So all the swing states, including Florida, went to
Obama after all, as I thought they would. How did CNN, the New York Times, and
to a lesser extent the Huffpost, get it wrong, and how did I get it right? Luck
of the draw? I don’t think so. Absent in polling is an understanding that
giving your opinion is one thing, the reality of voting is another.
Opinion has
no consequence and in the case of those so-called undecided voters, it was
often driven by powerful emotion. Their lives had been difficult for a long time,
they were afraid of things getting worse. They had a lot of ‘information’
thrown at them by the Romney campaign, very little of it truthful, much of it
fear-mongering, but how were they to know that? Fear diminishes your capacity
for rational thought. It happens to all of us.
But, the problem was that nobody really liked
Romney. When you’re not a fanatic it’s very hard to place your trust in
somebody who either doesn’t know how to reach you and connect with you, or
doesn’t think it’s important. Plus, he’s not a trustworthy politician. He’ll
say what he thinks people want to hear. This is not the first time he changed
his policies mid-way. He did it when he ran against Ted Kennedy.
He started both campaigns as a conservative, didn’t
make enough headway, so became more moderate. People who want to get rid of a
politician because he threatens their status quo or because he’s the wrong
color, won’t care about this absence of backbone and deep-rooted conviction and
they have no investment in rational thought. They’ll blind themselves to
something we all instinctively know if we let ourselves admit it.
That a man
who betrays once will betray again. And who he betrays isn’t of much concern to
him. Even those Romney supporters didn’t really like
him and their reasons for voting were not that he had great leadership
qualities. He doesn’t have them. It’s ironic that all the impassioned rhetoric
about rescuing the American economy and society from the claws of a socialist
came from people willing to elect a patent
liar.
Romney did now and then irrevocably and openly expose the truth of who he
is, mind you, when he said 47% of Americans were irresponsible victims and they
weren’t his concern. He consolidated that with another bit of truth
about himself when he added, in his clumsy and not particularly intelligent
attempt to patch things up, that in a campaign you tell your electorate what
they want to hear. That must have really reassured his wealthy supporters. But
they didn’t care.
Now that kind of stupidity is what causes the demise of all
civilizations. It was pretty obvious that
the ‘undecided voters’ were not
fanatics and had no agenda in voting Obama out. I was sure they
wouldn’t be able to blind themselves to Romney’s weaknesses or to how much he
lied when it suited him, or to how much Obama connected with them at a humane
level. They don’t like Romney but they do like Obama.
Not because he’s a con
artist but because he’s a good man with powerful leadership qualities and a
profound humanity. He might not have turned the economy around
sufficiently to completely alleviate their fear and discomfort, but he had
succeeded enough against massive odds and despite great Congressional resistance,
for them to see that he was a safer bet than Romney.
That moment of voting is
when the reality of consequence stares you in the face, when you realize that
your choice could be the one that shapes your future. If you have an ounce of
sense you cast your fears aside enough to think rationally, and you pick the
safer bet. I predicted that Obama would get all the swing
states because I believed that the majority of Americans have that capacity.
It’s easy to say you support somebody you don’t trust and don’t like. It’s very
difficult to actually vote for them.
People are so cynical about politics in
the US, but I think they illustrate the degree to which its society has
advanced in its capacity to make healthy choices that are truly about the
improvement of their world, even if that improvement involves discomfort and
challenge. And nothing could be more important than that.
