We can all feel it. The bloodsucking little fiends of political anxiety are let loose upon the public every day of this presidential election season, drowning out reason and logic with a swirling hysteria of partisan contradiction, woozy polling, “expert” pontificating, dark speculation and imagining the worst of the worst.
I’m sure there are many ways to fumigate this worrisome trend with its mad baring of teeth and the endless flapping of the wings of opinion. One fumigant to explore is what I’ve come to call electoral karma.
Electoral karma is based on a simple idea. Offend, attack and outrage enough people and electoral karma will ensure they will not vote for you on election day.
In 2020, Joe Biden won the presidential election with 81,284,666 votes, or 51.3 percent of the electorate. He won by appealing to voters not harassing them. President Donald Trump lost that election with 46.8 percent of the electorate, or 74,224, 319 votes, a victim of his own foot-in-mouth disease. President-elect Biden won the popular vote by slightly over seven million voters and won the Electoral College by 306 to 232, or by 36 electors over the 270 needed to win.
In terms of electoral karma, you could say that 51.3 percent of voters were offended enough by Donald Trump and the Republican party that they rejected them. That’s a purely negative way of looking at the results, of course. Electoral karma is not about support or reward. It’s about payback. (The spiritual meaning of karma is another matter altogether.)
From my perspective, slanted as all views are, former President Trump has done nothing in the last four years to alleviate the negativity of his electoral karma. I would think it impossible for virtually any of the more than 81 million Americans who voted for President Biden to have moved over into the Trump camp. The intertwining paybacks of electoral karma are such that they increase rejection of the offending politician and stimulate new voters to join the ranks of the offended.
Because of abortion banning, electoral karma will surge through the most powerful voting block in the country — women, and feminist men, who are deeply offended by Republican and Trumpian attack on reproductive rights. It’s likely the electoral payback will be massive. We already can get a glimpse of the future in not-so-conservative Arizona’s recent overturning of its 1864 abortion ban. That payback will be reinforced by electoral karma directed at the Republican attack on the politically activated LGBT community, long abused by prejudice and bullying violence.
The Trumpian GOP threat to underfund and undermine Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has profoundly offended senior American voters, and their families. The GOP might claim that seniors are conservatives, but they are not masochists, and most do not have a death wish. Electoral karma from older Americans has only grown sharper and more intense. It’s hard to imagine any but the most financially secure seniors supporting the political party and candidate that would work to impoverish and ruin the lives of most older Americans.
The logic of electoral karma also makes it seem impossible for the party of white supremacists to have gained many new voters of any age from non-white voting blocs. In electoral karma, disappointment at a party or a politician for not having done enough is far outweighed by the outrage and backlash against a party that is directly attacking one’s interests and one’s essential right to exist on equal terms with everyone else.
There’s a popular conservative myth that environmentalists don’t vote very much and that there has been a marked decline in concern for environmental issues such as global warming. No environmentalist with any political experience can or will forget the terrible setback in emissions reduction caused by years of deceitful Republican denial of global warming and its consequences. Did Trump gain environmental votes by calling climate change a hoax? Electoral karma is poised for a heavy payback against deniers as the world gets hotter and hotter this year.
What the logic of electoral karma tells us is that to win an election to an office that you lost in the past, a candidate must keep the voters he had and get new ones from voting blocs he offended before. It may seem simple minded, but you don’t win over voters by attacking them and their fundamental interests. Former President Trump is a politician whose principal strategy as far as I can tell is to add insult to injury ad nauseum. The idea of electoral karma tells us that is no way to win an election.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
Hi V.B.:
I agree wholeheartedly. Just where are Trump’s new voters going to appear from? How does he make up the dramatic deficit that Biden beat him by last time? I can’t see him attracting new voters except maybe a few disenfranchised Latinos, Youth or African-American. No one else.
Always enjoy your columns. I’m an old poetry buddy of Lawrence Welch’s but I haven’t spoken to him lately.
Sorry, I mean Lawrence Welsh.
This column gives me a lot to ponder. I respect your mind but, while I would agree that people don’t vote for candidates who hate them, so many women and those who not that long ago were immigrants DID vote for Trump last time around and he clearly disrespects and disparages both groups. So I’m still frightened about what will happen in November. Additionally, I fear that Biden’s continued support of Israel even when that country is using US money and arms to commit genocide will take votes from his column–even though we know Trump would be so much worse in terms of his Middle East policy and in every other way. Columns such as this one give me hope… and I am desperately holding onto that hope.
It seems more complicated than that to me. People vote for fascists when they want stability, when they are afraid and feel personally threatened. We are currently watching the results of such an election in Argentina. Javier Milei has slashed all things public in Argentina, Ministries of Culture, Women’s Affairs, and is attacking health care as well. His economic ideas are wrecking the country.
People in the US and other places are being whipped into an anxious and fearful frenzy by the Trump and the constant fear mongering of the media. There are many instabilities resulting from global warming, migration and people having to react to horrendous conditions in their home places. Our media does nothing but whip us up with more anxiety and fear on so many levels.
We watched many women and people that he clearly has no regard for vote for
Trump before. Hate breeds hate when people are made to feel threatened. Sadly, reason doesn’t hold in such circumstances. The right is playing the destructive long game. We continue to work for humanity and decent conditions for everyone.
People don’t vote their best interests in a logical way from what we see all over the world with the great turning toward the right. which is sold as stability and hope for making the country great again.
I am hoping that you are right. But these are dark times. We need to do all that we can to hold the light of reason and humane values up. You work every day in your efforts a journalist, poet and decent and human being. Thank you for that.
We will all keep on together.
My proof reading is as wretched as ever. Please excuse the typos. Good thing I am a visual artist and not a writer.