This posting on my blog, Your Freedom and Ours is definitely about British politics. We are in a very peculiar situation. There is a deep disenchantment with the main parties, particularly the junior partner in the Coalition, the Liberal-Democrats (known by me and my friends as the Lib-Dims); there is a growing understanding that the EU is generally bad news, which is not accompanied by a firm desire to leave; there is a small party that has been around for twenty years and ought to benefit from all this and yet UKIP is, despite the hype a couple of days ago, is getting nowhere. So I thought I’d have a go at analyzing the relationship between politicians and the electorate but I am hoping that the posting will generate a discussion.
Elections
Political Marketing, Popular Culture, and the Low-Information Voter
Amelia Chasse, who is a VP at a Republican online communications consultancy, has some thoughts on reaching voters who may be more influenced by the popular culture than by more traditional political communications channels:
The 2008 Obama campaign broke ground by advertising on Xbox video games, prompting thousands of stoners to get off the couch and out to the polls. In 2012, when young women visited a beauty blog, they were likely greeted with video ads of Eva Longoria or Scarlett Johansson telling them Obama was fabulous. And lest we forget the infamous ad where Girls star Lena Dunham invited her fellow young women to make their “first time” special with Barack Obama.
via Instapundit, who notes:
There’s a lot of free press too. At women’s lifestyle sites, about one article in 10 is soft PR for the Dems — why Barack & Michelle’s marriage is so great, 10 hot celebs who are voting for Obama, etc. The women’s lifestyle media are another arm of the Dems, and their stuff, especially the general sense of who’s cool and who’s uncool, often presented in a sort of Mean Girls style, is highly effective with low-information voters.
Reports of the economy’s demise are premature, but not by much.
UPDATE: The publication of this column by Amity Schlaes adds a bit of prophecy to my concerns expressed here.
Will 2013 be 1937? This is the question many analysts are posing as the stock market has dropped after the U.S. election. On Nov. 16, they noted that industrial production, a crucial figure, dropped as well.
In this case, “1937” means a market drop similar to the one after the re-election of another Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1936.
If I could be more worried about the future, this column might do it. Read it.
Russ Douthat’s column in the NY Times today points out a few problems with the left’s gloating about winning the election. I apologize for my pessimism but I can’t help looking at the facts beneath the surface.
The first comment beneath this article confirms my belief that the left ignores economics and is solely concerned about social issues and “stuff.”
The ideas that Republicans championed in the last election could have easily been heard at a segregated lunch counter in the ’50s. Suspicion about immigrants, fears about socialism, the subservience of women, back-of-the-bus-style racism, and disgust at the very thought of homosexuals were cornerstones of the Republican ethos. If there was an underlying wholesomeness in their belief in God, family, and tradition, I couldn’t detect it over the din of hateful, destructive rhetoric aimed at the majority of ordinary Americans.
The re-election of Barack Obama has ended the possibility of a serious effort to deal with out of control spending and debt in this country. The “fiscal cliff” is coming soon and there is speculation that one side or the other will “cave” in negotiations. It doesn’t really matter as no serious proposal is under consideration. The tax rates on the top 2% of incomes don’t matter. It’s not worth the trouble for Republicans to defend these tax rates for a group that may not even vote for them.
The whole world cartel of spending is coming to an end and it may not just involve national bankruptcy. It may be the end of an era, maybe of democracy which seems to be incapable of managing debt. An article in Der Spiegel sounds to me like a prediction of the future.
In the midst of this confusing crisis, which has already lasted more than five years, former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt addressed the question of who had “gotten almost the entire world into so much trouble.” The longer the search for answers lasted, the more disconcerting the questions arising from the answers became. Is it possible that we are not experiencing a crisis, but rather a transformation of our economic system that feels like an unending crisis, and that waiting for it to end is hopeless? Is it possible that we are waiting for the world to conform to our worldview once again, but that it would be smarter to adjust our worldview to conform to the world? Is it possible that financial markets will never become servants of the markets for goods again? Is it possible that Western countries can no longer get rid of their debt, because democracies can’t manage money? And is it possible that even Helmut Schmidt ought to be saying to himself: I too am responsible for getting the world into a fix?
The answer will not be pleasant to consider. We may have run the course on modern national financial competence. Japan, twenty years ago, was a warning we did not heed. Stimulus, as in spending billions on infrastructure, did not work. Japan had a real estate bubble and the response was to try to reflate the bubble. It failed.
Why did Romney lose ?
I swear this will end my ruminations about the election.
Accounts from the Romney camp have described him as “shellshocked” by his loss. The enthusiasm and huge turnout for rallies must have given him a sense of victory but it was snatched away by Obama’s professional organization. The Huffington Post is not exactly a source of wisdom on this topic but it is useful to see what the left believes. There is, of course, a lot of nasty comments following that article but I don’t believe they have seen the truth.
Peggy Noonan seems to think she knows the answer and maybe she has a piece of it.
Mitt Romney’s assumed base did not fully emerge, or rather emerged as smaller than it used to be. He appears to have received fewer votes than John McCain. The last rallies of his campaign neither signaled nor reflected a Republican resurgence. Mr Romney’s air of peaceful dynamism was the product of a false optimism that, in the closing days, buoyed some conservatives and swept some Republicans. While GOP voters were proud to assert their support with lawn signs, Democratic professionals were quietly organizing, data mining and turning out the vote. Their effort was a bit of a masterpiece; it will likely change national politics forever. Mr. Obama was perhaps not joyless but dogged, determined, and tired.
OK but why ?
