When Politics Were Smart
Has It Really Come Down to 2-digits vs 3-digits?
In campaigning for President in 1956, Adlai Stevenson was cheered by a supporter who shouted “Gov. Stevenson, every thinking person will vote for you”: “Ah, but Madame I need a majority” he retorted.
The witty, urbane Adlai was spot on in his assessment of the perspicacity of the average American voter. Today, more than 65 years on, Donald Trump has upended virtually every prior assumption about American politics. However, fortunately it’s no longer entirely a case of the “thinking” vs. the “unthinking.” If it were that simple, the Dems would never win a majority. However an intellectual divide clearly remains an element of our politics: 65% of the non-college white voters in 2020 opted for Trump, vs. just 33% of this demographic—equal to 42% of the total electorate—opting for Biden.
Given the fact that the non-college sector comfortably outweighs the college educated, even after adjusting for the higher rate of voting among those who have attended college, this would be understandable cause for alarm among Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents. Rather it has, thanks to Donald’s extremism in support of autocracy, become much more a matter of supporters of democracy vs. those willing to countenance would-be autocrats.
This is, in my opinion, the true divide today—not white vs. Black, not college-educated vs. high school graduates, nor rich vs. poor. Someone has said that our politics has devolved into a battle between those with two-digit IQ’s vs. those whose IQ’s contain three digits. Given the fact that the IQ test was designed to make 100 the precise median IQ, if this were true, it would go a long way to explain why almost all of our elections have shown no greater than a 52/48 divide. Personality differences between the two-party candidates, more than ideology, have most likely accounted for the slight popular vote deviations from a pure 50/50 divide in both 2016 and 2020.
Perhaps Hillary’s 2.3 million vote margin in excess of Trump suggests her personality, unappealing as it was, to have been slightly more appealing than that of The Donald. However, by 2020, one could argue that Biden’s 7.1 million votes greater than Trump’s suggests that Joe’s personality was seriously more appealing than Donald’s. However, given my unshakeable fondness for facts, I would suggest that Trump’s abysmal four-year performance as Chief Executive just might account for the bulk of Joe’s much greater margin.
Whether as much as one-half or as little as one-quarter of the 1.1 million Americans who have died from Covid can be attributed to the malfeasance of one Donald J. Trump, I would strenuously assert that the one-quarter estimate is the absolute minimum. Even the most casual observer of American elections would agree that killing off some 250,000+ of your citizens due to stupidity or carelessness doesn’t exactly endear you to large swaths of the electorate.
Voting in 2018 and 2020 showed a strong increase in turnout, to the highest levels since women gained the franchise in 1920. This has at least put a lie to old assumptions about “apathy” being a major force in American politics. It is perhaps the one positive aspect of our increasingly internecine political battles.
But I do not believe this simplistic analysis is right, as well as it obviously being bad politics to express it that way. (Surely Hillary, when she spoke of “deplorables,” learned this too late.) I believe that staking the battle on these precise grounds will assure an electoral majority for the forces of light vs. the forces of darkness. Yes, I am well aware that the opposition feels almost exactly the same way about liberals, or progressives, or whatever the Right
thinks believers in traditional American democracy should be called.
But they are quite simply wrong about where the majority lies. I believe future elections will only see a widening of the popular-vote majority that the Democrats have enjoyed in every presidential election since 2004. This is because the 18-21 age demo, the great majority of first-time voters every four years, divides roughly 65/35 in favor of Democrats.
Conversely the 65+ age demo, which includes most people who will have died since the prior election, divides roughly 60/40 in favor of the Republicans. Approximately 16 million US citizens turn 18 every four years, while about 10 million people 65+ die in that same period—excluding the 2020-22 spike from Covid. You do the arithmetic.
Now you see why Mitch McConnell experiences so many sleepless nights. I suspect he, more than anyone, understands the existential damage Donald Trump has done to the electoral prospects of the GOP. If someone could administer sodium pentathol to Sen. McConnell, I am fairly certain we would learn that his most fervent wish is to see the electoral, or even better the actual, demise of Donald J. Trump. From his lips—and triple chin—to God’s ears.
