Political Masochist – Five Days Out

*Why it still is “the economy, stupid,” and other rants on human nature.

Alright, so I forgot to bring home my fact sheets and neglected to email some of my new “economic growth” language to myself in order to have some hard numbers for this entry. However, I think a fair working premise most can agree on is that the economy is doing pretty well right now. The average unemployment rate is at a three-decade low, and more jobs are being created every month. The stock market is insanely high, as are home ownership rates. This is not to say that some areas of the country (e.g. economies historically based on manufacturing) aren’t hurting, or that our record high deficit (while falling) isn’t a very bad thing (it is). But average Americans right now are largely preoccupied with the “burden” of purchasing an analog converter box for each of their televisions for the national transition to digital broadcasting (trust me, I read a Congressman’s mail for a living). When people are concerned about the fact that the government will only be subsiding two of their converter boxes (at roughly $40 a pop, funded by the inaptly named Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 [S. 1932]) when they have three televisions in their home, I am going to have a really hard time believing that “the economy” will be the reason a whole bloc of Americans vote against the ruling party. Let’s face it: even registered Democrats like tax breaks when it means keeping more of the money they have earned. Funny philosophically inconsistent thing, that.
Yet as we are now witnessing, a good (or even great) economy is not sufficient to keep an electorate happy. On the contrary, the higher the standard of living, the more demands the electorate makes. (See the aforementioned “converter box quandary.”) Economic stability, for all its merits, creates a wider forum for debate on other issues – that is, when he’s not as worried about putting food on the table, Joe Public is more liable to sit in front of a television with his Miller Light and stew about gas prices, Iraq, immigration, etc. (Though for the record I’ve not seen a gas price letter come into the office for at least three months. Lots on Iraq and immigration, though.) This is part of the basic hierarchy of survival, human nature, or whatever you want to call it; the fat and happy have the luxury of rumination where the destitute do not. As we have acquired and sustained the means of survival, we are increasingly a nation of self-proclaimed philosophers.
Now if the point of this column of mine is the defense of my belief that the American people will not elect a sweeping Democrat majority in five days, why am I making the argument that a good economy breeds the discourse that leads to discontent? Apparent righteous indignation aside, I think there is a still striking difference in the American psyche between the “oughts” of the world and their own personal experience. I have a gut feeling that a lot of voters caught in a moment of honesty would admit themselves better off then they were ten years ago. And given the popularity of Republican-bashing right now, I can’t help but succumb to this feeling that, in part, some of the “wow” poll numbers we’re seeing are the result of what we learned in Empirical Research Methods to call the social desirability factor. People want to be seen as “so over” the Republican Party. But what happens in the poll booth and what happens during a telephone poll can be – not necessarily are, but can be – two very different things, especially today. (My LD made a really good point on this recently. Who do you think is more likely to register for the “Do Not Call” list – someone in federally subsidized housing or the family in suburbia? But which is more likely to vote? Another example of a good economy effecting the ability to predict political outcomes.) I think some Democrats are (wisely) aware of this and have therefore been careful to not count their chickens. The ones who are not so judicious have spent their time making 24 hour news station appearances for the last three weeks and sending their staff into majority committee offices to measure for curtains.
This much is for certain: should a Democrat takeover fail this year, not only will those measurements need to go on file, but the party may have to do some serious soul-searching to survive. Again, I think the wiser of the Democrats are troubled that things aren’t looking better for them five days out – if they can’t have a decisive lead under these conditions, they reason, when will they?
When, indeed.

* Two years ago tonight…
… I was standing outside the Multnomah County Elections Office, trying hard to retrain myself from launching rocks at the cars driving around the block and yelling at the long line of voters, “They just called Florida for Kerry! They just called Ohio for Kerry!” (We’d already heard how badly Ohio was going and were in fact operating under the report that had been passed to us from headquarters, which was “we may need Oregon.” That is neither what we wanted nor expected to hear.) Armed with my Treo phone and Blackberry, I was receiving reports from friends across the country and across my temporarily-adopted state. In short, it was pandemonium. I would be awake till 4 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, and even then things were not for sure – though far more certain then it had been on election night 2000. Here’s hoping I won’t need to stay awake for the Eastern Standard Time equivalent this year.