Upload
others
View
1
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
© 2015 CURRENT AFFAIRS
LOGIN
HOME / MAGAZINE / SUBSCRIBE / ABOUT / SHOP / DONATE
R
OCTOBER 21, 2017
YOU DO, IN FACT, STILLGET TO COMPLAINEVEN IF YOU DON’TVOTE
President Obama tells people “Don’t boo,vote.” But booing is a cornerstone of our
democracy…
by VANESSA A. BEE
epetition is a powerful tool—mind-bending, even. A
number of scienti!c experiments have consistently
shown that hearing the same falsehood over and over can
make us believe it’s true. If you’re told enough times that
the Atlantic Ocean is the largest body of water in the world, or
that there really was a nineties movie in which Sinbad played a
powerful genie, these supposed facts just might become your
sacrosanct convictions. Psychologists call this phenomenon the
“illusory truth e"ect.” Of course, just because something feels like
it must be true doesn’t make it so: the prize for largest ocean
belongs to the Paci!c, and Sinbad would never debase himself by
appearing in a bad !lm. The illusory e"ect remains no more than a
misinterpretation within our mind. It does nothing to actually
alter objective reality.
But politics isn’t about objective reality: it’s about what you can
make people believe. Given that repetition can literally control
people’s perception of the world around them, it’s no wonder that
pithy, repetitive slogans are the great mainstays of political
campaigns.
For more than a year now, former President Obama has been
repeating the claim that if you do not vote in elections, you have
no right to complain about subsequent political developments. At
the 2016 Democratic Convention, where his party endorsed
Hillary Clinton as its Presidential nominee after a bitterly
contested primary, President Obama admonished protesters in the
audience with a sharp, “Don’t boo, vote.” A year later, with
Donald Trump in the Oval, President Obama would repeat this
claim while campaigning for Democratic gubernatorial nominees.
Encouraging a crowd of New Jerseyans to vote blue in November
2017, President Obama outright stated: “You cannot complain if
you didn’t vote.” Later that evening, this time in a speech on
behalf of Virginian candidate Ralph Northam, the President
served his catchphrase yet again: “Don’t boo, vote!” The crowd
faithfully roared in agreement.
President Obama is far from the originator of this philosophy; nor
is he its only adherent. With each election cycle, voting absolutists
of all political stripes resurrect the saying and throw it at anyone
they suspect may not show up at the polls. To some extent, this
may merely be a cynical attempt by political campaigners to garner
additional votes, by evoking a sense of duty (and perhaps even
shame) in constituents who aren’t otherwise !red-up by their
candidate’s substantive talking points or personal charisma. But
it’s also true that many people genuinely believe that voting is a
non-negotiable moral obligation. The institution of Voting, after
all, has a kind of holy aura in American civic life. Voting is one of
the exclusive privileges of citizenship, and the minimum starting-
point of civic engagement. Fights for su"rage and
enfranchisement feature heavily in the progressive narrative of
American history. For people who take this sacramental view of
voting, the failure to vote is a willful refusal to participate in
national life, which in turn strips the non-voting miscreant of any
right to complain when national life then devolves into a out-of-
control trashcan !re.
But “Don’t Boo, Vote” mantra is ultimately a means of
mesmerizing the crowd, using a punchy, commonsense-sounding
phrase to categorically silence dissent. “Don’t Boo, Vote” fails to
recognize that many people who boo are people who have no
right, or no e"ective ability, to vote. It fails to recognize that those
people who do not exercise their right to vote, in the belief—too
often fully-justi!ed—that their vote will make no difference to the
things that actually matter to them, may still have perfectly good
reasons to boo. It also fails to recognize that, fundamentally, a
politician supplicating for public support has no right to tell
anybody when, and how, they express their rage, grief, and
dissatisfaction over the way things are going.
