I probably spend way too much time thinking about elections. I suspect you think so too, particularly since I’ve devoted so many blog posts to the subject. I even talked about it a lot on my short-lived political podcast, Strange Sound, though not so anyone would hear. The fact is, I kind of hate elections. They’re nerve-wracking as hell, they often turn out badly, and I’m not a big fan of suspense, especially when it runs all night long. But that’s just experience talking – long, bitter experience.
There are many things we can do that are more important than voting. Mutual aid, organizing, public service … all of these things make an immediate difference for people. But more than one thing can be important at the same time, and my contention has always been that voting is important enough to do, even if it isn’t as important as all that other stuff. For people like me – CIS-gender white males – the time commitment involved is negligible.
So, though I’m not a huge NPR fan, I was excited when I heard that a recent Serial Podcast had centered on elections in North Carolina and purported voter fraud. But after listening to it, I can only say that they kind of hid the ball. Or dropped it. Not sure which.
Organizing is the enemy
Without getting too deep in the weeds of the podcast, The Improvement Association – a co-production of NPR’s This American Life / Serial and the New York Times – talks about a political action committee in Bladen County, North Carolina that does get-out-the-vote efforts for black residents. They basically hand out a sample ballot with their recommendations and encourage people to support their list. In short, this is organizing 101, completely legal and above board, and a really effective way to drive turnout and support for Democratic candidates.
Naturally, the Association is under constant attack by white politicians, who accuse the organizers of voter fraud. They basically gaslight the organization, so that when an actual Republican voter fraud scheme is busted, somehow this black organization’s name is dragged into the conversation both on a local and a statewide level. The white people in this story – mostly Republicans – understand the power of this black voting block, and they’re using the tools available to them (i.e. baseless accusations of cheating) to undermine it. What is more of a threat to white power than organized black people?
Strange focus
What kind of astonishes me about this podcast is the degree to which the reporter, Zoe Chase, gets sidetracked by this internal power struggle within the PAC. Now, it should come as a surprise to no one that organizers and political agitators tend to have egos. It seems likely that the two lead organizers, Horace and Cogdell, push to get their own way in the context of the organization. But if the ultimate goal is more power and resources for black people in the sea of white people known as North Carolina, is this all that bad?
Chase follows Cogdell’s efforts to elect three black councilmembers in a little town named Elizabethtown – a majority black community run by rich, white people, where there is virtually no public investment in the black neighborhoods. Chase spends a lot of time on the critics’ accusation that Cogdell is doing this so that he will be able to control these three black women on the town council. In the end, Cogdell’s candidates lose, and his colleague Horace suggests that this was essentially because black people were voting against their own interests for one reason or another. This is Chase’s take on Horace:
“It’s always zero sum with Horace when it comes to politics. I’ve learned that. If you’re not with him, you’re against him. And if you’re against him, you’re wrong.“
The thing that must not be named
On the other hand, what I hear from Cogdell is a pretty reasonable economic, almost Marxist analysis of how power works in that little town. A minority of white people with money get all the benefits, while underrepresented black people get the shaft. NPR / NYT say little if anything about this dynamic. It’s really more about personal squabbles. That’s what makes a podcast go viral, right?
Am I surprised to learn that NPR / NYT reporters are constitutionally incapable of giving credence to this kind of analysis? Not at all. There was a similar issue with the podcast Nice White Parents which I talked about on my podcast, Strange Sound. They will twist themselves into knots trying to avoid it.
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This is the program Trump inherited from other Republicans like Tom Tancredo, Mitt Romney, and many more. Obama’s first term, in particular, was an extreme accommodation to it as well. That’s likely because the big lie about invading armies of dark people is an effective distraction for disaffected workers. The bipartisan neoliberal economic experiment that’s been underway for the last forty years is a total failure for working people in this country; Trump is working to deepen that failure, and the only way a politician can maintain some measure of popularity while conducting these deeply unpopular policies is by encouraging working-class white people to blame brown people for all their troubles.
That said, among my biggest disappointments on Tuesday night was the failure of Andrew Gillum to win the Governorship in Florida – not for want of trying, I should add. I could say the same for Stacey Abrams in Georgia. Two tantalizingly close races, which suggests that a bit more GOTV might have put them over the top. Or perhaps not. After all, about a million voters have been dropped from the rolls in Georgia over the last few years, thanks in large measure to the efforts of Abrams’ opponent. That’s one way to ensure victory. Another is not to allow them to register in the first place, as has been the case with ex-felons in Florida, though as of Tuesday we now know this will change.
How did Trump meet this outrage? By doubling down on his anti-immigrant tirade. By sending hundreds of troops to the border to stop a group of poor people a thousand miles away. And by launching an attack on birthright citizenship, the principle at the core of the fourteenth amendment. It’s almost as if, while attending a memorial service in Pittsburgh, Trump is doing his best to make it up to the Synagogue shooter for falling short of his racist expectations. He seems to be under the impression, no doubt encouraged by the likes of Steven Miller, that he can, as president, undo the 14th Amendment by executive order or, in a pinch, through legislative action. As usual, Trump is skating on top of another constitutional question about which he knows less than nothing.
Trump attended a fundraiser for Tenney that was supposed to be a closed-door, no-press event, but at some point they allowed pool reporters in to record his remarks, which were about typical. It amounts to the Democrats wanting to raise your taxes, open the borders wide, and take away your guns. Of course, the president was talking to a crowd of heavy-wallet donors: the cheap seats were $1,000 and sponsors paid $15,000. So, for once, he may be right about Democrats wanting to raise the taxes of the people in that room – they richly deserve it.
I thought of that poster this week when the Rosanne Barr story broke. I will admit that I was never among her fans, but I like to think that fandom would not have kept me from despising her when she started hurling racist epithets. The fact is, that did not start this past week. Since her hey-day in the 1980s-90s, apparently Barr has been careening to the right, adopting and promoting bizarre-ass conspiracy theories, endorsing an increasingly more militarist and oppressive Israeli government, race baiting black women and Muslims, and so on. Clearly, ABC – which has garnered a lot of pundit credit for having fired Barr so quickly – never should have hired her in the first place. But then again, they are in business to make money, right?
There is also the fact that the President doesn’t understand policy, isn’t interested in it, and is incapable of delving any deeper than the surface of any political issue. He is kind of a blank slate, though he does obviously have deep-rooted visceral prejudices. Third-rate thinkers (and ninth-rate speechwriters) like Stephen Miller can scrawl their alt-right graffiti on the guy and he will repeat whatever they tell him. Retrograde bigots like General Kelly and Tom Cotton guide Trump like he’s their senile uncle. So the President’s feint towards compromise last Tuesday was transformed into the spectacle of last Thursday, when Trump denigrated an entire continent as well as the ex-colony that was a primary source of France’s wealth.