Hunting The Muse

Bush's Chances

I really think Bush is fighting a losing battle here. The GOP, loosely speaking, has two crowds it has to reach out to - its base, and the moderates in the center.

Bush won in 2000 by preaching the "compassionate conservative" line. Ultimately, however, this was an argument aimed at deceiving the people who would vote for them. His base heard Bush's promises to the center and winked and nudged at each other, knowing that he was one of their own. The center took him at his word, though, believing he'd be a moderate.

Bush doesn't have that card anymore. The voters that really wanted someone moderate realize that Bush isn't as moderate as he acted. And Bush's choices since then have shown over and over again that he is aiming to solidify his base rather than reach out towards the center.

In the battle for the center, there are, again loosely speaking, two groups of voters that are key. One is the number of Bush-2000 voters who will now vote Kerry. The other is the number of Gore voters who will now vote Bush. The question is which number is greater.

Because of the center-base problem, we're seeing a large number of Bush-2000 voters who will now vote Kerry. However, there is one key group of people who voted for Gore in 2000 and may now vote for Bush. These are the people that were freaked out by 9/11 and are preoccupied with the idea of terrorists wanting to kill us.

There are a lot of otherwise reasonable people that just completely freak out when they feel threatened.  Call it a huge root chakra presence, or an overactive sphincter, or unmoved fear, or Leo rising, or whatever - they'll completely shift their paradigm and forget about the other stuff they care about.  I think that out of all the Gore->Bush switchers, this is probably the largest group, and Bush is going to keep playing to them.  Our challenge is to find another way to reach them.  Bush's appeal takes them to a baser place, so you combat that by figuring out a way to allow for that reaction without feeding it.  I think empathy can work wonders in those cases - validating their fear as being a reasonable reaction, while also showing that it's not the only thing out there.  It's a difficult line to walk, because many of these people - especially the ones that lean right - are ashamed of their fear and are extremely sensitive towards any suggestion that it's silly. So you have to convince them there's a place for it, while there's also room for optimism. Also, I think there's an empowerment that can be found in the experiences of being victimized.  I keep on thinking about how on 9/11 and 9/12, the first reaction of so many people was to line up around NYC blocks to give blood.  They tried to take our blood and we lined up to give more.  That's amazing.  It's also an action these people took from feeling highly emotional, and scared, and grieving, and indignant, and attacked. It's an intense direction to direct the charge someone feels from being attacked.  (I also think that this is more what Jesus meant by sacrifice, rather than the concept of diminishing oneself.) Maybe focusing on those sorts of stories will encourage someone to channel the emotional intensity they feel about the issue, into something that is more constructive, rather than reflexively moving towards Bush, who only wants to remind them of how threatened they are and how much more supposed danger they will put themselves in by voting for Kerry.

Right now, Bush's only hope in convincing the center to vote for him is to scare them into it. And it's here where I think Bush is in danger of drastically miscalculating the American people. Osama tried to scare the American people into bending to his power, and instead we had a nation that unified, came together, and cared for each other a little bit more. Sure, we've had some people that are scared enough to want to give them anything they wanted, and some people that are convinced to support Bush no matter how counterproductive his actions are, but overall, Americans respond to victimhood by waking up. This is why I think Bush is toast.

Posted by Curt at July 31, 2004 03:16 PM