2016 US Election Lessons Learned: The Electorate

Every democracy's foundation is a secure and effective process to collect the 'consent of the governed'.  In our democracy, this collection is in the form of votes cast in popular elections to select government officials who act by proxy in the government on behalf of those who elected them.  

Ideally, these elected officials are selected by the voting citizens based on a best judgment assessment that those selected are the ones most likely to accurately convey the voter's intent into the government institutions where important decisions are made to establish the rules of governance.  If a particular elected officials fails to perform this accurate conveyance of opinion to the satisfaction of the majority of their constituents, they can be voted out of office in the next election cycle.

This process seems straightforward enough in theory, but in actual practice across the many millions of citizens in this country, there are several issues that could conceivably upset the process of conveying majority intent into the governance of this country.  Certainly, there is a danger that these issues can be triggered inadvertently, but more recently, there is a much greater threat that these issues can be deliberately manipulated to slant the outcome of elections in a particular direction.  These issues have never been more apparent than during the 2016 presidential election.

At the top of this list of these election issues is the matter of the US electorate.  The most destructive thing for any democracy is an electorate that is not reasonably informed about current events that matter and sufficiently educated enough to understand the implications of these events. A democracy can only be effective if its electorate is engaged and informed.  That is not to say that everyone has to be experts, just reasonably and sufficiently informed. 

Poorly Educated

After winning for his third straight primary victory in the Nevada Republican caucuses in Feb 2016, Trump told supporters in Las Vegas "I love the poorly educated."  Was Trump in that moment moved by the disadvantage these poorly educated must experience every day to survive in our sophisticated, technical world?  Not likely given his undeniable narcissistic personality disorder.  It is much more likely that his love was based on how pliable the poorly educated voters were to his sloppy style of campaigning, and the ensuing realization that they were the only opportunity for his flailing campaign to actually succeed.

Many, perhaps even most, children in this country attend good schools and get good educations, but there are too many children who do not.  Their schools and the resources in those schools are substandard, and so is the education they receive.  They in turn grow up to be the poorly educated that Trump has come to love. 

It is incumbent on this nation to ensure that every citizen no matter their social status is properly educated.  Sadly, there is evidence that education in the United States can only be considered average when compared to the rest of the world ranking 14 out of the top 20 (top 20 Education Systems).  Teachers are the front line of this education endeavor, and across the country, they are increasingly expressing a general dissatisfaction with their leadership, salary cuts, and a lack of resources due to serious government budget shortfalls. 

Most if not all of these budget shortfalls are a direct result of tax cuts that have been put into place that largely benefit the very wealthy.  Government subsidies to wildly profitable corporations such as those in the collectives of Big AG and Big Oil can't be cut according many elected officials who receive large donations from them.  Military spending is at record highs, but for some obscure reason, the education of our future generation of voters can be can be seriously compromised.  Education is critical for our future generations if they are to be competitive in our increasingly technical world, and they also need to be properly educated to become good citizens who can actively and constructively engage in our democratic process.

If our children are not properly educated, their future is in jeopardy and our democracy is vulnerable to the darkness that comes from being ignorant and uninformed.  It appears that our country is guilty of becoming increasingly apathetic about educating our children even though the potential damage this apathy poses to our democracy is staggering.  Education issues should have a very high priority and receive the funding that it requires.  The future of our democracy depends on it.

Ill Informed

Technology makes us feel very well informed about what is going on around us, but the reality is sadly very different.  Many of us can tell you what a casual friend had for dinner yesterday from a picture they sent in a text message, but they can only draw a blank when ask to name a world leader.  Just ask Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.  

Most people are not really as savvy as they would like to believe about the process of keeping themselves informed.  It requires great skill to maneuver through the mass of information that is available on the Internet sorting through all the trivial and unimportant and in some case downright false information to get to the real meaningful news.  This winnowing through the chaff is why we have traditionally had journalist working in our free press unencumbered to get us the correct information that we need to know. 

But there are indications that our free press needs to do a better job of keeping the electorate informed.  A number of issues have been observed as news services have transitioned from focus on serving the public to making huge profit margins.  This new focus makes them much more concerned about selling advertising for news programs than presenting a balanced perspective and thorough reporting of the things our citizens really need to know. Numerous issues exist such as poor coverage of important events with much more focus on the sensationalism that sells advertising.  These news reporting issues are reported in much greater detail at the Daily Source .

