Miscellaneous

It's the Values, Stupid

My wife is far more liberal than I. And over the weekend, for shits and giggles, I tried -- I really tried -- during an episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher" to play devil's advocate with her on Sarah Palin and politics, in general. Because when it comes to politics, my wife gets self-righteous as hell, and agree or disagree, it's always tempting to argue with self-righteousness. I see it here in our comments, all the time. Only it's usually from the conservative side.

Anyway: Here's what I discovered. If you want to win an argument (or an election) bad enough, you can pretty much blind yourself to all your own faults. It's actually not that hard to argue on McCain's behalf -- the problem is, it's not a very exciting argument (and it requires that you forget about the last two years). It's when Palin comes into the equation that it gets a little more difficult to argue on behalf of that ticket. But, if your values swing a certain way, and if you're one of the many, many, many, many voters who makes a decision based, largely, on values (gah!), it's a lot easier to see why Palin is so popular. If you're a waitress, if you're an apolitical single mom who works as a secretary for a law firm, if you work at Wal-Mart, or in a factory, of if you watch NASCAR, well, then: Palin is the only person on either of the tickets that it's easy to relate to on a personal level. War-hero senator? Hell no. Foreign-policy expert? Hell no (the fact that Biden takes the train home every night is compelling, but who takes the train?). And a Harvard-educated lawyer from Chicago? Hardly. None of those three are particularly compelling to a middle-aged woman who puts in eight-hours as a hospital administrator and goes home only to find her teenage son playing video games. But Palin and all of her goddamn baggage is -- in fact, the more baggage she has, the more compelling she is to values voters.

So, the problem -- at least as I see it -- is that values voters clearly make up most of the electorate now. And values voters don't listen to the pundits, or even the ads. The only news most of them watch is the local news, and mostly for the weather. I know -- my entire family consists of value voters (gah!). And, ultimately, it is those value voters who are going to elect the president. And there is nothing the rest of us can do about it. Maybe, this year, there will be a groundswell of young voters -- voters who use only cell phones, who haven't been polled -- who turn out in favor of Barack Obama. But I doubt it. The American worker is not only the backbone of our economy, but of the electorate. And the average American worker will, more often than not, vote for the candidate who shares their values the most. And, at least on the surface, that's Sarah Palin. And there are no arguments that Barack Obama or Joe Biden can make to defeat that connection. So, until the Democrats find another "salt of the Earth" candidate, like Bill Clinton (a brilliant, Rhodes scholar, who was still able to convince the American people he was one of them, in part, by fucking his secretary), then we're kind of screwed. Values voters don't vote for the smartest, the more experienced, or the guy with the best ideas. Values voters vote for themselves.

And right now, I'm just praying to a God I don't believe in (because I'm an elite, liberal heathen) that McCain lives out his term.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on September 16, 2008 (boomark / email).