The Indecision Blues
If You Can't Decide, Maybe You Already Have.
A lot has been written lately about the so-called ‘Undecideds’. The approximately 18% of likely voters who can’t say which name they’ll check on November 5.
In a late September article about this, the New York Times started by saying, “More than other voters, they tend to be young, and Black or Hispanic. They get more news from social media than most voters do. They worry about their economic security.
“And they use phrases like ‘lesser of two evils’ to describe the choice between former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Not surprisingly, the authors of this article immediately went looking for group commonalities, hoping to understand this indecision through a demographic lens.
But in the end, they really had few insights as to why - this close to election day - so many people who plan to vote, couldn’t say who they plan to vote for. Especially among voters they saw as natural Democrats.
Few insights other than this one … “A picture of them is emerging that helps explain, sometimes in contradictory ways, why they remain uncommitted. Their opinions, reflected in polling and interviews, suggest that longstanding voting patterns in the Democratic coalition are shifting in this election. And the undecideds are challenging old perceptions of how identity influences voting.”
’They are challenging old perceptions of how identity influences voting.’ Bingo! In other words, people are just not fitting as well anymore, into easily mobilized blocs. Am I alone in seeing this as good news?
The race is neck and neck. Nobody in his or her right mind would bet on either candidate at this stage of the game. Think about how deeply weird that is. Not only are Americans divided into two enormous groups, but these groups are almost exactly the same size.
If you were to quiz your friends about 10 non-political issues, they’d be all over the map. When left to our own devices, adult humans are not only variable in opinion, but variable in surprising ways. Knowing what kind of car a friend drives can’t tell you what music is playing inside. A woman who rescues feral kittens might also love gruesome true-crime podcasts. We humans can be random as hell.
But if my neighbor to the west is flying a Trump flag, and my neighbor to the east has Harris/Walz signs posted … I can accurately guess where each stands on every pertinent political concern.
That’s not natural. If Americans were really thinking for themselves about every issue, using instinct, life experience and common sense to weigh its pros and cons, there would be no chance of us splitting the electorate into two equally-sized groups.
But we haven’t been encouraged to think for ourselves, have we? No. We’ve been strongly discouraged from doing so.
The people interviewed for the Times article are conflicted. Perhaps because they actually are thinking for themselves. And they don’t see a candidate in this race who holds up to scrutiny.
Have you ever fact-checked a major candidate’s statements? I’ve been doing that for quite a long time now. And that’s given rise to a question I ask myself. ‘Would I let a friend of mine get away with being so dishonest?’
In the last ten days I’ve watched as both candidates failed to live up to that standard.
Take the issue of immigration. I’ve cued up the two videos below by timestamp. Just click on each and watch for a couple of minutes.
Here’s Kamala Harris last Sunday on 60 Minutes.
She says: “From Day 1, literally, we have been offering solutions.” Nonsense. On Day 1, LITERALLY, Joe Biden dumped Trump’s border restrictions. And well before Day 1, while still debating in the primaries, he invited desperate human beings to quote, “surge to the border”.
His administration swamped the asylum process intentionally. So that they could look compassionate. Turning the lives of maybe a million would-be immigrants upside down.
When asked if it was a mistake to discontinue Trump’s policies, quadrupling border crossings, she deflects … blaming Trump and Congress, and otherwise refusing to answer.
Would you accept that level of dissembling from your mate? Your kids? Your co-workers? During this appearance, Harris is - at various times - unprepared, disingenuous, and seemingly intimidated. The interview is heavily edited; with voiceovers sometimes attempting to say for her, what she apparently wasn’t able to say for herself.
Where is the no-BS straight talk that we deserve? Where is the rock-solid decisiveness we’ll need to project to the world? Where is the Alpha energy? Are we to believe that she’ll strike fear into the hearts of Khamenei or Putin or Kim?
How will SHE stack up against Xi?
Which brings us to her opponent.
I know that some of you support the former president. But in the wake of Helene, while many of his voters were wandering shell-shocked through the muddy ruins of home, this is what Trump was telling his fans in Michigan.
Pleases … listen for 2 minutes.
He expects his listeners to believe that Kamala Harris cleaned out FEMA’s till, in order to set up undocumented migrants in “luxury hotels”. That a women who heads neither of these governmental departments, robbed the one to prop up the other. This he says after spending the previous 5 minutes scapegoating and demonizing these immigrants in ways extreme even for Donald Trump.
