracy and repression are dangerous foes. I hope we defeat them.  If not, hide this book under your mattress and know that I tried my best for your future.  💙)