Why the Rally Matters

Talking to a friend this evening, I mentioned my glee that the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear) drew over 250,000 people. Her question: why are you so pleased? For a moment, I was stumped. Why this number, so large it's not possible to really comprehend how many people were there.

But here's why. For many Americans, Election Day is the extent of their involvement with politics. Yes, they get robocalls, and yes, they see political ads, but these are actions of consumers, not participants. To be involved, they vote, and this is enough for many. The problem is that voting (and the sampling that tries to predict it) doesn't do enough.

Polling and voting tell us preferences for or against a given person on a given day under certain conditions, one reason why there can be large swings between polls and results. People's thoughts at home can differ from their thoughts in a voting booth, and their thoughts in a voting booth can differ from their intentions and actions outside of the booth.

In short, voting is an imperfect way of expressing our thoughts, especially given how buggy our voting system is, and accordingly, I think many elites don't care too much about votes as a signal of intentions and the character of the country.

Instead, I think the record demonstrates amply that politicians respond to a lot of things: a plumber with a simple question, a gaffe from an opponent, but relevant to this conversation: the thoughts and feelings of those around them. And those who are around politicians tend not to be representative of everyone. For one thing, given the low pay / high work ratios of working in the public sector, those around politicians tend to gather some sort of "pay" from being close to power, or from feeling like they are making a difference and helping people. But most importantly, these people are also elites, interested enough in the public sector to interact with it much more than the average person. Those are the workers.

The citizens who voice their opinions also aren't representative. Yes, they are of every sex, orientation, color, and hue, but they all care too much. They (or I should say we) are often polarized, and are motivated to contact offices in DC with specific wishes for or against bills. There's nothing wrong with these interests, but I've found in my experience that such interests come from two places. Either they are from people with a personal focus (like the parents of children with cancer who lobby congress for more research funding), and whose political interests are focused in that area, or they care about dan near everything. Those with personal focuses are more like the rest of us - they are involved because of what happened to them or their loved ones, but they only sound off on one thing. The people who care about everything sound off on 10 things. Or 20 things. And so the partisans (good people that they/we are) get an overinflated power over every politician and of that politician's positions.

And logically, too, I should say, since these are the same people that contribute to campaigns. But these people are not everyone - I am not of the same level of political interest as my collegemates - and as a result, our leaders stop representing everyone and they start representing US - the interested class.

This event is important because it brings more people into the sphere of influence on politicians. Their words and actions will differ now, because 215k+ people showed up to the Rally, and if they don't, people will be more likely to hold them to account. So in the long term, I might push for process reform, but in the meantime, I will celebrate rallies that are about countering the insane games that politicians and those that surround them play in the search for power.