Low Information Voters and Republican Strategy

Some of the most distressing descriptions of American citizens I've read lately have been detailed by two retired Congressional staffers, one a 28-year veteran of the Republican party and the other who worked for a moderate Democrat. These are not people on the fringes of the right or left. And now that they have retired, they feel free to write what they really believe, what they have actually experienced and observed. This is what Mike Lofgren, who served 28 years as a Congressional staffer and "16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees," writes :

There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

Lofgren goes on to describe how "the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends." People who think government doesn't work decide that their vote doesn't count, too. And so they stay home while the far-right minority, "whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News" increases its clout in elections. This strategy of weakening trust in government institutions to create citizen malaise goes hand in hand with another Republican strategy, that of disenfranchising voters who are more likely to vote Democratic:

Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies)**; by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

Lofgren says that other folks are very upfront about these strategies:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption [the more recent Republican strategy to filibuster every confirmation and routine procedural motion] .... By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

 So what Republicans cannot succeed in doing by rigorous debate of the issues and communication of those issues to constituents, they plan to win by subterfuge and destruction of democratic institutions. Again, this is not some leftie talking; this is a guy who witnessed Republican strategy for years from the bullpen and who mourns the demise of Republican virtue (if virtue exists in politics). He is no supporter of President Obama, he says, but he wanted Obama to succeed in the worst economic crisis the country has faced in years because he wanted his country to succeed. The Republicans--those leading now--want the country to fail so that Obama will fail. The country fails, millions of Americans suffer--but they will blame the current president. Why? Because they are low information voters who have no idea how government works.

The second negative description of American citizens comes from a Congressional staffer who worked for years for a moderate Democrat. This staffer wrote in response to James Fallows' post about Mike Lofgren's essay.

The mainstream media absolutely fails to understand how little attention average Americans really pay to what goes on in all forms of government. During our 2008 race, our pollster taught me (hard to believe it took me 24 years to learn this) that the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress. All the millions of dollars of TV ads, all the thousands of robo-calls and door-knocks, and it all comes down to having a message that will stick in the voters' minds during the 5 minutes before they walk into the voting booth.

 Although the pollster mentioned above is referring to Congressional races, I grimaced a little when I read how inattentive voters are in making their choices. While I understand my own ideals and how those ideals have affected my voting record in national elections and state level elections, I have been less attentive to local elections. Yet that's where many politicians get their start, in their being elected to the school board or to mayor. From the city level, they may go to the state level and then the national level--though, more often than not these days, the already-rich jump directly to representing us at the state and national level.

If anything should convince those disaffected voters to get out to vote, this should: there are people hoping that you won't vote so that their ability to whip up the anger and fear of the fringe will have a stronger impact. And that's not good for our country...or for ordinary Americans.

**I have read that the push in Wisconsin to close Department of Motor Vehicles offices has been tabled. A spokesman said that there was no intention to shut down offices in Democratic constituencies, but a Democratic spokesman said that a look at which offices were planned to be shut down counters that claim. However, a recent Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles memo came to light in which employees were directed to provide material when people ask for the free ID but that they should not readily provide information if not asked. So it's pretty clear what the intent is.

More on the Wisconsin voter ID conflict: This guy evidently should have used his personal e-mail to send out his message, but....."Wisconsin Employee Fired for E-mail Defying Voter ID Policy," posted on TPM. More at the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: "State Employee Fired After Telling Co-Workers about Photo ID Policy," 8 Sept. 2011.

Antidotes for Angst and Despair

For days, weeks even, I have been thinking of trying to address as honestly and straightforwardly as I can why I usually support liberal causes over conservative causes and why I have become increasingly cynical about politics and the possibilities of change in the way we are governed.  I envisioned a series of such exploratory posts, and yesterday I wrote the first one, addressing my changing perspective on religion. And then I lost the entire post because I was using the updated Blogger interface, which evidently doesn't save drafts automatically as the older interface does. Or perhaps the loss of the post was due to some error of my own. Whatever the cause,  nothing I could do resulted in my being able to retrieve the lost essay. So I surrendered to the capriciousness of technology and took a walk instead. Later I recorded some details of that walk with photos and a post that turned out quite differently than I had originally intended.

I have found, however, that experiencing--and recalling--details of the natural world helps me maintain perspective when confronted with political landscapes where alliances are constantly shifting, where people say what they don't believe, don't believe what they say, say they believe what facts and figures can't support, or massage facts and figures to conclude what they wish from them, or just make up stuff and hope that saying it over and over will convince people of its veracity. (Unfortunately, research shows that this last strategy works.)

So a day when I get online and read that even a career Republican Congressional staffer thinks that the Republican party is now "full of lunatics" or that "the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress," I know that's a day I need to leave despair at the keyboard and get outside.

A camera can be distracting if I am constantly snapping photos so that the initial experience is distanced and delayed to later viewing. But having a camera in hand can also help me to focus on sights I might otherwise overlook: the mushroom covered in tiny brown fibers that look like furry hair, the fly with red eyes perched on an autumn-blooming flower, the photography-worthy gate to one's neighbor's yard, slender green limbs heavy with purple beauty berry, a dragonfly posing patiently on a blue-black salvia bloom. Just small moments of awe and beauty can help restore my equilibrium.

However, I'm afraid that all my antidotes to angst and despair--immersing myself in the natural world, gardening, crafting things, writing--have limited efficacy and must be administered frequently. The next news cycle requires another dose.

 For an enlarged view of the dragonfly I photographed today on my patio, click on the photo.

After the Storm

Tropical Storm Lee has finally left Louisiana after days of dropping copious amounts of rain. At our house, we received just a little less than 11 inches of rain. What remains is wind, lots of cool wind brought in by a cool, dryer front colliding with the warm moist air of Lee. Our cats can be seen sniffing the air and walking in and out the front door, which we propped open in order to enjoy this uncharacteristically cool air at the end of summer in South Louisiana.  The cooler north wind brings with it, perhaps, unfamiliar scents and a hint of fall, both welcome after four days of rain.

Like the cats, my husband and I also ventured out to sniff the air, to enjoy the cool breeze, and to appreciate the subtle signs of fall. The sky was still overcast when we left the house to walk through our neighborhood and along a paved trail, but by the time we returned, the clouds were on their way out, headed to Georgia and the Appalachians.

More Irony

I don't get cable anymore, so I'm evidently missing out on a whole host of reality television shows turned bad--not that I ever was a fan of reality shows, in the first place. First there was the poor guy who had appeared on that "Housewives" show who hung himself after his wife filed for divorce. How horrible! And now here's Stephen Seagal with his little reality show, Steven Seagal: Lawman. I mean, it's funny how actors like this (the Chuck-Norris syndrome) take themselves so seriously. Here is Steven Seagal playing lawman with that controversial sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, Joe Arpaio. Evidently, alongside Sheriff Joe Arpaio, ol' Seagal raided a guy's home for alleged animal cruelty (cock-fighting)--a raid that included driving a tank through Jesus Sanchez Llovera's front gate. (What is this, Iraq?) In the raid, Llovera's 11-month-old dog and over 100 of his roosters were killed by gunfire.

h/t TPM

Update: But maybe the dog wasn't killed after all-- "Arpaio, Seagal deny dog killing claim during raid."