The Deep Campaign

Beneath the incessantly over–reported spectacles with their over–interpreted gestures, beneath the rumors (what does Karl Rove know and when did he know it?) and nightmare scenarios (does anyone seriously intend to draft a contingency plan in case of a terror attack on Election Day?), beneath the smack, feint, softening–up and smash–mouth – values! flip–flops! optimism! – that soak up reporters’ attention during this polymorphous presidential campaign, the largely subterranean game of deployment goes on.

With nearly four months to go before the election, forces and counterforces mobilize to churn up their respective bases and, at the same time, coax the gravely disaffected chunk of the populace out of its warrens. Never since the epoch–making collision of 1968 have so many activists undertaken so much so far in advance. This is the deep campaign. Fervor is in the air.

Saturday, 10 July, I was one of 180 New Yorkers who bussed to suburban Philadelphia – paying for the privilege, no less – to spend a few hours knocking on doors, database–building and registering voters in an effort organized by a coalition called America Votes. (New York also sent eight buses to other swing areas that day.) This officially nonpartisan effort aims to send volunteers from safe states like New York to teetering states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire and Maine, to see what voters have on their minds, the better to match them, later in the campaign, with get–out–the–vote specialists from member groups, and thus to mobilize what you might call the deep energies of the voters, as opposed to the surface ripples from the televised campaign.

The idea is: if you tell the canvasser you’re mainly concerned with environmental questions, you can expect to be contacted later by the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, or such; if you say education, then the National Education Association will get your number; if racial discrimination, the NAACP; if the economy, one of a number of unions or the AFL–CIO; and so on. In the meantime, the canvassers register the unregistered.

Pennsylvania, which owns the fifth–largest trove of electoral votes, went for Gore by 204,840 votes out of almost 5 million cast in 2000, and recent surveys are too close to call. Montgomery County, outside Philadelphia, is swing–state country with a vengeance. These long–settled suburbs consist mainly of single–family households with trim lawns, impressive trees, and unrusted cars. They have a high Republican registration (75%, according to our enthusiastic shepherd), but they also have a Democratic Congressman, voted twice for Bill Clinton and once for Al Gore for president, and surveys say they burn with environmental concern. There are a plethora of American flags flying out front, at least during the week of 4 July, and a notable number of yellow ribbons tied onto houses where tense–looking young women come to the door. But there wasn’t a single political sign to be seen anywhere, or one bumper sticker.

On a splendid July day, a lot of houses were evacuated for the day, but there were also plenty of residents on my designated turf who didn’t come to their doors for a stranger. Don’t tread on me might still be an American slogan, though not in the anticolonial sense. One citizen with a flag hanging from his clapboard–and–brick house had posted two signs on the gate: BEWARE OF DOG and PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT. ‘Only in America’, as sentimentalists used to say. Two white men in their forties were adamant about not being registered to vote and not caring to register either. A young black man in an apartment from which emanated an Arabic chant was equally adamant: “not interested.”

Still, my own swath of 30 voters turned up several who were so troubled by the state of the nation they wanted to tick off all the available options on the important–issue checklist – economy, health care, national security, environment, civil liberties, you name it. They didn’t volunteer in so many words which way they were leaning, but they didn’t sound like Bush–leaners to me. They’re listening. The ads are aiming for them.

Given a range of issues to choose from, only two on my streets singled out war and foreign policy as uppermost on their minds. The top concern by far: the economy. Whether this means that these people are angry at Bush, or whether their anger at Bush, if any, will outweigh their attachment to the litany that the Bush people refer to as his “values” – no abortion, no gay marriage, more Christianity – is anyone’s guess.

Evidently, this particular district was not exactly bursting with political vigour, but one national survey, at least, suggests, to the contrary, an unusual interest in the campaign. According to an April survey by Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, & Public Policy, 42% of adults said they were paying “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of attention to the campaign – as against 15 percent in April 2000. The upsurge of interest among the young was about equally gigantic – from 13% of those between 18 and 30 in 2000, to 42% in 2004, for an increase of over 223%. People are reading much more about the campaign this time around, and are much more likely talking and thinking about it.

Taking a big bite from reality, 57% of the younger folks thought the election would have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of impact on the future of the country, as opposed to 33% who felt that way in 2000. In fact, younger adults were more likely than older adults (51%) to think this election mattered a lot.

There are mixed reports about what the parties and their supporters are planning to do to drive these newly primed voters to the polls in November. Money is streaming in to efforts like America Votes, but it’s early to know – hell, it’s early to sense – how decisive they’ll prove in the fall. The White House is counting on Christian mobilization, and their ads will surely keep trying to panic the not–quite–committed into holding fast to Bush amid endless wartime. The Democrats will try an interesting maneuver: Criticizing Bush for making the country less secure in the face of job loss, income stagnation, and mass murderers, all the while sounding positive notes. (Note to bewildered Martians: optimism is more than a state of mind, it’s a position in the politics of the nation that, more than any other, holds the world in the balance.)

So goes the fever chart.

Meanwhile, a footnote to a previous column:

The Bishop of Charleston–Wheeling, West Virginia, has asked all the priests in what is the state’s largest Roman Catholic diocese to deny communion to Catholic politicians “who stray from the church’s teachings” on abortion and euthanasia. Bishop Bernard Schmitt declared that “Catholic politicians whose voting records or public statements are opposed to the Gospel of Life…have made themselves unworthy of receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.”