He was president of the friggin’ United States for four years. He knows damn well that border enforcement falls under Homeland Security, as headed by Alejandro Mayorkas. And that CBP specifically, is headed by Troy Miller. Trump knows that their funds are not in the same pile as FEMA’s, and that FEMA is not broke. The dude just pours out alternate realities at will, and expects his minions to lap it all up.
These are our choices? Really? To fill the most powerful position on Planet Earth?
To my thinking, the question isn’t why 18% of likely voters can’t make up their minds. What I want to know is how the other 82% have made up their minds. And let’s just be bluntly honest here. A generous portion of the ‘decideds’ never really make up their minds at all. They just do what their political tribe tells them to do.
I know people personally - smart well-intentioned people - who were still declaring an unwavering belief in Joe Biden’s competence on the night before he quit the race. And within 24 hours these otherwise trustworthy people were All Kamala All The Time.
I scrolled back through the Facebook histories of several of these folks, and could find no mention whatsoever of Kamala Harris. Let me be clear. She was not a favorite pubic servant among Democrats. There was ZERO talk early this year of her replacing him on the ticket.
“Well, Joe Biden’s done a great job, but let’s not forget that he’s got one helluva good VP who could easily step up and take his place.”
There was nothing like that.
As for my Trump-loyalist friends … I know that they love their country. That they want us to thrive. Many of them held their noses when they voted for Trump in 2016. They liked the policies on offer. They thought Trump would bring a needed shock to the system. So they forgave his crude ways and chronic exaggerations.
But by mid-2018, it wasn’t about Trump’s to-do list anymore. Most had become unquestioning supporters of the man himself.
In every way. On every issue. Bending their own values this way and that, in order to keep believing that the guy is a good-hearted patriot who’s just a little rough around the edges.
This is especially troubling among conservative Evangelical Christians.
Very early on, Trump said that he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose a single vote. That was an INSULT to his supporters. That was the kind of thing you’d hear one con-man say to another when sizing up a mark.
Just a joke you say? Certainly it was an exaggeration. But remember, this was before he won the presidency. Four years before ‘Stop The Steal’ became their slogan. My point is that Trump accurately predicted how little his behavior would affect the loyalty of his fans.
It’s slightly humorous to watch political journalists fretting about how almost a fifth of voters can’t choose between the candidates. Especially given that in 2020, when we had an historic turnout, only 66% of eligible voters bothered to vote. In some states, close to half of them stayed home.
Last year when surveys showed that Independents were almost as numerous as Republicans and Democrats put together, you’d think that this would have been the biggest story of the year. But nobody in the media-political-industrial complex wanted to talk about it.
The whole concept of Republican v Democrat, conservative v liberal, red v blue … is a construct of political convenience. As I’ve said many times before, ‘we are not only divided … we have been divided’.
This Manichean binary works for both parties. Each builds it’s platform from planks known to be objectionable across the aisle. This absolves them of ever having to really tackle the problems we have hired them to fix.
Each party - in it’s intractability - provides a ready alibi for the other.
”We tried to pass some great measures, but THOSE PEOPLE wouldn’t let us.”
I for one, am okay with knowing that the coming presidential election might actually be decided by the undecideds.
Alongside the ‘Independents’ who have already voted with their feet against an either-or system that’s become something of a two-headed dynasty.
Something has to change. Somehow we’ve got to impress upon politicians that we’re tired of being talked down to and manipulated. Corralled here and there like herd animals every time they’re up for reelection, to then graze passively until the next time they need to admit we exist.
I know that many cities and some states are experimenting with alternate means of selecting political representation.
Maybe some of you have experience with one or more of these new methods. I’d love to get your impressions in the comments section. Or anything else you might want to add.
At the very least, it’s time for all of us to adopt an appropriate level of skepticism regarding our current system.
Thanks for reading. I do appreciate it. And a special thanks to those of you who support my writing. -Dave
This go around, it all comes down to records. Are you happy with the last 4 years or were the four before that better for you. I too am not sure why there are still undecided.
I recall the words of Paul Harvey “If you want sweet and nice in a president, elect my wife”.
Polls are one thing, the one that will really matter is the one taken on November 5th.
Right on! While I won’t disparage anyone’s choice, I do find it extremely disappointing how many Americans rely on only one news source to inform (I use that word lightly) themselves to make their choices.
When I was in a college political science class our amazing professor stressed how biased news sources are. Most biased was television followed by newspapers and lastly news periodicals. With the advent of the internet we now have another way to be swayed. It’s up to us to read and listen to as many “big brains”,of either stripe, as possible to help us form our opinions and make sound voting decisions. It takes time and focus, but it could be the most importing undertaking any of us will have in our lifetimes!