five quick reflections from pre-election america

a last-minute stream of consciousness

TLDR:

1. America is big

2. Americans love celebrations

3. Americans didn’t have good options

4. Americans, in many places, face multiple questions

5. America’s on the edge

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I’ve been in the States since early September. And I’m currently on a train from DC to New York, feeling too distracted by the fact it’s election day to read the Quine I brought for the journey. So, here are some quick reflections. 

1) America is big. I’m hit by this every time I visit, and I wrote about it back in 2016 (a few days before Trump won), but man it’s big. It’s big geographically, it’s big population-wise, and it’s big in many other ways. This makes America hard to comprehend as a coherent whole, particularly if you’re not American. The deep variety of its parts only complicates things further. This isn’t to denigrate that variety! I firmly believe it’s one of America’s greatest features. I’m also a hardcore democratic decentralist, along subsidiarity lines, in that I think collective decision-making should always take place at the lowest possible effective level. So, whilst for instance, I’m convinced that fiscal decentralisation brings about various good economic ends, I also believe it reflects the right of local people to direct local decision-making. As such, I’d favour it even if its good ends could be achieved effectively in other, more efficient, ways. Like most countries, however, America is nowhere near sufficiently decentralised. Ok, it’s vastly more so than the UK (low, low bar), but there’s still far too much at the centre. And there are convincing empirical arguments that a strong federal level can also lead to less power lower down. All that aside, however, some decisions need to involve everyone: correctly, nobody thinks Northumberland should run its own defence policy. So sometimes, politics depends on the coherence of the whole. And in a place as big and varied as America, that’s really hard — particularly if you want to go about it in a democratic manner.

2) Americans love celebrations. When I went for a walk on the Saturday night before Halloween, I’m sure at least 70 per cent of the adults I saw were in costume. Intricate costumes: a woman in a full-on dinosaur suit here, a guy in a goldfish-bowl space hat there. (He explained it was supposed to be a diving helmet, but hey.) I love this focus on the positive. But I wonder the extent to which it’s classic American optimism, and the extent to which it’s interim escapism in a time of tension. Does this make it harder to predict what’ll happen tonight? Is it not only that the polls might (still!) be failing to account for shy Trumpers, and not only that people are tired of being polled, but also that they’re in the business of persuading themselves to be positive?

3) Americans didn’t have a good options. If there are only two candidates, and you feel obliged to pick one of them even though you think both are substandard, then that’s not great. Many people I’ve spoken with have expressed something along these lines, including most of those fully committed one way or the other. On July 4th this year (UK general election day!), I spent all afternoon changing my mind about which of 12 candidates to vote for, in Oxford East. I’m usually a red-line voter, in the sense I primarily pick by ruling candidates out, rather than going straight for the one who best matches my preferences on net. But I ruled them all out at least ten times, before finally frustratedly making up my mind. In the US presidential election, ruling one person out effectively means picking the other. And many people — the people whose votes it’ll come down to tonight — found picking hard, because both candidates broke various of their red lines, and/or neither jumped out on net. I can’t help but blame the pipeline problem, here: there seems little incentive for current candidates to support a range of future hopefuls, and that’s disastrous. A few years ago, I asked a Democrat friend about their party’s pipeline, and they said, “Don’t worry, Biden’s got it all tied up for the next election!”. I’d vote for the Democrats if I were American, but I think about that answer often and sadly.

4) Americans, in many places, face multiple questions. Will Ted Cruz lose his seat in the Senate because, as a Trump-supporting friend said to me the other day, “Even Republicans think he might be the Zodiac Killer!”. Ok, my friend didn’t quite say that, but you get the gist. There are some ‘split-ticket’ voters who’ll go for Party X at one level, and Party Y at another. So it’s worth checking out how the ‘staggering’ works, for this reason and many others. Which states have elections for what? Which of these are presidential battleground states? What’s the likely balance of power, over all? What will that mean for national stability? What are the advantages and disadvantages of Party X getting the presidency, and Party Y getting Congress?

5) America’s on the edge. Or is it? What will I find, tomorrow morning, when my train pulls into DC Union Station? Ok, it may take a little longer than that. But if the result isn’t decisive, who knows.