Commentary: The electorate’s one constant: constriction

By Dan Carpenter
TheStatehouseFile.com

What do you make of an election (I know you’re dying to read another of these) in which red states vote to raise the minimum wage, blue states elect hard-right GOP senators and governors, the most government-dependent states bite the hand that feeds them, a Congress with a 9 percent approval rating is re-elected virtually en masse, and $4 billion in campaign spending can’t get the majority of the electorate out of the house?

H.L. Mencken comes to mind. But if it’s true, as he famously said, that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, how do we account for the belief by an equally eminent journalist, Edward R. Murrow, that the common man is fundamentally wise and benevolent?

Or our greatest president, Mr. Lincoln? “Give the people the facts and they will save the nation.”

The facts were very much on the side of the Democrats and President Barack Obama, and very much not.

As several analysts have pointed out, those Dems who chose to deny the president thrice before the cock crowed could have cited a deficit far lower than Reagan’s, an unemployment rate down to prosperity level, a stock market and capital accumulation at record levels. Republican bread and butter issues, pilfered right away from them.

What the Dems could not get around, however, and there is great irony here, is that the economic comeback has not brought back good jobs and adequate growth in wages for the middle class, the largest contingent of Americans who bothered to vote in any appreciable numbers. As for the poor, well, nobody speaks to their needs because they don’t vote because nobody speaks to their needs because they don’t vote.

Republicans, who have done nothing but expedite the flow of wealth away from the middle class, were able to exploit dissatisfaction with a government that’s left paychecks stagnant for more than a decade and happens to have a black Democrat at the helm right now. Visceral animosity toward a man who wears CHANGE on his face, combined with lack of spare change and folding money in people’s pockets, made for a winning combination for the party that portrays itself as outsiders: selfish dissatisfaction, apathy and a devil. The success of religious bigots and science deniers in these elections speaks to that same fundamental fear of change on the part of a shrinking white majority. Never mind that those candidates are bankrolled by businessmen who do not share the voters’ superstitions.

It’s also been pointed out that the Republicans have no plan, and for the time being need no plan. Just saying no to programs for the masses – minimum wage (never mind those referenda), workplace safety, environmental protection, health care, nutrition – while making life ever-easier for campaign financiers works as long as “liberals” are perceived to be in charge of a lousy economy.

Is the pressure on the GOP now that it controls two branches of government? My belief is that popular expectations are so low that the usual 96 percent or so will go unpunished in 2016. And with Hillary Clinton, a rightist Democrat but still a highly polarizing figure running with a huge war chest against a GOP turkey, the White House should remain in her party’s hands – but the signature message sent by that “on-year” election may again reside in the turnout.

Ronald Reagan’s cheap pitch – “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” – may morph into “Do you expect to be better off four years from now?” The answer will come in ever-growing silence as the ever-smaller faction who has a stake in these opulent biennial games pretend they’re persuading the rest of us.

Dan Carpenter is a freelance writer, a contributor to The Indianapolis Business Journal and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.”