POLITICIANS UNDERSTAND THE MESSAGE A VOTE CONVEYS. DO VOTERS?

Through our votes, we not only determine who wins particular elections, but we also point the course for American policy.  As a result of policy decisions over the last 50 years, inequality has increased while social mobility has decreased; more Americans live in poverty; more are incarcerated than ever; foreign policy has caused the deaths of thousands of civilians around the world; and our civil liberties and social safety nets are under threat.  These are facts that should concern voters of any party.  Not everyone will agree on the solutions, but all options should be on the table.

Political accountability is the crux of a successful democracy.  Citizens hold officials accountable when they “cast their vote in favor of candidates and parties contingent upon their past political actions in elected office and their credible commitments to future actions after (re)election.”  Citizens can impose incentives and costs on politicians—and, crucially, political parties, as well—that make them responsive to citizens’ desires.  If citizens do not or cannot hold their leaders accountable, they lose their ability to influence political decision-making and democracy fails.

In the United States, political accountability has somewhat broken down.  But the United States’ democracy still works pretty well in the sense that the parties our responsive to voters.  It may be failing, though, in that many citizens send a message they do not intend with their votes, leading to unwanted policies.  Thus, accountability is deteriorating in the United States less because officials have betrayed the desires of the people, and more because people have not effectively used their vote to protect and promote their interests.

For example, the Democratic and Republican parties have both moved to the right on many issues since the late 1960’s-early 1970’s.  It may be that the movement to the right reflects the actual values of Americans.  But it is also true that the Democratic party has sought to capture more conservative voters by moving to the right.  By voting for the Democrats even as they become less progressive, voters on the left have, in fact, encouraged this rightward shift.

No politician more embodies this than President Obama.  President Bush was heavily criticized by the left for civil liberties abuses and war.  People reasonably expected better from Obama on those issues, but the President has not fulfilled those expectations.  Among other hopes dashed, the President also failed to bring more transparency to government, to protect whistleblowers, fight for labor unions, or meaningfully regulate Wall Street.  In sum, he has not brought the “Change” many voters wanted.

If some voters did not get what they expected from President Barack Obama during his first term, what should they do about it?  On the one hand, they can vote for him again if they still find him preferable to the Republican candidate – after all, the two major-party candidates are widely assumed to be the only ones with a chance to win.  In other words, disappointed voters could reason that Obama is the “lesser evil” and vote for him in spite of his policies that they personally disagree with.  That choice alone is understandable.  But the rationale is flawed because it fails to consider the long-term political effects of endorsing the President’s undesirable policies.  To put it another way, there is an election for the Office of the President every four years; thus, a voter should weigh how his or her vote will impact the next election(s), too, just as the candidates and parties do.

The most likely explanation of the President’s generous support of the very bankers who defrauded millions of regular Americans is that he was grateful for their massive campaign contributions, and wanted to ensure he received more for the 2012 campaign.  Check.  Likewise, his civil liberties and foreign policy is probably aimed at strengthening his conservative credentials – and he has succeeded in that regard.  They were done for political gain (as opposed to for the public good).

What the “lesser evil” strategy as described above fails to account for is that a vote for Obama signals to the Democratic party and its future candidates that it should continue to move to the “right” on economic and national security issues to capture more votes.  For a politician, the incentive to attract more voters is undeniable.  Barack Obama wants to win the next election, and the Democratic Party wants to remain in the ascendant.  Generally, there is a cost to going too far to the “right” only if voters on the “left” impose it by withdrawing their votes.  If voters on the left refuse to withhold votes, the only political cost is in not going far enough to the right, losing voters to the more conservative opponent.  When voters on the left continuously assent to a political strategy based on taking the right’s votes, they tell the party to move even further in that direction.  The voters’ guiding principle is “beat the Republican.”  The Democrats respond positively by trying to appease more conservative voters and increase their chances of winning.

That responsiveness is why our democracy is not completely broken.  It also leads to a second possible voting strategy for dissatisfied voters:  If voters on the left really care about certain issues that President Obama has opposed, vote for someone else, even if that candidate has “no chance” of winning.  It is true that such a strategy might make it more likely of a Republican winning the election, but even that is not clear.  In fact, Nader likely helped Gore by running in the 2000 election.

Even if you assume that the second strategy would lead to a Republican victory and so you would find the next four years worse than under President Obama, you should also expect the Democratic party to respond to the expressed desires of the electorate—just as it always has done—because its viability as a political party depends on it receiving votes.  Instead of telling Democrats to move to the right, the second strategy would tell them they have gone too far.  And instead of pandering almost completely to “centrists” and “moderates,” the next Democratic candidate might have to try to convince voters on the left to pick him/her for policy reasons and not just because the Republican is supposedly worse.

It may take more than one election cycle to accomplish, but votes are the ultimate political currency.  If people convince politicians to take them seriously, politicians will take them seriously.  The movement of the parties to the right shows that to be true.  If people are unhappy with the consequences of that movement, they should use their votes to say so.