ELECTION 2008: WHY THE REPUBLICANS STAYED HOME AND MORE POST-MORTEMS

A Vote for Nobody = A Vote for Obama

The numbers are telling an intriguing story: the Republicans didn’t turn out to vote.

According to Curtis Gans, director of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate, Republicans voted in lower numbers than expected, with the Republican turnout actually declining 1.3 percentage points from 2004. Gans speculates that this happened “because of disappointment over John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, combined with a perception that the ticket would lose. ‘There was real hostility ... amongst moderate Republicans that McCain would choose the conservative governor,’ Gans said. ‘And then there was a gradual perception that the party was going to get whomped.’" (CNN.com: Number of votes cast set record, but voter turnout percentage didn't, http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/06/voter.turnout/; WSJ-Washington Wire: Voter Turnout Rate Not as High as in ’68; http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/11/06/voter-turnout-rate-not-as-high-as-in-68/.)

In Ohio alone, Republican turnout fell 17 percent compared with 2004, which translated into 500,000 fewer votes. (Ironton Tribune.com: Republican turnout fell 17 percent in Ohio, by Benita Heath; http://www.irontontribune.com/news/2008/nov/06/republican-turnout-fell-17-percent-ohio/.)

Why single out Ohio? Oho was a battleground state that McCain could not afford to lose. The final
vote:

2,708,988 Obama
2,502,218 McCain

(Source: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/)

The final margin: 206,770—or, less than half of the number of Republicans who took a pass. In other words, if the Republicans had shown up at all, McCain would have won Ohio. Could it have mattered in other states? Maybe, maybe not—but if a similar picture applied for Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida…what presented on Tuesday night as “no path to victory” for McCain might have become a dimly lit one.

We have our own speculation as to why these folks didn’t vote. We think that in the real world, where neighbors, friends, congregations, and communities talk about money, sports, and politics, where real people work, shop and play, a lot of moderate Republicans were not only repulsed by McCain’s horrific and graceless campaign, they found themselves warming up to Obama—he’s a charismatic guy. So, there they were, stuck in the mud: they didn’t want to vote for Obama—maybe even just because he’s part black—but couldn’t in good conscience vote for McCain.

No mavericks there. At ground level, there was no personal benefit. By sitting it out, these reluctant Republicans didn’t rock their social boats, and can also tell themselves that they didn’t exactly turn their back on the GOP. And better yet, if Obama falls flat, they can correctly if disingenuously say, “Well, I didn’t vote for him.”

But the tasty irony is, they did. The Republicans who stayed home in effect voted for Obama anyway—their votes weren’t there to cancel out Obama votes.

It was the equivalent of voting “present.”

Just a Few Kicks at the Dead Horse

"Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Chico Marx in Duck Soup, 1933

First and foremost, it’s a relief to know we’re not insane. We started this blog spot for mental health reasons, because of the Alice in Wonderland, back-asswards aroma of the McCain campaign. (See, for example, “Trapped on the Other Side of the Mirror,”http://hypercriticalobserver.blogspot.com/2008/10/trapped-on-other-side-of-mirror.html; “The Would-Be Emperor’s New Clothes,” http://hypercriticalobserver.blogspot.com/2008/10/would-be-emperors-new-clothes.html; “Why I Must Vote for Obama…even if I didn’t want to at first,” http://hypercriticalobserver.blogspot.com/2008/10/why-i-must-vote-for-obamaeven-if-i.html.)

We can read, we can see, we can think. Yet we had an army of otherwise intelligent people looking us in the eye, swearing—figuratively and literally—that down was up, day was night. And we wavered and wondered: maybe we’re crazy.

We give thanks that, in the end, the outcome matched the evidence:

--The voters recoiled at the vicious and at times patently false GOP campaign messages.

--Instead of listening, thinking, and giving the electorate what they craved in these bleak, deteriorating days—equal parts substance and hope—the GOP did what the US automakers used to do: tell us we really need is old fashioned gas guzzlers and cram them down into our pockets. To put it in business terms, these are not customer-centric models. And therefore, no longer successful ones.

--The decision to pick Palin was virtually an impulse buy in the checkout line, because McCain was talked out of his first choice, Lieberman. Palin was not thoroughly vetted, yanked out of the tundra by the taproot, and thrown into the deep end (with wolves, sharks…pick a predator), over her head and overwhelmed. With insufficient time to adjust to the increased pitching speed at the major league level, she came off as ill-prepared and dumb. Yet the McCain campaign continued to make experience a central issue, and tried to recast Obama’s eloquence and aura as negatives. Vote for us, we’re just like you (to paraphrase Joe the Plumber, "We're up for it.") Don’t vote for him, he’s too smart.

--Conduct, as always, told the story. Wardrobe-gate underscored the disconnect between what they were saying and what they were doing. The party that would stop the wasteful spending of our money was wastefully spending theirs. (We’re also finding out what we'd suspected: this was as much Palin’s doing as any staffer's. Three or four outfits on a $25,000 budget [still $6,000 each!] became $150,000 plus—and counting; even a rich Republican blanched at the bill. We can’t help but use the image one last time: this behavior was…piggish.)

--If McCain sold out, Palin was pimped out. Sarah, forget what you said and did yesterday, here’s what you say and do today. She did it for the team, but in the process fed the smoldering speculation about her porous, ad hoc ethical membrane. Ultimately, Palin did not deliver a breath of fresh air, but a blast of the same old stale air out of a fresh lipsticked mouth.

Now we’re hearing more about the rift between Palin/McCain. Some of this is part of the recent pathetic blather, where the whole sorry circuit says it wasn’t all that bad (because McCain only lost by 7 million votes? Because it wasn’t a shutout?), and simultaneously stampedes to blame their siblings for knocking the heirloom GOP off the pedestal and breaking it. (One commentator has called it a “circular firing squad.”). But there was also visible evidence of Palin/McCain enmity:

--McCain fidgeting and wringing his hands while Palin talked during the Brian Williams interview. Remember the EF Hutton commercials? When EF Hutton talks, people listen. When Palin talks, McCain winces.

--Palin goes over to hug McCain after the concession speech. He visibly recoils and gives her a perfunctory and dismissive pat-pat-pat on her elbow.

Conclusion

What does the wretched election fiasco, overall, say about McCain’s judgment, his skill as an executive or a delegator, his talent for surrounding himself with smart people? (OK, a rhetorical question.)

If in America we needed—now more than ever—to elect the best and the brightest, we on all accounts chose the better and the brighter.

To do the right thing in this election, to make this signal choice, we Americans had to pass a signal test. This wasn’t just a referendum on the dotty, corrupted, and failed GOP, but a referendum on whether we as a people could live into our own propaganda.

We passed. Thank God, we passed…and my wife and I can stay.

Chico Marx said it perfectly, and in the end, it wasn’t really that hard. To choose the better man for this job, we didn’t need to be color-blind. We just needed not to be blind.