Voting and American Decline

It has become an increasingly common topic of conversation: Are we watching the end of the American Century? Is this what the collapse of empire feels like? Several recent books address this notion directly or indirectly -- Alan Ryan reviewed five of them in the October 23 issue of the New York Review of Books (good essay). A colleague of mine who specializes in Roman history nods his head sagely and says: Yes, this is Rome in the late days, complete with the beer and circus that has characterized so much of our politics over the last generation.

These conversations tend to focus on The Big Picture: American geo-military position after the Iraq debacle; the rise of emerging economies; the consequences of borrowing so much money from China; the failure of the United States to respond to the climate crisis.

As the election enters its final (thank god) week, however, I'm struck by a smaller but no less dispiriting symptom of American decline. More and more of us, to judge by what I'm reading, hearing on the streets, and watching on the internet, simply assume that our elections are corrupt and dishonest. When early voting in Florida began, one late-night comedian quipped: "Early voting has begun in Florida. You know what that means? Florida has probably already screwed up the election and we won't know it until November 4." Scroll down here and you'll see that Tom posted a funny Simpson's clip. When Homer tries to vote for Obama and he registers six votes for McCain instead. Funny stuff.

And as Homer said once, in another cartoon context: It's funny because its true. Or true enough. There is no question that the 2000 election was stolen; there is compelling evidence that the 2004 election in Ohio - at least - was also swiped. And by god if there aren't reports of voting problems already in Florida.

This all went under-reported in the press, and Americans largely shrugged their collective shoulders and took it for granted. It is a sorry commentary on the state of The Greatest Democracy on Earth that we are largely resigned to stolen elections.

We should be clear. American elections have always been two parts democratic process and one part three-card monte game. The wonderful painting by George Caleb Bingham of the "County Election" from the 1850s is enough to dispel the idea that our elections were once pure. (The painting features drunkenness, debauchery and voter intimidation.) For several generations black Americans had their votes taken from them for the crime of being black; women couldn't vote at all until 1920. American elections have never been models of democratic probity.

Still, rather than cracking jokes, we should be demanding better. The first responsibility of any real democracy - before invading other countries, or bailing out its investment banks - is to make sure the democratic process works. That citizens are permitted to vote, and that each and every vote is counted honestly. It is a fundamental failure of our democracy, therefore, that we can't provide enough ballots or machines that work, that we can't keep polling places open so that working people can vote, that people wait in lines so long that they look like the third world simply to exercise their most basic right in our society.

It has become the stuff of jokes of the sort we used to make about banana republics. Now, however, we are laughing at ourselves.

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

For the last forty years, political commentators have hurled us back in time to the year that shook the world, 1968. John McCain's campaign, a beaten up 1968 Chevy Bel Air of an operation so far, has given us a quick drive-by of the "Summer of Love," burning $4 a gallon gas at 10mpg.

Just when the weight of 1968 cliches is about to crush the body politic, political analyst Kenneth Baer offers a compelling alternative. In an excellent piece in the WaPo, Baer (full disclosure: an old student of mine) stands astride tired, hackneyed 1968 history, shouts stop, and offers us a compelling alternative (pace WFB). The roots of modern American politics, he argues, can be found in 1978, not in that troubled year a decade earlier.

Why? The tax rebellion, the first judicial blow to affirmative action, the energy crisis, the anti-gay assassination of Harvey Milk, the creation of FISA, the Camp David accords, China's new openness, the introduction of cellular telephones. I might add a few more telling developments: Resorts, Atlantic City's first legal casino, opened that year; President Carter declared a state of emergency at Love Canal in upstate New York; Cleveland, Ohio went into default (under Dennis Kuchinich); Karol Woytyla became Pope John Paul II. And all of it happened to the sound of Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town, whose song "Factory" is one of the best anthems to the Rustbelt ever sung.

I remember 1978, and fortunately, because my Ford Pinto didn't blow up, I'm here to tell about it.

WHITE RACIAL ATTITUDES AND THE ELECTION

The question of race and electoral politics is the subject of much speculation, but little hard evidence. Yesterday's WaPo presents the results of the first detailed survey of race and public opinion since Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee. The findings: "nearly half of all Americans say race relations in the country are in bad shape and three in 10 acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice..." The findings follow patterns in most previous surveys of race relations: namely a divergence between black and white assessments of the state of race relations in the United States. The WaPo found that most whites (53 percent) think that race relations are good, but that only a little more than a third of blacks (36 percent) agree.

The most relevant finding was on the impact of racial attitudes on white support for Obama and McCain. The WaPo constructed a "sensitivity index," combining answers to survey questions on prejudice, the existence of racial discrimination, and cross-racial friendships and found that those who ranked lowest in those three categories support John McCain two-to-one.

At the Monkey Cage, two political scientists offer different opinions on the question of the impact of race on white electoral behavior. One of the country's best scholars of race and politics, Phil Klinkner, highlights the WaPo's finding that "racial attitudes have a big impact on whites’ candidate preferences, even when you control for partisanship." His colleague John Sides, by contrast, cites three studies of white preferences for black candidates and offers a more optimistic prognosis. But those studies might not shed much light on this year's election. One comes focuses on white voters in cities whose experience with black mayors leads them to change their voting behavior, a group that accounts for a very small segment of the white electorate. Most white voters in America have never had the chance to respond to a black incumbent because they live in overwhelmingly white communities, state legislative districts, and Congressional districts. The second, of House races in 1996 and 1998 found that white voters were not less likely to vote Democratic when the candidate was black. But it is quite likely that those districts are atypical: whites who live in majority black districts are quite different than their counterparts who have chosen to live in overwhelmingly white places. The third study--of black candidates in statewide races--draws from only 12 races--is too thin.

For now, I think Phil probably has it right--but there's a lot more research to be done.