Whenever I read a book or an article about politicians, it feels like one key thing I’m supposed to take away is their ability to read tea leaves.
Successful politicians are allegedly uncanny in their ability to ride whatever wave is carrying the biggest tide, not just at that moment but in moments ahead. Their timing can be impeccable, and almost impressive as their recollection of anecdotes from generically-named blue-collar workers.
Where there is no wave present or coming, the savvy politician will create one, tapping into anger or desperation just beneath the collective surface to speed themselves to power. Obama did it. Trump did it. Characters in John Grisham books make it look easy; it’s table-stakes ability for a politician and their team.
And that’s why I’m confused by what is happening on the Right in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. As thousands of vocal teenagers and their parents, friends, and supporters take to the streets to protest gun violence and demand controls, Republicans are clinging more stubbornly to their guns-for-all talking points than ever before.
Politicians in Georgia punished Delta Airlines for withdrawing a discount for NRA members (as though offering that discount is something Delta was duty-bound to do), clearly taking sides in a way I didn’t think was legal. Fox News anchors have gone as far as to mock some of the children involved in the protest. All this while 66% of Americans polled support stricter gun control, 67% support a ban on assault weapons, and 97% support background checks.
How can politicians, who I’d expect to be switching sides on this issue ahead of 2018 – especially in the face of the coming Blue Wave – remain so doggedly blind on this one? A few thoughts:
1: They don’t believe it’s a wave at all: During the 2016 presidential elections, a lot was made of the disconnect between “the elites” on the coasts and “real America” that was truly disaffected and generally over the way the country was going. Now, Hillary won the popular vote, and I do believe the elections were hacked (not manipulated, but hacked), but still…the media and the experts – even on the right – got it wrong. There was a lot more Trump country out there than anyone thought there was. What we’re seeing now could simply be people thinking there’s not as much anti-gun anger out there as there actually is.
2: They are blinded (by greed and/or desperation): People will stay in a bad relationship for money, or in an abusive one for good sex. The 6 o’clock news is built on people making poor decisions, and as a collective person, I’m not sure why the NRA or the Right would be totally different. It’s possible they don’t see what’s happening, trapped in their own echo chamber, whipping up frenzy of an ever smaller base. President Obama once talked about people clinging to guns and religion. It would appear he was correct at least about the guns bit.
3: They genuinely disagree: Whenever I watch the news these days, I’m also playing a game where I’m daring the pundits to say something reasonable like “I hear you and understand your perspective, but I disagree.” If that happens, I’m allowed to get Jeni’s ice cream (which, btw – if you’ve never had it – you should look into). My game is an effective weight loss mechanism. We never get far enough into well-facilitated discourse to see it, but there is a slim possibility that right-wing political actors honestly disagree with the goals of the gun-violence protests, do not believe gun control is the answer, and view arming teachers as the only reasonable response to school shootings. It wouldn’t make much sense, but it’s a possibility.
I don’t know which of the above is true, but I’m nervous about the future of our political representation: the success of the United States depends on multiple points of view balancing each other out, reasonably checking each other in the process of making laws and setting norms. With every local election in which a Republican gets blown out by some long-shot Democrat, we get closer to the possibility of a complete blue-out of the House and Senate in the coming years. And with every Republican that sticks their head in the sand on gun violence or on Trump being Trump, we get closer to another such election the likes of which we’ve seen in Alabama and Pennsylvania.
While most of my views skew a hard left these days, I know that too much of a thing – anything – is not good. The inability of the Right and the NRA to get their heads out of their asses and address the concerns of a growing majority could leave us with an unchecked one-party government in 2020 and 2022, impacts of which – for the general concept of democracy – are difficult to overstate.