Rock The Vote: Election 2006

Don’t worry my Republican friends, I won’t gloat too much about the sweeping Democratic victories in Congress and our “thumping” of your party in the midterm elections this week. I won’t dance on your Kerry Healey posters (although I doubt I’m friends with you if you actually like somebody as scummy as Healey) or taunt you with visions of a world where Americans enjoy federal health care, the Middle East includes a Palestinian state, and Bill Clinton is in charge of dinner menus at the White House. First of all, I figure watching Nancy Pelosi become House Speaker is punishment enough, and second, I’m too tipsy from throwing back cocktails at Don Rumsfeld’s Pink Slip Party to be overly snide.

But mostly, I’m just enjoying myself too much to be mean-spirited. And why shouldn't I be? There’s been a lot for us liberals to love about the 2006 election.

However, despite the U.S.'s sudden swing towards center, what I think I loved the most about Tuesday's runoff was a completely nonpartisan issue: for the first time in as long as I can remember, it seemed like everybody -- across age, race, political, and economic lines -- was abnormally interested in the races and honestly passionate about voting.

Last year when I was talking with my Taiwanese roommate, Becky, about U.S. elections, she was appalled to discover that such a low percentage of Americans actually WENT to the polls. In Taiwan, where democracy is still a relatively new thing, they usually average an 80% voter turnout -- a figure practically unheard of in the U.S. The two of us wondered if the Taiwanese would eventually slip into a similar pattern and become more apathetic, or if there was something innately cultural about American complacency.

Despite this pessimistic discussion, I don’t actually believe that we, as Americans, are really politically apathetic -- at least not as much as some of us claim to be. As a people whose ancestors got so pissed about overpriced tea that they overthrew a monarchy and kicked an entire empire off the North American continent (okay, okay, I’m wildly generalizing here), we can’t really describe our culture as one which encourages the perpetuation of the status quo. In fact, we’re a society that loves to argue; bring up politics around any American dinner table and you’re sure to get an earful. Or two. Or twelve. Flip a couple of 24/7 news networks and listen to the people who call, write in, and argue passionately about almost anything -- hell, the fact that we even HAVE so many 24 hour news networks says something about our culture. We certainly care enough to keep Larry King in snazzy suspenders well into his golden years. Then why, come election time, do we scrape the bottom of the barrel to reach a 50% voter turnout? We haven’t hit 60% in a Presidential or midterm election since 1968 (when the turnout = 60.8%).

I’m certainly no expert, but aside from the obvious hurdles of the U.S.’s shear size and population, I think that our nation, despite our willingness to participate in political discussion, has an an innate aversion when it comes to taking political ACTION. We may be an opinionated people, but we’re also lazy, dislike change, and remain unequivocally optimistic in the face of adversity. Although there is a portion of our nation which jumps to participate in almost any cause, most of us are satisfied with sitting home and believing that everything will work out eventually. This Pollyanna attitude was one voiced by many British colonists prior to the Revolution, and one which has carried much of our population through the United States’ most polarized times.

Need a more recent example?

Ask almost anyone if they think the electoral collage is a good thing. Most people will give you a very passionate “no,” especially after Al Gore’s loss of the Presidency in 2000 despite winning the popular vote (yeah, I’m still mad about that. I love Al Gore. Certainly better than our hack of a junior senator, Kerry. But moving on. . . ). But does anyone rally to abolish the electoral collage? Nah. They think, “That would take a lot of work. And effort. And the electoral collage works, even if it messes up sometimes. It’ll be fine. . . let’s just keep it.”

And why not?

Strange as the dynamic is between us and our governmental system, I’m not about to take out a giant Steven Colbert waggy finger and reprimand the nation. In fact, I argued to Becky that this “apathy towards action” we have is actually what makes our system WORK, while other democratic nations whose populaces readily jump into action stumble. As citizens, we care what happens within our government, but not enough to gang up and overthrow it. As passionately as many Americans hate Bush, for example, I doubt many would say his Presidency calls for a coup. Such upheaval would destroy a governmental system which does work for us, and we’re not about to do that just because we happen to dislike our current leader. We think, “He’ll be gone soon. . . It’ll be fine. . . let’s just keep him. Although I’ll get really mad at social gatherings if his name comes up.”

See a pattern emerging here?

In many newer democratic states, such as Ecuador, the government, corrupt or not, never has a chance to get off the ground before some group gets disgruntled at the President and overthrows him to install someone they like better. Then the opposition group rises up and does the same, which completely bypasses the democratic process and ultimately leads to a cycle which lacks any hope for resolution.

Conversely, Americans are hopeful enough that they can wait out the years of the political cycle to exact change in a more legal way: through elections. Although our political system was designed to incorporate checks and balances, the best check and balance we have is the two party system where the voter is in charge of the pendulum swing between libralism and conservatism. The end result is that we tend to walk the middle line more often than we're willing to admit -- and that keeps everyone moderately happy.

Although many citizens are pessimistic enough to think that a single vote counts for nothing, it takes a lot of people to change the motion of a heavy pendulum, and each side needs all the help it can get. If you’re not willing to get out and push the nation out of a ditch, who is to say your neighbor will do it for you? Therefore, despite the fact that a little ambivalence is what makes America great, no citizen should refuse to cast his drop in the bucket. Personally, I feel that if you don’t participate in the electoral system, you have no right to complain about the government. Stand up or shut up.

And that was the other amazing thing about the 2006 elections - those people stood up. For the first time in recent memory, an election showed the country what can happen when enough angry people push back their dinner conversation chairs and actually show up at the polls. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Green Rainbow or Jedi Knight, on election day you saw a huge group of people speak, and they said:

“Congress’ job performance sucks. They are SO fired.”

Immediately, Washington answered, handing Rumsfeld a pink slip and changing “Stay the Course” in Iraq to “Accepting Exit Strategy Plan Suggestions Please.”

Hopefully, this massive Congressional power shift will humble the current administration into acting more moderately. The thing that has angered me most about Bush and his cronies has been their arrogance -- his 5-year-old insistence on working unilaterally, whether that meant bypassing Congress, the U.N., or common sense. Losing Congress will force them to work with their opposition rather than just sticking their fingers in their ears and going, “I can’t hear you! La la la!”

At the same time, however, I don’t want to see the Democrats get full of themselves just because they suddenly seem to be having a good day. The Democratic party has suffered from a lack of direction for years, and for the last five or so has billed itself as the “anti-Bush” party or the “anti-Republican” party. Memo: nobody wants to vote for an Anti. They want to know what the Democratic party stands FOR, not what it doesn't stand for. The public's distrust of negative campaigning was reason #1,450 why Deval Patrick buried Healey in Massachusetts' Gubernatorial race. The Democrats also don’t help themselves by promoting some of their stupider members, like that jackass, John Kerry. Yeah, I voted for him for President, but I hated myself for doing it. I’ve never liked him, and despite my exasperation with Bush’s incompetence, I’m glad Kerry isn’t President.

So with November almost over, I’ve done my part by going to the polls, and for the first time in my short voting career, I was actually pleased by the results. Now I can go back to being lazy and optimistic, and leave the arguing to the dinner table.

Although if Al Gore changes his mind and runs in ‘08, I may just have to volunteer for his campaign.