Don’t think so frickin’ much, or, How the Post-Modern Voter is Ruining America

I was looking for something else entirely today when I came across this New York Times article from earlier in the month about Bill Richardson’s campaign in Iowa. Since I’ve been pushing for Richardson to run for president since, I think, my junior year in high school (when he was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations), I perked up when I saw that someone in the MSM was actually covering someone not named Hillary, Barak or John.

For two pages, you get a wonderful picture of how Richardson’s grassroots effort in the first state to have a caucus (don’t call it a primary – the New Hampshire folks will spike your maple syrup in retaliation). For reasons that still mystify me, a handful of farmers in one of the country’s least populous states has an inordinate impact on who ends up representing each party in the presidential elections. That’s a rant for another time – right or wrong, it is what it is.

Anyway, you get all the way through this, and you’re starting to develop some optimism – a renewed faith in the power of ordinary tax-paying rural WASPs to pick a nominee (as opposed to the editors of, say, Time or Newsweek)…and then you get this:

One big concern of Iowa Democrats is backing a candidate who can retake the White House — regardless of their antiwar stance. At nearly every stop, Iowans repeatedly cited Mr. Richardson’s résumé and foreign policy experience as a positive, but said that most of all, they just wanted someone who could beat a Republican.

“I like his foreign policy statements,” Laurie Dahms of Iowa City said at the fairgrounds. “And I love his commercials. I just want someone with good experience who can win.”

Her friend Diane Muchatka, also of Iowa City, said: “I like his résumé. That is important this year. But I’m not sure who will be electable.”

After listening to Mr. Richardson at the Fiesta restaurant, Bob McMahon of Muscatine, Iowa, who is undecided, and his wife, Betty, who is in the Clinton camp, said what they want most is someone who can win in the fall.

Right. Because that worked so very well for Democrats the last time around, when many voted for John Kerry in the primaries because he was “more electable” than the 2004 Obama, John Edwards (whose window has sadly closed, I’m afraid). When are we EVER going to learn?

Interestingly, I’m hearing more and more Republican voters debate the same types of things about their party’s prospective candidates. (This is entirely anecdotal – no links – but believe it or not I do have Republican friends.) They muse not about the candidate’s policy positions, but whether however many times it is-divorced Rudy Giuliani can win the Christian fundamentalist vote, or whether a Mormon like Mitt Romney can win in the Bible Belt. (News to the blogosphere – Mormons are Christians, too, even if you don’t believe what they believe.)

When a paid consultant who hasn’t lived outside of D.C. since grad school asks these questions, it’s condescending, a way to justify one’s salary. When your Mom, your boss and the check-out person at the gas station are asking whether soccer moms will stomach a vote for Hillary, we’ve got a deeper problem.

Chalk it up to too many years of “Hardball” and “West Wing” re-runs – the average American is now an expert not only on policy (that goes back to the days of Thomas Paine), but on political strategy. Except that we’re not.

Rather than voting for the candidates we like and think will best represent our individual interests, we’re turning into mini-Roves (pause for a full-body shiver), throwing our support behind the people we think “they” will support. We’re up in the war room with James Carville, and the air up here is mighty thin.

A vote is the most obvious of self-fulfilling prophesies. If you elect someone – guess what? He or she is by definition “electable.”

So don’t think. Okay, think, but not about what “they” want, because – guess further what – “they” is YOU. Think about what you want for your family, yourself and your community, and vote that way. Spend more time on the news than on the commentary – your great-grandkids will thank you, I promise!

(BTW, it pisses me off that the Times doesn't have Richardson on the main page of its election coverage. Who says the MSM doesn't frame our issues for us? B*stards.)