The sun gives way to the penetrating lamp
of the local polling place. Citizens all,
they move their hands over the humble, battered
body of the nation, while their fingers
make full utterance: I want, I want.
-- Martha Hollander, "Election Night," 1997
I don't have a great feeling about today.
Maybe I feel slightly better than I did two years ago when I didn't feel good about what was about to happen. Back then, I thought Hillary Clinton would be elected president. I wasn't excited about that prospect, not because she wasn't competent or because she was corrupt but because I wasn't wild about the establishment of another political dynasty, or about the way she'd campaigned. I thought she might be a little hawkish, a little too cozy with the moneyed elite, that she had a bit of Kissinger around her eyes. I would have preferred someone else follow Barack Obama; the only candidates who really impressed me during the campaign were also-rans John Kasich and Martin O'Malley.
On the other hand, if either of these guys had emerged as a legitimate possibility, I probably would have found crippling flaws in them. I don't think anyone is good enough to be president. The worst sort of people to elect to the presidency are the people who actually want the job enough to campaign for it.
(We should draft our president; make someone who doesn't love the limelight but has proven themselves able, fair and unbeholden to special interests take the job. Let's do it the say way the MacArthur Foundation awards its "genius" grants. We might end up with Robert Mueller. We might end up with someone who's teaching English literature at South Dakota State.)
In fact, I thought the best thing about Donald Trump was that he didn't want the job; he was just trolling us. His strong showing would galvanize certain factors. It would embolden white nationalists and conspiracy theorists. TrumpTV would traffic in irresponsible, Infowars-type misinformation and deepen the divisions between us. Trump might be a kind of John the Baptist for a slicker, blow-dried American fascist who'd arrive later on. (In a way, Trump's election might yet prove to be a kind of shock therapy for the country--if we can resist going full Kristallnacht on ourselves, we might look back on Trump's tenure as a political firebreak.)
There are some good signs; all through the early voting there have been anecdotal accounts of bustling polling places in Arkansas and around the country. It looks like more people are voting in these midterms than have in the past, and that's a good thing. Because people vote when they feel like their vote is meaningful, when they have some political will they want to express.
Still, only about half of the people who could vote will. Mostly that's on them, though we should also note that efforts at voter suppression are real. Every measure you put in place to make voting more inconvenient for people discourages someone from voting. If you can make the lines move slower or make the trip to the polls longer, there will be a certain number of people who won't bother to make the effort. Who can blame them--people have lives to lead and no matter how we try to shame them by talking about civic responsibility, they know their votes don't matter nearly as much as somebody else's dollars.
I wouldn't miss work to vote, or burn a vacation day or a sick day to stand in line for a couple of hours to cast a vote for someone who wants me to pay their salary. I vote because it's a 10-minute chore that makes me feel smug. I thank the poll workers for their time, they congratulate me on taking part in the Great Process. Someone peels a sticker that will be applied to my lapel. And even though some or most of the candidates I've vouched for won't win and many that do will disappoint, I've at least participated in our democracy.
But I better understand my friends who refrain from voting out of principle than the ones hopeful of the ballot box leading to real change. There are still a few good people in politics, and even if these people have to play the game by the rules that exist if they mean to accomplish anything substantive, there are lines they will not cross.
I came up in an age when people did not automatically roll their eyes when someone talked about "good government," when there was a great degree of ideological overlap between the two major parties. There were some Democrats to the right of most Republicans, and some Republicans to the left of most Democrats. There were politically engaged people who didn't take their cues from some intellectual mascot talking head, people who might even surprise us from time to time by following their own consciences rather than maintaining party discipline.
Or at least it seemed that way. Maybe it was just that people were more polite, and our society hadn't been coarsened by reality TV and the cynicism inherent in the 24-hour news cycle. It's hard to say. Maybe there were giants in those days. Maybe the scales just fell from my eyes.
In any case, there are no giants now. But in the local races, at least, some good people. Little Rock's next mayor will be a good man, regardless of which candidate eventually gets the job. We ought not elect judges, but some of the candidates for those positions deserve to be judges.
Trump will hold serve in Arkansas; but as for the rest of the country, we'll see. As Lincoln said, "[e]lections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters."
It's not been a comfortable two years. But it's not been uninteresting either.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 11/06/2018