How To Decide Whom To Vote For in the US Presidental Primary

And now for something completely different. I don’t usually post about politics, but what with all the election coverage I hear every day during my commute, I can’t help but think about it. I am basically a “progressive”. Perhaps my politics is “defined” by the fact that I read The New Republic and The New Yorker, and listen to National Public Radio. So here’s how I look at the Presidential election.

Because the primary elections are in progress, we hear mostly about them. But what’s really important is the general election. Any of the major Democratic candidates is way, way better than any of the major Republican candidates. So, the only thing that matters is for a Democrat to win. And therefore, the only criterion that matters for the primary is to vote for the Democrat who is most likely to be able to win in the general election.

That means that my primary vote should be based on how I expect everyone else to vote in the general election.

What criteria will everybody else be using to make their decision in the general election?

Polls tell us relatively little. As we all know, there have been major failures in polling already. Many voters don’t make up their mind until they are actually in the voting booth. I believe that what voters say to pollsters is influenced by what they think the pollsters want to hear, and the way that they’d like to sound and to perceive themselves, which is not all that accurate a predictor of how they will actually vote. Things keep changing, often rapidly: one “gaffe” can have a big effect. Polls asking “if x and y were candidates in the general election, who would you vote for?” are particularly dubious, since so much will change between now and general election day.

I believe that Iowa and New Hampshire tell us very little. They are quite atypical in so many ways, particularly that New Hampshire allows independents to vote Democratic in the primaries. Obviously Michigan tells us nothing about the Democratic primary race, since the only major candidates on the ballot is Clinton.

Some people mostly care about the real issues and/or ideology. The Democratic candidates are quite close on all the issues. (The differences that are being debated now are very minor.) So from the point of view of my primary voting decision, none of that matters.

A lot more people vote on what they perceive as the “character” of the candidate. Among the most important “character” criteria are:

• Is he/she someone I’d enjoy spending an evening with?
• Is he/she the “kind” of person who respects my “kind” of person?
• Is he/she optimistic?
• Is he/she female?
• Is he/she black?
• Is he/she “cold”?

For example, last time, I believe that John Kerry was perceived by many voters as being an “Eastern elite liberal sushi-eating Chardonnay-sipping type who snickers at ordinary working-class people”. It makes no difference whether that’s true or not; the only thing that matters is the perception. George W. Bush affects a Texas accent (gee, his dad and brother don’t talk that way!), is seen in jeans clearing sagebrush from his ranch (or whatever), and so on, portraying himself very differently from Kerry.

(The fact that W. avoided war service, while Kerry served honorably, was a cause of cognitive dissonance to some voters. They were looking hard for an excuse to dismiss this fact, and the “Swift Boat” people, no matter how implausible their claims, gave them the excuse they needed to make them feel happy opposing Kerry.)

I believe that Clinton cannot possibly win the general election. The Republican attack machine will have a much easier time sliming her than Obama (or Edwards). So many people already loathe her; her “negatives” are about 40% now (this is one polling result that I have some confidence in), and (I am told) negatives are much less volatile than positives. Last summer, I met an otherwise-reasonable woman who told me that she would never vote for Clinton, “because she didn’t divorce Bill”. And a lot of people, most of whom won’t admit it, would not vote for any woman.

Obama is a brilliant and inspiring orator, very optimistic and positive, and I don’t think he will be perceived as an “Eastern elite liberal etc.” as Kerry was. I am afraid that his major drawback is that he’s perceived as being black, albeit not with the kind of negatives that you’d get from, say, Al Sharpton (to put it mildly). I think more people will claim to be comfortable to be voting for a black candidate than actually are.

A lot of these things can be influenced by advertising, organization, and endorsements; sadly, people can be influenced (the advertising industry is not crazy to spend all the money they spend). Clinton has a lot of strengths in these areas that will help her a lot in the primaries.

I think that all things considered, Obama is less unelectable than Clinton, which is why I’m going to vote for him (unless something big changes in the next few weeks).

My prediction of the outcome, which has not changed in many months, is that Clinton will win the Democratic primary and lose the general election.

And what do I actually believe (as opposed to how I’m going to vote)? I prefer Obama, although any of Obama, Clinton, or Edwards would be just fine with me as President.

