Harebrained.
Matt Yglesias is right to be dirisive about Unity08. At least I hope he is, because they're either a silly bunch of pollyannas or they're bad news for Democrats. As Jonathan Alter explains it:
The Unity08 plan is for an online third-party convention in mid-2008, following the early primaries. Any registered voter could be a delegate; their identities would be confirmed by cross-referencing with voter registration rolls (which would also prevent people from casting more than one ballot). That would likely include a much larger number than the few thousand primary voters who all but nominate the major party candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire. This virtual process will vote on a centrist platform and nominate a bipartisan ticket. The idea is that even if the third-party nominee didn't win, he would wield serious power in the '08 election, which will likely be close.
Yes, it probably will be close given how well-defined the partisan coalitions have become in US politics. And, therefore, if Unity08's plan "works" -- in the sense of wooing a chunk of the 20-25% or so of regular voters with low party attachment, it will accomplish two things. First, it will drive both major parties (or, more specifically, the Democrats) straight to the interest groups that form their bases. Second, it will throw another election to the Republicans. The reason for these complementary facts is clear as day in Unity08's manifesto:
In our opinion, Crucial Issues include: Global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, the corruption of Washington’s lobbying system, the education of our young, the health care of all, and the disappearance of the American Dream for so many of our people.
By contrast, we consider gun control, abortion and gay marriage important issues, worthy of debate and discussion in a free society, but not issues that should dominate or even crowd our national agenda.
In our opinion – since the disintegration of the Soviet Union – our political system seems to have focused more attention on the “important issues” than the “crucial issues.” One result: The political parties have been built to address the interests of their “base” but have failed to address the realities that impact most Americans.
In other words, Unity08 promises to replace the sham issues of guns, God and gays with the sham issue that the Democrats are a bunch of extreme lefties who don't already downplay hotbutton social issues and don't care about the deficit and health care. Except it won't even do that. What's far more likely is that by taking a slice of the Clueless Independent vote, Unity will force the Dem candidate to fight a culture war campaign as well in order to hold on to those of us who actually respond to a robust, unapologetic social liberalism (just like a desperate Paul Martin did in the last Canadian election, to his credit I might add). That leaves us with more, not less, guns, God and gays.
Now I wouldn't normally consider this a terrible thing, not least because hotbutton culture war issues about human dignity merge easily with broader social and economic questions of human dignity in a wealthy society -- grappling with these issues might make a smart Democrat sound really smart and less soundbitten. The problem is that, with a Unity08 candidate drawing 10% of the clueless but more-or-less socially tolerant swing vote, that full-throated, smart, proud-to-be-tolerant Dem will lose Mondale-style and his robust social liberalism will be shoved straight down his craw in the election postmortems being written by Unity08 types in between cocktails during President Allen's inaugural fesitivities.
But back to the "silly bunch of pollyannas" theory. Leaving aside any possible risk to the real centrists in America -- the Democrats -- Unity08 looks a classic example of what Scott Lemieux at Lawyers Guns and Money once dubbed "L'electorate c'est moi" political activism. In the "internet age", that means having online primaries in which thousands of delegates prove their people power by confirming the organizers' belief that the vital center of America thinks exactly as they do and is just waiting for the right candidate offering the right policies wrapped in the right rhetoric. The problem is that even if thousands of sensible centrist online delegates show up, they represent not the "vital center" of Unity's dreams, but a tiny self-selected sample of the millions of American voters who have shown little aggregate indication they can or want to be "unified".
To this end, Alter concludes his too-positive piece by noting approvingly that more than 40% of voters now identify as independents. I don't know what figure Alter is quoting, but my guess is that it depends on whether you consider independents as anybody who doesn't ID as a Dem or Rep or whether you only count "independent" self-IDers. Via Polling Report, the latter is 22% of voters in the 2005 Harris poll, which was, if anything, slightly below the 30-year average. Nor is nonpartisan pox-on-all-of-them disgust apparently at high historical levels. For instance, the percentage of voters telling ABC/WaPo that neither party can handle the nation's problems is hovering around, or just slightly above, the low level (8-14%) it's been since 1998. Most people really do believe that one party or the other can to carry out effective government. Their party.
Which is to say that, although there is certainly apathy and nonpartisan disgust out there, it's not evidently the defining characteristic of the majority of the politically active population. Partisanship is not a riffraff outlier. It's who we are at this point in history. And maybe, just maybe, it's not that awful a thing... especially if Unity08 or some equivalent doesn't go and put its thumb on the scale for the GOP.
The Unity08 plan is for an online third-party convention in mid-2008, following the early primaries. Any registered voter could be a delegate; their identities would be confirmed by cross-referencing with voter registration rolls (which would also prevent people from casting more than one ballot). That would likely include a much larger number than the few thousand primary voters who all but nominate the major party candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire. This virtual process will vote on a centrist platform and nominate a bipartisan ticket. The idea is that even if the third-party nominee didn't win, he would wield serious power in the '08 election, which will likely be close.
