Weird Deer

Our talk about the election the other day got me thinking about the issue of electability, which is something I wish nobody thought about. In fact, I’m beginning to think that “electability” is usually just a proxy for other concerns that for some reason we can’t seem to get at directly.

John Edwards, clawing for relevance at the January 21st debate, insinuated that he, as a white male, is the most electable Democrat running for president, thereby achieving a major technological advance in the politics of race- and sex-baiting. In effect he’s saying, “Listen, I know that you, humble Democrats, are not racist misogynists, but can you really depend on the rest of America not to be? I’m not asking you to pick me because you don’t like black people or women, but because they don’t.”

For reasons that others have made plenty clear, electability is a bad way to figure out who to vote for. Caring about electability means making a lot of assumptions about what other people care about, and since none of us really has any idea what drives even our closest loved ones, the electability question becomes a place of wild speculation and fearmongering. Electability killed Howard Dean, and look what good that did us.

In Edwards’s case, he’s using electability as a stand-in for race and gender bias–and this from a progressive Democrat, no less–but he’s doing it in such a way that the individual voter doesn’t have to feel like the racist misogynist.

I don’t think this is particularly new. Saying, “I’m not voting for Obama/Hillary because I don’t think America will actually elect a black/female president” doesn’t sound a whole lot different from such discrimination classics as “I didn’t hire him because I don’t think our customers would feel comfortable dealing with somebody with dreadlocks” or “The guys in management won’t take you seriously if you wear blouses like that.”

This kind of “Hey, don’t look at me” discrimination is incredibly pernicious. It makes the speaker feel innocent because (1) he doesn’t appear to be drawing on personally held prejudices and (2) the content of the statement might even be marginally true—racist customers might get all weird, misogynist bosses might leer condescendingly, and some voters might not be ready for a black or female president (though it’s worth asking if any Democratic candidate really has a shot at their votes anyway). Even if the statements are true, there’s no reason our misguided speaker should be advancing the racist/misogynist cause by acting as its proxy. And the pass-the-buck quality of the statements make you wonder if he’s really just worried about saying something far more direct that could land him in deep doodoo.

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But the point I was getting at was this electability thing, and I was going to say that popular suffrage implicates the individual intellect—this whole thing rides on most of us making the correct choice, using whatever faculties we have. By now we know all about the candidates’ policy positions, their experience, their endorsements, their ability to imitate black southerners, and so on. It’s too much to think about, so at this point I’m just trying to winnow down the relevant criteria, and electability—along with whatever strange ideas I might fill it with—is the first to go.

Happy voting,
Paul