The Nov. 5 election is just days away, and the question I hear most is “How can the election be this close?”
High-information voters who care about an existential threat to our democracy may be missing a key fact: If a person is not thriving, she may have little interest in defending an institution that seems to have failed her.
We have lost so much over recent decades, beginning with the end of the FCC’s fairness doctrine, which strove for an authentic “fair and balanced” media. The drastic reduction of newspapers and magazines due to the advent of online news delivery diminished information access. Coders create algorithms to play to extremes, and online radicalization has become a thing.
Meanwhile, our courts are tipping the scales of justice and some states’ election laws have bent democratic rules and processes to exclude as many as possible. No one bats an eye when toxic attacks, now acceptable in polite company, pollute our discourse. Gone for too many is a sense of belonging, community, meaning, and respect. In effect, it has become difficult to be good citizens.
As a result, our polarized citizenry is filled with cynicism, anger, and alienation. If institutions aren’t serving the strugglers, they will not mourn the loss of democracy. Too many are gripped by the politics of grievance and fueled by fear, mistrust, and perceived threats to their beliefs. It is easy to manipulate the alienated voter, particularly with the decay of our foundational institutions and norms.
Economics seems to underlie much of this. Often suspicious of everything “big” — big government, big corporations, even big unions — our alienated siblings see bigness as power, to be used against, not for, them.
The decline of union membership since the 1970s and the economic inequality it has created has set this stage. As nearly half of us struggle to get by, we lose track of whom to properly blame. Does a president control prices, for instance, or is inflation served to us by Corporate America, the Federal Reserve and other non-political forces? Not only are some of us misunderstanding causes and perpetrators, we are also losing sight of the values of unity, empathy, and community. We focus instead on getting whatever we can for ourselves. Experts say that authoritarian populism grows from these roots.
In addition to the cynical, there are a swath of people who are simply too overwhelmed by the challenges of economic survival to engage in the abstractions of politics. Once, when I campaigned door to door, a woman answered, holding a baby and nursing a black eye. She told me that her focus was on affording diapers for her baby, now that she’d fled her abuser. Whatever I came to discuss with her simply wasn’t on her Maslow’s hierarchy of immediate needs.
Political opportunists see fertile ground to manipulate people, to pit us against each other. It’s fairly easy: Play to tribalism (we like those who are like us) and fan fear (warning of those who are not like us). This is the tactic of those who engage in cultural warfare in our schools, on the border, against government, and everywhere else they can ignite passions and create bonfires of hatred.
If we expect voters to care about threats to democratic institutions, we must ensure that those institutions deliver for us. Economic fairness is key to this. We must also rear the next generation in the fine arts of media literacy, civic engagement, compassionate voluntarism, and civil debate, to armor them against political exploitation. Labor unions can lead the way, because we know how to organize and mobilize. Let’s do this to restore our sense of belonging, community, meaning, and respect for our democracy.
Laurie Wimmer is Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Northwest Oregon Labor Council.