People who did not vote, or will not vote, retain an inalienable
right to complain. More than that, they should complain. To
suggest that the actions booing and voting are somehow mutually
exclusive is at best silly, and at worse cynical. An unbridled right to
whine about our conditions and the performance of our
representatives is important for several reasons. First, whining
should be regarded as desirable by the left, insofar as a society in
which people are free to say mostly whatever they want—
regardless of how the Constitution formally de!nes and applies
the right to free speech—is essential to the survival and success of
the left. In an age when the state has no qualms about repressing
dissent among its constituents—e.g., the response to critics of
police brutality or the surveillance state—it is ba#ing to see
anyone profess to love democratic processes, and urge others to
self-censor in the same breath. For what reason then, other than to
feed the self-righteousness of the enforcer, should my right to
complain depend on having voted?
Then there’s the fact that many people don’t vote because—often
correctly—they perceive the political system to be too heavily
stacked against them to be worth a wasted morning standing in
line at the polls: the slate of candidates is unpromising, no
candidate seems to embody the voter’s values more convincingly
than any other, the issues the voter cares about most are never
prominently addressed, the voter is suspicious that any candidate
is truly concerned for her particular constituency or demographic.
Some “Don’t Boo, Vote” believers might answer that voting is a
noble end in itself, not just a means of accomplishing change. To
satisfy such people, I could write in Real Housewife Teresa Giudice
for Governor of New Jersey—not that she wouldn’t be a welcome
upgrade from Chris Christie—and, having satis!ed the letter of
my Civic Duty, retain my standing to complain when Mrs.
Giudice then demonstrates her table-$ipping expertise at the State
Dinner.
But what’s curious about Democrats who advocate booing over
voting is that, somehow, they often seem to !nd ways to take issue
with voter’s principled choices to vote for third-party or insurgent
candidates. The sustained campaign of vili!cation against anyone
who voted for candidates to the left of Hillary Clinton in 2016
strongly suggests that a vote for the candidate with lower odds of
winning also triggers the prohibition against booing. Thus,
apparently, to earn the right to complain, you must settle for the
Democratic Party’s candidate of choice. This, in turn, gives the
Democratic Party little incentive to present Virginians with a
better gubernatorial candidate than a guy who literally voted for
George W. Bush not once, but twice. Ralph Northam has stated
that he “regrets” those votes: and somehow, he is still allowed to
not only boo the results of his own poor voting decisions, but
even to run for o%ce himself! Bizarrely, it isn’t Northam, but the
voter who abstains from uninspiring candidates such as Northam,
who is rebuked under the “Don’t Boo, Vote” paradigm.
Presenting “booing” and “voting” as mutually exclusive also seems
to imply that political dissatisfaction should only be expressed
through voting, not through other, informal modes of complaint.
Not only are non-voters denied the right to boo, but voters
themselves, having made their choice at the polls, are supposed to
silently bear their share of responsibility for whatever their
candidate subsequently does. This seems deeply unfair. Many
people, for example, are single-issue voters, whose candidates will
never articulate a clear position on this single issue while on the
campaign trail. It is thus possible to vote for a candidate generally,
without voting on a particular issue. Should the voter forever hold
their peace when the candidate they successfully elected now takes
a position on the previously unaddressed issue, with which the
voter disagrees?
I also worry that forbidding booing and lionizing voting will
discourage people who voted for Donald Trump from verbalizing
their complaints. It could even encourage them to avoid the sort of
re$ection that would cause them to admit that supporting a right-
wing sycophant was a mistake after all. This potential for
doubling-down should worry us, considering that active
participation usually follows from our formation and re-
formations of opinions. Complaints galvanize people to get o"
their sofa and to the ballot box, if not all the way into the depths
of community organizing and social movements.
But let’s go back for a moment to just how undemocratic the
Don’t Boo, Vote philosophy is. I strongly believe that the right to
whine is key to achieving a fairer society; that our society will serve
everyone better if more people—and not fewer—have a say in the
decision-making processes that shape their communities and the
lives of the people around them. It is thus crucial for people who
have been stripped of their right to participate through legal
channels to continue to be heard. And Virginia, where the “Don’t
Boo, Vote” was recently so well-received, is a great example of why
these alternate channels for political engagement are so necessary.
