The Most Important Four-Letter Word in Politics

I was in Albany in October, 1994, helping Governor Cuomo with his late run for a fourth term. I was sequestered in the mansion pool house, rewriting a last ditch TV spot. The governor came in to see how it was going, and he looked haggard. Every poll was predicting that George Pataki was going to win the election. He was very sober about this. He mentioned that after three terms the electorate had grown tired of him. They wanted someone new, even a bland alternative like his opponent. He expected to lose, I’m certain, because enough of the voters no longer liked him.

It all distills into a single four-letter word. Like. People vote for the candidate they like, or rather today the one they dislike the least when it comes time to go to the polls. It is why Reagan won two terms, why W beat Gore, why Obama beat McCain. Few people remember the issues or even care who stood where. They remember the missteps during the stretch run, if anything. Every dinner party conversation about politics begins with “I like…” or “I don’t like….”

In my short time working for the governor of New York a generation ago, I learned two things about the electoral process: First, every politician spends as much money as he or she can afford to tweak the dials of a campaign. Focus groups, polls, more focus groups, more polls, TV buys, all the time. The behind-the-scenes staff will analyze the ethnic market, the urban market, the suburban market, the exurbs, every likely voter in both parties, every demographic and psychographic you can think of. In fact, they will break down every precinct, and tell you how a given zip code is probably going to vote. The back office campaign specialists look around every corner. It never stopped surprising me how thorough they were. The second thing is that everything I just mentioned so far has limited value, and often no value at all when it comes to election day. This is certainly true of the polls, without going into the many reasons why they are so unscientific and thereby unreliable. That they are such a big part of the process has more to do with early fundraising. No numbers, no money; it’s that simple. They only matter at the very end, just before the real polls open.

We are 10 months from choosing a new President, and most of what we’ve seen so far are the preliminary scrums from both parties, at times outrageous, ridiculous, funny, infuriating, occasionally revealing, and at least somewhat entertaining. The trick to winning the White House is to obfuscate one’s weaknesses and to avoid drilling down into the significant issues as much as possible. The one who can do this the longest ends up standing. In the end game, he who makes the fewest amount of gaffes wins. It is about finesse and character. This is not new; it is the standard operating practice of any candidate in any political party. Why? Simply because thoughtful voters who have not yet chosen sides make up a minority that it doesn’t pay to chase. It’s the thoughtless minority, a much larger and more meaningful bloc— the real swing voters of either party (in the states that are contentious) that really count. I’m not implying that thoughtless means stupid. It just means this cohort doesn’t care to drill down too deeply into the real issues, except perhaps the ones that affect them most. They ask what their country will do for them, rather than the other way around.

Based on recent figures there are approximately 235 million eligible voters in the U.S. If 55 percent turn out next November (about the average or a little higher in the past several cycles), that means 82 million votes will be cast. I’m just guessing (like everyone else) but perhaps only 7 percent will go into the booths undecided between the two finalists. So in the end less than 6 million people will make the difference. Of that 6 million it’s anybody’s estimate as to how many are the thoughtless impulse voters; that is, those who actually “like” or “dislike” a candidate. And of course the most significant of those live in the six or seven swing states. (I guess a collateral point of this piece is that we have a very low bar for the basic civic responsibility of choosing our chief executive, and relatively few people care about clearing it, even if it’s only once every four years.) There’s a lot of money out there chasing very few voters. Probably a billion dollars over a year and a half. Don’t compute the cost per vote; it will just depress you.

Let’s take a look at the two most interesting candidates at this point: You Know Who from the Republican side, who is leading the polls and the news almost every night. He certainly gets the idea, never proposing a specific plan to solve any problem. Love him or hate him, you have to watch him. He is the lion tamer who knows as long as he has his head in the lion’s mouth, the circus crowd can’t take its eyes off him. Even if you believe the polls are accurate, there are still more eligible overall voters who dislike him. (Experts I trust count this as 6–8 percent of the total eligible voters, not just Republicans.) I expect him to be a non-factor throughout the year, and if he does win the nomination, I think he will be crushed by whomever the Democrats run against him.

The other is Bernie Sanders, who leans leftward and is running a sensible, energetic, practical campaign that appeals to the middle-class Democrat who believes that much of the system is rigged against him. Sanders’ main theme is that he can change things. Those who like him; indeed, those who support him, are not very confident he can win the nomination, let alone a general election. They fear he leans too far left to win it all. His true believers are just not a large contingent at this point.

I expected Jeb Bush to be more of a factor, but he has shown so little gut and heart for the long run (think of his early mistakes that keep him from gaining even modest traction). He’s given the other GOP contenders hope. That leaves You Know Who, Rubio, and Cruz. (I will eat my keyboard if Christie, Fiorina, or any of the other fringe candidates wins the nomination.)

Many candidates are largely running on the fear issue at this point. That is, they are pandering to the fact if you vote for them it will be safer to go into public places. But even the most thoughtless voters will see beyond that on Election Day. America has the unique ability to define inertia. We seem to be moving forward in one minute; stagnant and stuck in another. It’s the essence of our Democracy, both good and bad. It gets down to who is the safest candidate (and not necessarily the one who promises more homeland security). The one who will upset your household the least. Because in the end, few people really believe that a President can get them a job or keep food on their family’s table. They know the system is going to plod along. (The most cynical, of course, don’t even bother voting.)

My prediction is that the voters who actually swing the election will vote for the candidate they dislike the least. That’s Hillary. The gender issue will be a non-factor, as we’ve already had leaders in England and Germany who ran and run their nations no worse than the men do. It will finally get down to those key undecideds who say to themselves, who will be the least disruptive in my life? Eight years ago, Clinton played the national security card and it backfired badly because neither she nor Obama had any foreign policy experience. Now she has a state department line on her resume, and that will gain her more votes than it will lose. Yes, factor in Benghazi, the email servers, all the bad things she did or allegedly did back to Whitewater, and people will still dislike the other candidate more. She’ll have less baggage when the negative ads start streaming. She’s running a much more disciplined campaign than she did in 2008. She seems less managed. She’s making fewer mistakes. She has a better hairstylist.

Whether any of the candidates will make immediate significant changes in the nation’s direction (given the other two branches of government) is anyone’s guess. But I think Clinton will be the first woman President simply because the voters who really count will dislike the other choice more.