Decisions, Decisions

Matt Hanson asks why so many voters are still undecided with such a clear choice.

By Matt HansonOctober 28, 2024

• Politics

THERE HAS BEEN a lot of debate about the true motivations of the undecided voter. The New York Times recently ran a roundtable discussion with uncommitted voters who seem to have all types of reasons (not to say excuses) for why they can’t make up their minds. Gal Beckerman proposed in a willfully naive Atlantic piece that these undecideds are not in fact ignorant or indifferent but are perhaps just expressing a “sagacious delay” in making their choice as to who should be the so-called leader of the free world. I beg to differ.

It’s not just that there are only two realistic choices for president or that the choice is between (as some have put it, with varying vulgarity) a sandwich and a pile of broken glass. Kamala Harris’s potential faults are not even close to Donald Trump’s already well-established ones. A previous coup attempt and current threats of election interference haven’t dissuaded them. This is not a moderate position, and it’s certainly not sagacious. Maybe there are other reasons for undecided voters’ skittishness. Let’s ponder them, considering that they might make or break the future of the country.

More than ever, politics has morphed into a warped form of self-expression. Supporting a party or candidate is more a lifestyle choice than an expression of principle. It’s about telling the world not so much what you think but who you think you are and how you want others to see you. Given our media-saturated age, self-promotion isn’t just what you do at a job fair or a bar; it has become a way of life.

A quick look at a Trump rally will show you that a large part of the appeal is about telling the world what a badass you are. Consider the paraphernalia for sale with images of Trump as a macho man or superhero or adorned with vulgar slogans (“Trump that bitch!”). It’s unironic for the attendees, who seem jazzed to shed any self-conscious criticism of what they’re buying into. Trump’s appeal is easily conflated with mobster chic, since his family has been submerged in the shadier aspects of New York real estate from the start, and he has used his braggadocio as a way of keeping it real. But, to borrow from Martin Scorsese’s archetypes, they think they’re getting competent, ruthless Robert De Niro when they’re really getting defensive, psychopathic Joe Pesci.

Much of Trump’s support comes from a particularly crass form of personal empowerment. His followers’ most fervid fantasies are permitted and encouraged: to make America great again by remaking it piece by piece in their own image. They only want to see the part of the picture with their faces in it—which makes it easier to fall for the right wing’s pseudopopulist hustle. Republicans have mastered the art of appearing to speak for the common or “forgotten” person while making their lives harder. Case in point: Just last year, while crowing about “respecting the dignity of work,” the GOP proposed work requirements for Medicaid, which were implemented in Arkansas and resulted in disaster. Claiming to support Trump because of policy is like saying you read Playboy for the articles.

On the left, from the people who brought you the politicization of personal meaning, the problem is the opposite: not vice signaling but virtue signaling. The indispensable Thomas Frank made the case in his 2016 book Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? Economic populism has all too often been replaced by social signifying. Yet there are also plenty of liberals who are annoyed by language policing and fussing about pronouns or whatever they think shouldn’t overshadow the fact that Joe Biden’s administration turned a wobbly pandemic economy around and drastically decreased inflation, even if the knee-jerk punch line is that Biden is just another boring old fart.

This muddled dichotomy no doubt contributes to the unaffiliated voter’s indecision. But in case any of them is considering making the sleazy calculation that authoritarianism might work out just fine if you back the winning side, history proves otherwise. Heed the warning attributed to comedian Dick Gregory: “What happens to Black folks today happens to white folks tomorrow.” Sooner or later, the strongman’s pendulum swings the other way, and you’re the one underneath it. Consider Arthur Koestler’s harrowing novel Darkness at Noon (1940) as a fictional demonstration of this truth. Or historian Robert O. Paxton’s superb analysis in The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), which reminds us that whenever we lose institutions that are supposed to be independent of the president’s will, we don’t easily get them back.

Perhaps a more accurate motivation for the undecided voter is that they are of the “low information” designation. But that’s no excuse. Presumably anyone who wanted to could find out what a Harris administration might do. They could read up on how Harris contrasts with the Biden’s administration’s policies or look at what experts are saying about an issue as urgent as the defense of Ukraine, for example, which incidentally creates quite a few manufacturing jobs all over the country.

But it’s much easier, and safer for one’s pride in a culture that fetishizes being smart, to simply say that you are deeply skeptical and then suggest that the Harris campaign is at fault for not pitching more persuasive policy positions. More information about candidates is always a good thing, but if you’re a low-information voter, then you probably aren’t going to be roused by boring stuff about inflation or the deficit or the Middle East, especially during the heat of an election season.

In Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 (1973), Hunter S. Thompson strikingly portrays his fear for the future. “Who is going to explain in 1976 that all the people who felt they got burned in ’72 should ‘try again’ for another bogus challenger? Four years from now there will be two entire generations,” he writes, “who will not give a hoot in hell about any election, and their apathy will be rooted in personal experience.” If Thompson thought that was depressing, consider how Richard Nixon’s landslide victory dissolved into Watergate, and the GOP finally had to tell Nixon he was done. Former Nixon aide Roger Ailes subsequently built a partisan network to protect against that ever happening again, which is almost working as planned.

There was a saying in the 1990s from the movie Slacker that “withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy.” But it gives you the same result. As David Foster Wallace pointed out in his thoughtful essay “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub” (later republished as “Up, Simba!”) about John McCain’s 2000 campaign: “In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.” In an election that will very likely come down to a small town’s number of voters in several swing states, thanks to the archaic headlock of the electoral college, Wallace’s point is well taken.

Undecideds put lopsided and unrealistic expectations on each party. Trump has fully remade the Republican party in his lumbering image while paying homage to deregulation and tax cuts, which have pushed more wealth steadily upwards, while singing disingenuous hymns to the common man. Meanwhile, the Democrats are expected to take the role of government seriously. This is always going to be an uphill battle, especially in a country with the United States’ ingrained libertarian instincts. Crunching numbers, consulting experts, crafting legislation, making deals, and all the rest of democracy’s daily grind are necessary but no fun.

It’s perfectly fair to ask for more transparency from anyone who wants to be president at this complex and fraught moment in history. Ominous clouds gather on the horizon. There is bad blood in the water. Countries across the world are armoring up. The old ways are dying, and the new ways struggle to be born. Nothing is simple. Everyone will have something to criticize no matter what Harris proposes. But I know I’d rather be in the car that’s slowly creaking up the high road than the one that’s barreling down the ditch.

So please, undecideds, a lonely nation turns its eyes to you: worry not about the people getting mouthy at the watercooler; don’t ignore the stark line that the Right has drawn in the sand. Equivocating won’t change a thing, especially at such a late hour and with this much at stake. What cold comfort it would be to wait long enough that the country’s direction—and in many ways, the world’s—is ultimately decided for you, and for everyone else, in a way you neither want nor expect. After November, it will be too late to change your mind.

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Featured image: John Townsend Bowen. Log Cabin Politicians, 1841. Harry T. Peters “America on Stone” Lithography Collection, National Museum of American History (DL.60.2409). CC0, americanhistory.si.edu. Accessed October 24, 2024.