The “one issue” voter problem By Peter Burrows elburropete@gmail.com 4/9/24
Churchill once famously said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” These days, I don’t think it would take that long. I would bet a Don Juan burrito that the average voter can’t name their two senators or who represents them in the House of Representatives, let alone any details about budgets, foreign policy, etc., etc. ad infinitum.
In defense of the average voter, in a world with so many complex issues, we can’t expect voters to be well-informed about all of them and, in fact, many voters simply don’t have the time or the interest to become well-informed on ANY issue. They look at only one thing when it comes to who they vote for: party affiliation.
Given the bias of the media today, this gives the Democrats a huge advantage. It's hard to imagine, for example, any Democrat president today getting an approval rating as low as the 22% given to Harry Truman who, in hindsight, was a pretty good President. That's lower than the 24% approval for Richard Nixon in a poll taken just before he resigned in disgrace.(1)
Truman's readings may have reflected a media bias that was pro Republican back then. Today’s media bias is very much the opposite and probably accounts for President Biden's approval rating of 40%, which is ridiculously high for an obviously incompetent, senile octogenarian. If you suspect this rating hides a huge division of opinion based upon party, go to the head of the class. Sure enough, the Democrats give Biden a --- get this --- 77% approval rating (!!) vs. the Republicans giving him only 7%. (2)
As for Trump, his recent ratings were 52.5% unfavorable vs. 42.6% favora ble.(3) Once again, this reflects a huge division based on party, and while I couldn't find any current polls, one from last July shows Republican approval for Trump at 66%, and Democrat disapproval a whopping 91%! (4)
Never in my lifetime has there been such a huge, and heated, division. To say that Trump elicits an emotional reaction from voters is very much an understatement. Emotions trump facts, no pun intended, and what this means is that Trump is THE issue in this election:
A new Economist/YouGov poll’s findings revealed precisely what the 2024 election will be about. The survey showed that regardless of which side one is on, this race is all about Trump.(5)
People voting their emotions can destroy democracies, which have a history of putting charismatic demagogues in power who then become dictators. Hitler, Mussolini, Hugo Chavez, Juan Peron and Robet Mugabe come readily to mind. That’s why our Founding Fathers created a Constitutional Republic, sometimes called a representative democracy, in which the people elect representatives to govern.
This puts a buffer between the “madness of the crowds” and those passing laws. The Founding Fathers wisely thought this wasn’t enough of a buffer to protect us from democracy --- yes, PROTECT us from democracy --- so they created a bicameral government in which one of the legislative bodies was not directly elected by the people: the Senate.
Few people know this, but Senators used to be appointed by their state legislators, which meant that the Senate was only very indirectly elected by the people, i.e., was one more step removed from the madding crowds. This ended with the 17th Amendment, enacted in 1912 and effective for the 1914 election which was the first that saw senators elected directly by popular vote.
My impression of the times is that the state legislatures were only too happy to let Senators be chosen by popular vote. Selecting Senators was one hell of a lot of work for the state legislators. Why not just let the people decide? More democracy! Sounds good, doesn't it? Not in hindsight.
What this means is that the Senate today is composed of 100 people who, politically, are no different from their cohorts in the House of Representatives. Members of both houses are politicians, people who appeal to the general populace for votes and usually have as their number one priority getting reelected.
Elections are expensive. Candidates often complain about the time they spend raising money, and this includes those people who are already in office. Senators, who originally only worried about lobbying their state legislatures, if that, now have to spend time raising money, kissing ass and placating special interests, just like their cohorts in the House of Representatives.
Thus, the Senate is no longer much of a check on the emotions that might run rampant in the House, since they are also swayed by those same emotions. And that’s why this election is so dangerous. The 91 percent disapproval rating of Donald Trump from their constituents is something the Democrats in the Senate and House are very aware of.
Furthermore, this is a STRONG disapproval. If some of the news announcers and talk show hosts in the MSM, especially on CNN and MSNBC, are any indication, some of the opposition to Trump is positively hysterical. I’m afraid Keith Olbermann’s thinly veiled sincere hope for Trump's assassination is not an outlier. (6)
Even if Trump can overcome swing-state voter fraud and actually win, we can expect a repeat of the “mostly peaceful” riots of 2020 led by the same Antifa/BLM masked thugs, except this time on a much larger, more intense scale. It would not surprise me if President Biden would then declare martial law. It also wouldn't surprise me if the Democrats and RINO Never-Trumpers in Congress vote to overturn the election results to “save Democracy.”
I hope I'm wrong. It's ridiculous that this election is about Trump, who is a loud-mouthed New York asshole, NOT a threat to “democracy” or a dictator in waiting. Robert F Kennedy Jr. was quite correct to point out to an interviewer that Biden is a ‘much worse threat to democracy’ than Trump.(7) RFK, Jr. has also said voters deserve better than the ‘least of two evils’(8), something I thoroughly agree with. The problem is, with RFK in the race, it would be the lesser of THREE evils.
As impossible as it may be for some people to believe, there are a number of issues which are far more important than the specter of Donald Trump as president, issues I think Trump can deal with far better than Biden. The Biden Administration’s complicity in the illegal immigrant invasion is number one on my list because it is an open violation of the Constitution, Article IV section 4:
“The United States shall guarantee to every state in the union a Republican form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;"
A Trump administration will stop the invasion and MAYBE prosecute those responsible. Maybe. “Maybe” is better than nothing. So, while Trump is a long way from being my first choice, my first choice isn’t on the ballot. I can only choose the “least of two evils" and compared to Biden, Trump is Mother Teresa.
(2) https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-BIDEN/POLL/nmopagnqapa/
(3) https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/
(4) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/21/little-change-in-americans-views-of-trump over-the-past-year/
(6) https://www.foxnews.com/media/keith-olbermann-suggests-hope-trumps-assassination-x-post
(7) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/02/robert-f-kennedy-jr-cnn-interview-biden-trump