This sad commentary of the state of our 24/7 news networks is underscored by the fact that many (myself included) go to various comedians who have stepped up to fill this information void.  We are fortunate to have their commitment to distributing real news that needs to be reported but does not make the 24/7 coverage cut.  None of these show exist on the 24/7 news networks.

Semi-Engaged

Estimates show more than 58 percent of eligible voters went to the polls during the 2016 election.  The most logical reasons for the other 42% who did not vote is that voting was either too inconvenient for them or they just deliberately for some reason did not vote.  The matter of inconvenience will be discussed in greater detail below, but the matter of simply did not vote will be further dissected here.

The matter of not caring enough to vote falls into two major categories of why.  Clearly, there are some people so caught up in their personal life dramas that they simply do not care to vote, possibly are not even unaware that an election is ongoing, but others did not vote because they did not feel they had a clear enough understanding of the issues and candidates to be able to make correct voting choices.  

This lack of understanding is a symptom of our average, underfunded education system and news reporting that is more focused on sensationalism rather than important events foreign and domestic.  The process of voting is relatively simple, but casting a well thought out vote is not that easy.  If voters are sufficiently educated and reasonably informed, it is reasonable to assume they will want to be engaged in the process.  

Very Enraged

Above all else, one thing is crystal clear.  Our current electorate is very, very angry. 

One aspect of this rage is the righteous anger that is appropriate and deserved by the way that greed has beset our election process and government.  We are rightfully angry because the political agenda of the last several decades appears to have grossly favored the few who are rich over the many who are not.  We are angry because we have been told lies to solicit our voting support to elect leaders who do these favors for the rich but ignore our specific needs. We are angry because every recent election has been preceded by a shameless parade of candidates going to curry favor from one of the several billionaires who likes to have political pets to be their stooge.

The rich in this country are seriously being favored by the trends in government particularly in the last 30 years, and they are recently (i.e. since the Citizens United decision) very brazenly and openly trying to buy politicians and elections to have these trends to continue and perhaps even be extended.  The rest of us, Republican, Democrat, and Independent, are righteously angry about these things, and this righteous anger has generally forced the election away from the typical rational analysis of issues and facts into a much stronger emotional context.  It is reasonable to expect people to be angry about their government for legitimate reasons, and for our election process to be able to tolerate this type of strong emotional context generated by anger that is rationally based in reality. 

The real problems begin with the inclusion of much more nefarious types of anger.  This anger is not based on real world issues, but rather, this anger is stirred up by fringe groups who exist to promote their particular angry blend of racism, xenophobia, and religious intolerance.  It is not based in reality.  It is just pure hatred.  These fringe groups from the far right wanted to inject their particular flavor of anger into the already boiling mix hoping that it would simply, seamlessly blend in the mix without being noticed. Unfortunately for them, their irrational hate that exists at the basest levels humanity generates a much more powerful form of anger that is hard not to notice. 

This nefarious anger has been fueled in recent years by the ongoing war with terrorists who are disproportionately religiously aligned with Islam.  Additionally, racial tensions have been exacerbated by video recordings of unarmed blacks (men and children) being gunned down by police, and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that was created to not let these matters slip away from public attention.  These new racial injustices and the baseline racism that has simply never gone away have reignited decade’s old racial tensions.

Another very conspicuous focus of this nefarious anger is the fact that the current second term president of this country is a man of color who pulled the country back from the precipice of the 2008 Great Recession.  He has been able to be reasonably successful even in the face of near complete obstructionism from the party of ‘No’.  He has been demonized and the object of overwhelming criticism that have no real basis in reality.  Though most of his detractors would be quick to point out that they are not racist, they most certainly without a doubt are.

An emotional campaign has been forced to an even more dangerous place by this nefarious anger that has further clouded this election process and created tensions that have spilled out generally into our society.  An election process that had already been pushed from its typical rational analysis of issues and facts into a charged emotional context that quickly escalated through irrational to an hysterical frenzy.  This shift to this very volatile and dangerous environment created the perfect storm of the 2016 election.

Part two of this discussion The Campaign is located here.