Yes, it probably will be close given how well-defined the partisan coalitions have become in US politics. And, therefore, if Unity08's plan "works" -- in the sense of wooing a chunk of the 20-25% or so of regular voters with low party attachment, it will accomplish two things. First, it will drive both major parties (or, more specifically, the Democrats) straight to the interest groups that form their bases. Second, it will throw another election to the Republicans. The reason for these complementary facts is clear as day in Unity08's manifesto:
In our opinion, Crucial Issues include: Global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, the corruption of Washington’s lobbying system, the education of our young, the health care of all, and the disappearance of the American Dream for so many of our people.
By contrast, we consider gun control, abortion and gay marriage important issues, worthy of debate and discussion in a free society, but not issues that should dominate or even crowd our national agenda.
In our opinion – since the disintegration of the Soviet Union – our political system seems to have focused more attention on the “important issues” than the “crucial issues.” One result: The political parties have been built to address the interests of their “base” but have failed to address the realities that impact most Americans.
In other words, Unity08 promises to replace the sham issues of guns, God and gays with the sham issue that the Democrats are a bunch of extreme lefties who don't already downplay hotbutton social issues and don't care about the deficit and health care. Except it won't even do that. What's far more likely is that by taking a slice of the Clueless Independent vote, Unity will force the Dem candidate to fight a culture war campaign as well in order to hold on to those of us who actually respond to a robust, unapologetic social liberalism (just like a desperate Paul Martin did in the last Canadian election, to his credit I might add). That leaves us with more, not less, guns, God and gays.
Now I wouldn't normally consider this a terrible thing, not least because hotbutton culture war issues about human dignity merge easily with broader social and economic questions of human dignity in a wealthy society -- grappling with these issues might make a smart Democrat sound really smart and less soundbitten. The problem is that, with a Unity08 candidate drawing 10% of the clueless but more-or-less socially tolerant swing vote, that full-throated, smart, proud-to-be-tolerant Dem will lose Mondale-style and his robust social liberalism will be shoved straight down his craw in the election postmortems being written by Unity08 types in between cocktails during President Allen's inaugural fesitivities.
But back to the "silly bunch of pollyannas" theory. Leaving aside any possible risk to the real centrists in America -- the Democrats -- Unity08 looks a classic example of what Scott Lemieux at Lawyers Guns and Money once dubbed "L'electorate c'est moi" political activism. In the "internet age", that means having online primaries in which thousands of delegates prove their people power by confirming the organizers' belief that the vital center of America thinks exactly as they do and is just waiting for the right candidate offering the right policies wrapped in the right rhetoric. The problem is that even if thousands of sensible centrist online delegates show up, they represent not the "vital center" of Unity's dreams, but a tiny self-selected sample of the millions of American voters who have shown little aggregate indication they can or want to be "unified".
To this end, Alter concludes his too-positive piece by noting approvingly that more than 40% of voters now identify as independents. I don't know what figure Alter is quoting, but my guess is that it depends on whether you consider independents as anybody who doesn't ID as a Dem or Rep or whether you only count "independent" self-IDers. Via Polling Report, the latter is 22% of voters in the 2005 Harris poll, which was, if anything, slightly below the 30-year average. Nor is nonpartisan pox-on-all-of-them disgust apparently at high historical levels. For instance, the percentage of voters telling ABC/WaPo that neither party can handle the nation's problems is hovering around, or just slightly above, the low level (8-14%) it's been since 1998. Most people really do believe that one party or the other can to carry out effective government. Their party.
Which is to say that, although there is certainly apathy and nonpartisan disgust out there, it's not evidently the defining characteristic of the majority of the politically active population. Partisanship is not a riffraff outlier. It's who we are at this point in history. And maybe, just maybe, it's not that awful a thing... especially if Unity08 or some equivalent doesn't go and put its thumb on the scale for the GOP.
1 Comments:
Laura-
First, thanks for noting this, I hadn't picked up on this, but it's certainly interesting. Quick note: I thot Matt Yglesias was too harsh on Broder and Alter. Both of them, I thot, were appropriately skeptical. I liked Alter's observation that different mediums have worked at different times in American politics.
The idea that gun control, abortion, and gay marriage are somehow different in importance strikes me as wishful thinking. Those issues directly impact some people, and for those people, they are much more important than something as remote and abstract as global warming or lobbying reform.
This reminds me of the Perotistas. After the initial success, I remember some people being surprised that their movement was becoming infested with - the horror! - politics. And then they disappeared.
It also reminds me of a line from American President. Michael Douglas claims that it's not the business of the American people whether or not he goes out on a date. Martin Sheen, his chief of staff, replies that the American people "have a funny way of determining what is, and what is not, their business."
Political movements and parties are organic. Issues arise because people are passionate about them. Trying to define the issues relevant for a particular group of people, particularly this far in advance, strikes me as an exercise in futility.
But it should be fun to watch!
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