I do not buy the argument that Clinton had “experience”. Perhaps Biden and Dodd has experience that matters, but they’re out of the race. Clinton was merely a kibitzer; she didn’t even have a security clearance. And the Republicans will make great hay out of this. (And why does she say she was named after the recently-deceased Sir Edmund Hillary, who didn’t become famous until six years after Clinton was born? And what was going on when she made $100K in fast commodities trading? And those are just two of the real issues, not counting all the fake ones like Whitewater.) And they will find ways to make the point “you don’t want a woman as president”, without saying so in those words. Attacking her will be like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s going to be very ugly and unpleasant.

I hope that John McCain wins the Republican primary; he’s the least awful of them.

OK, now I’m on the record, here on the wonderful Internet where nothing ever goes away. I’ve been wrong about politics many times before, and the present situation is pretty volatile and hard to predict. (As have been the last few general elections, which were extremely close.)

Notes on the book: Supercapitalism

Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, by Robert Reich, is the most interesting book on the American government and how it relates to our lives that I’ve read in a long time.

In a nutshell, the thesis is: “Capitalism has become more responsive to what we want as individual purchasers of goods [and investors], but democracy has grown less responsive to what we want together as citizens.” “Democracy means more than a process of free and fair elections. Democracy, in my view, is a system for accomplishing what can only be achieved by citizens joining together with other citizens–to determine the rules of the game whose outcomes express the common good.”

He makes what I consider an extremely cogent, well-written, and persuasive argument to support this. He explains why it happened, focusing on the history of the American economic and governmental structure starting in the post-War era (the fifties), and showing how major changes started in the Seventies and continued to the present.

He offers explanations for:

• Why CEO pay has soared into the stratosphere and what prevented it from soaring before
• Why inflation has become less of a threat than it was three or four decades ago
• Why antitrust laws are less important today as a means of restraining economic power than they were previously.
• Why there are so many more corporate lobbyists and lawyers in Washington, D.C.
• Why politicians demand that companies be “patriotic” and put America before other nations
• Why a bigger fuss is being made over corporate philanthropy when corporations were never set up to be charitable institutions
• How someone can fret about the decline in hourly wages and simultaneously hunt for the best deal from China or India, which is often at the expense of an American’s wages or even job.
• How someone can lament the decline of independent retailers on Main Street while at the same time do most of their shopping at big-box retailers and online.
• Why a person who is deeply concerned about global warming might nonetheless buy an SUV
• Why politicians like to publically excoriate CEOs but then enact no laws making what they did illegal
• Why the move toward improved corporate governance makes companies less likely to be socially responsible
• Why the promise of “corporate democracy” is illusory
• Why the corporate income tax should be abolished
• Why companies should not be held criminally liable
• Why shareholders should be protected from having their money used by corporations for political purposes without their consent
• Why large companies have less economic power now than they had three decades ago
• Why the immense increase in corporate lobbying is due to a decrease in the market power of the corporations

You may be thinking about some of these points: “Oh, it’s obvious why.” But Reich’s explanations are often not what you’d expect.

None of this happened because of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher; the trends were clearly under way before they came to power, and the same trends can be seen in other countries to some extent. Neither were they caused by heroic or villainous CEOs; the changes are structural, not personal.

“The executives of Wal-Mart or any other large company are not brutally insensitive or ruthlessly greedy. They are doing what they’re supposed to do, according to the current rules of the game–giving their customers good deals and thereby maximizing the returns to their investors. Just like players in any game, they are doing whatever is necessary to win. But just as all games require rules to define fair play, the economy relies on government to set the economic ground rules. If government wanted to do something about the means Wal-Mart employs, it could change the current rules. In theory, it could enact laws to make it easier for all employees to unionize, require all large companies to provide their employees with health insurance and pensions, enact zoning regulations to protect Main Street retailers from the predations of big-box retailers, and raise the minimum wage high enough to give all working people a true living wage. All such measures would have the likely effect of causing Wal-Mart and other large corporations across the board to raise their prices and reduce returns to investors.”

Reich is not especially advocating that government should do these things. His point is to show what could happen, and why things are happening the way they are. He would like there to be more public conversation about whether or not to make these kinds of tradeoffs. The last sentence is “The first step, which is often the hardest, is to get our thinking straight.”

The writing style of the book is simple and direct, and fun to read. He has a lot of supporting facts and figures as well as good illustrative stories.

I believe that his overall point is extremely valid, and provides a useful framework for thinking about the vital issues of our economy and our government.