Just in December 2016, a federal Court of Appeals upheld
Virginia’s voter ID law, which was erected by the Republican
legislature. As a result, it is now likely that fewer older persons and
individuals from ethnic minority groups will be able to obtain the
IDs necessary to have their vote counted in future elections—an
e"ect that is well-documented (and likely welcomed by the bill’s
proponents) where similar laws were passed. Others will have IDs,
but for a variety of reasons—such as homelessness, medical
illnesses, and in$exible or strenuous labor conditions—it will
prove impossible to physically attend a mid-week election or vote
by mail.
Virginia is also one of a handful of states where felons lose their
right to vote forever, absent their restoration by the Governor.
Recent !gures show that the number of felons in the state hovers
around half a million. Another quarter million of residents are not
authorized to vote in elections because they are undocumented.
And thousands of more teenaged minors were ineligible to vote in
2016 and will be for the next few years. Should none of these
people have a right to complain when the state legislature calls for
the unconstitutional detention of immigrants in local jails?
Should they bite their tongues when decisions are made that could
impact their children and the schools they attend? Or when the
Virginia legislature proposes to curtail their reproductive rights?
All of this is not to say that seeking a solid voting turnout is
somehow inherently wrong: if you believe that a particular
candidate is the right person for the elected position they’re
seeking, it stands to reason that you would want as many people to
vote for them as possible. This is especially important for left
candidates running on a third-party platform in local elections.
Electoral politics at the local level can provide a path to regain
geographical and institutional strongholds that the left previously
ceded to liberals and conservatives alike. After all, it took a strong
grounds game and corresponding vote tally for an outspoken
member of the Socialist Alternative party, Kshama Sawant, to
muscle her way onto the Seattle City Council. In the south,
Jackson, Mississippi, will usher in a new era with the radical
Chokwe Lumumba, Jr. as its mayor. Meanwhile, in the Northeast,
the activist left successfully secured their longtime defender and
friend Larry Krasner as the next District Attorney for
Philadelphia. This wave of victories could be just the beginning. If
the left can turn out the votes, it could very well entrench itself on
the city councils and ward board for cities as large as Minneapolis
(where another Socialist Alternative candidate, Ginger Jentzen, is
outpacing the Democrat candidate in fundraising), and as small as
Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts (where Bernie Sanders
is making pit stops on behalf of radicals candidates like Ben Ewen-
Campen and Will Mbah). Considering that these races and future
ones could depend on a handful of votes, I sincerely hope their
communities will show up for them.
The reality remains, however, that we live in a country in which a
lot of folks are literally or e"ectively disenfranchised. Some will
eventually gain or regain the right to vote, while others may never.
None of this should have any bearing on whether they deserve a
right to complain, to have a voice outside of these formal channels.
The answer should always unequivocally be “yes.” To boo or to
vote is false choice—no matter how often those among us, and
above us, repeat it. So have at it: boo and vote. Or boo and don’t
vote. Your right to boo is precious, and no politician can take it
from you. ♦
Vanessa A. Bee can be followed on Twitter @dolladollabille
IF YOU LIKED THIS ARTICLE, YOU'LL LOVE OUR PRINT EDITION.SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO Current AffairsCurrent Affairs MAGAZINE.
MORE CURRENT AFFAIRS
LESSONS FROM LAST NIGHT
MONUMENTAL HYPOCRISY
WHAT YOU HAVE TO FEARFROM ARTIFICIALINTELLIGENCE
THE CURRENT AFFAIRSFIELD GUIDE TO SOCIALISTANIMALS
THE VERY BADDICTATORSHIP: AN EXCERPT
Embed View on Twitter
Tweets by @curaffairs
1h
1h
our election round-up currentaffairs.org/2018/11/lesson…
Current Affairs Retweeted
jeff sessions is the only confederate monument trump was willing to take down
Current Affairs@curaffairs
Clint Smith@ClintSmithIII
Be the first of your friends to like this
Current Affairs84K likes
Like Page
11/7/18, 3(38 PMPage 1 of 1