Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Structure, History, and Culture"
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| [a] Divided RF |
Electoral 1 Electoral 2 Electoral 3 Vote! Clearing Electoral 4 Electoral 5
Electoral 6 Electoral 7 Electoral 8 Electoral 9 Electoral 10 Electoral 11 Electoral 12
Electoral 13 Electoral 14
Electoral 6 Electoral 7 Electoral 8 Electoral 9 Electoral 10 Electoral 11 Electoral 12
Electoral 13 Electoral 14
If you live in Tennessee or Delaware, you might wonder why you haven't heard much of anything from the presidential candidates, at least not in a personal sort of way. You will probably watch American Idol or Mad Men (or college football...or Entertainment Tonight) with commercials about things such as dishwashing liquid, radial tires, pizza, jewelry, and erectile dysfunction. You have, of course, watched the national news, and know that some other people watching television (or listening to radio) in the country were seeing something profoundly different.
They were watching political warfare.
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| [b] Weaves RF |
They were watching Citizens United...in a deeply divided sort of way. Let's just say that you live in Wisconsin and Virginia. That's what I do, and I commute (often by car) through the granddaddy of 'em all—Ohio (more on that soon). Even if you don't have a television on in those states, you walk by them, see snippets on the internet, and hear from people who watch television all of the time. Let's say that you live in those states (or, perhaps, New Hampshire and Iowa) and happen to watch a little television. You like catching a few hours of programming on networks and cable most nights of the week. One image weaves through your imagination.
Bulldozer.
The two campaigns bought up almost every moment of advertising available to them, right up to the election. That means that Shopko is going to have to wait until Thanksgiving to get its groove back, and the local law firm specializing in estate law won't find it's stride until after the first of the year. It was Bain Capital and You're Fired (Mr. President). It was nasty most of the time and positive (either side) only a tiny portion of it.
Tough, visceral stuff.
There is another reality of swing state life. If you live in Richmond, Virginia or Madison, Wisconsin, you got to see Mitt Romney and Barack Obama (as well as Bruce Springsteen and...Meat Loaf) in person. You could go to State Street and sway with liberal Madisonions; you could shout approval at the Mobility Supercenter with conservative Richmonders. If you are from a swing state, you have had many hours of candidates right in your back yard. If you have not been able to go out and press the flesh with Monsieieurs Romney and Obama, you certainly saw them on the local news. They were everywhere, and it was just about impossible to ignore all of the sound and fury, the gist and bile. And you know what? You didn't have it nearly as bad (as we say back home) as one other set of citizens of the United States of America.
You could, of course, live in Ohio.
And you can't spell "Ohioan" without "oh, no!"
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| [c] Paths RF |
Yup, even though people in Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, and other states had it bad (as we say back home), no people suffered as much as those who live in Ohio. This was the epicenter of the American presidential election in 2012, and almost every analysis done on both sides of the campaign, for over eighteen months, showed that the winner of Ohio was probably going to win the election. Period. It all came down to eighteen electoral votes, without which the Republican had almost no path to victory, and the Democrat would have had far fewer options.
As it turned out, the Obama campaign over-performed (as we say) in all of the swing states (even the one they lost), but no one ever disputed that the skeleton key to the presidential election was meant to fit into the lock in a few counties in the Buckeye State. It wasn't even Ohio "as a whole." It sort of boiled down to five counties in that sizable landmass with these chunks of the electorate:
On some levels, the rest of us didn't matter. While that is troubling, it is the constitutional rule of the land. In order fully to understand what was at stake in the "swing states" of Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, and North Carolina, we have to comprehend a deep and very troubling detail. This should shake you to your very sweat socks. This could make you feel—despite how much positive thinking you have been doing—sort of irrelevant. Here it is. Brace yourself.
Most of the country doesn't matter; most of the country gets "no" attention.
Most of the country is in the bag—red or blue.
Yesterday, we considered the reality that more than 400 electoral votes are "gone" without much of a fight. There might be some quibbling here or there about New Mexico swinging right or Arizona swaying left (or Michigan and Pennsylvania even being in-play). Let's not kid ourselves, though. Almost no resources went into states that had twenty point leads for Romney or Obama, or even those with still-substantial ten point margins.
They aren't even close. Not even close.
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| [d] Diverse RF |
Almost all of the billion dollars of campaign spending (just think for a moment about where that money might have gone if it could be turned to "better" use) went into fewer than ten states...with about one-hundred electoral votes (we can argue about thirty here or there). On a deeper level, as we have seen, almost everything went into Ohio; almost every other dollar or minute was geared toward protecting a small lead or cutting into a narrow deficit.
Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.
Is that the system we really want? Ohio decides the whole country. I leave you with that question for today, and we'll wrap this up tomorrow with a few sobering worries over what might happen if we abandoned what most of us think is a ridiculous electoral college system. Why shouldn't we just abandon this ridiculous monstrosity?
Well, I have one word for you...well, three...and some punctuation.
Florida 2000...recount.
We'll pick up the rest tomorrow.
This is one post in a multi-part series on the American Electoral College. Click below for the others.
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