Vote Loud.
I spent some time this week writing billboard headlines urging people to vote. A client had become dismayed with the state of our civil discourse, and thought he might help by funding a small get-out-the-vote campaign. My favorite:
America. Established 1776. Re-established Nov 6.
In the end the project fizzled. The effort was too last minute, and big companies get nervous about diving too far into politics. But a lot of them are thinking about it.
The trajectory of the country is hurting their business, even as the sugar high the tax cut bill gave the economy makes their profits look pretty good.
Companies like my client are like so many of us. Terrified by the roller coaster we got strapped into after the last election. Uncertain about how to get off. Worried that the wrong move might make it even worse.
Our politics have never been more emotional, and who can blame us. To read the morning news is to step into a hellish abyss of chaos, while the guy we hired to bring some order to the whole thing spends all his time in stadiums chanting “Fake News!” and “Lock Her Up!”
The brief for my short-lived campaign was to play with these emotional triggers to convince people to vote. Everyone knows turnout is a problem, especially among the younger voters who have the most at stake. Maybe high-minded calls to make our voices heard and save the nation could overcome the disillusionment.
I’m not so sure that’s right. A former U.S. Senator told me the other day a big part of the problem is we expect too much out of politics. We’re turned off because a party isn’t progressive enough, or too progressive. The candidate is just another old white guy, how can he identify with what I’m going through? We’re so used to having everything from our media to the food in our grocery store curated to our tastes that we get a little freaked out when the election comes down to a binary choice and neither of them is striking quite the right emotional vibe.
What we really need right now is a cold calculus, so here it is.
Your vote is a nudge on history. A political party organizes those nudges into a force that might actually have some effect.
That might not seem like much, but it’s what we have. Over the broad sweep of time, it’s probably done more to alter history than any political act humanity has yet been able to come up with.
In 2016 we were at a more important crossroads than anyone quite realized. We may have thought we could sit it out if we weren’t sufficiently inspired, or use our vote as a protest because the whole system felt bogus. As a result we now have a lot of people who are dishonest or worse, far, far worse, in charge of our collective destiny. Which, unless you have a line on a rocket ship that will take you to another planet, will have a lot to do with your destiny.
So here we are at an even bigger crossroads. If it goes wrong this time you might not get another chance to repair the damage. Your nudge is sorely needed.
