If you haven’t heard, identity politics are in. In the last two weeks or so, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain announced he could win one third of the black vote. President Obama’s numbers are sinking with Jewish voters, and apparently also with white, liberal voters.
Clearly, we’re going to see some realignment of the traditional voting patterns next November. Without support from people who are black, Jewish, white or liberal, President Obama might be in some trouble. In fact, that’s about 85 percent of Obama’s voter base.
He shouldn’t panic. There are plenty of untapped constituencies the president could court over the next 13 months to make up for losing those other groups.
First, he should make a heavy push for the “I Met Him Once Vote.” Traditionally, the average person is more likely to vote for someone if they meet them because that way they can tell their neighbors, “Hey, I met him and he seemed really nice.”
But the president shouldn’t just go out and shake hands — In order to really run up the score in this group, he should start going to random school plays and ballet recitals. Imagine the number of people who would say, “Well I wasn’t going to vote for him, but it was so nice of him to come see Katie’s play even though she only had two lines.”
Come on, you all know people like that.
Additionally, President Obama needs to court the “He Seems Like a Regular Guy Vote.” He’s had trouble with this one, mostly because he is an Ivy League educated former law professor who uses words like “philosophical.”
There’s always time to change minds. He needs to take off his tie, roll up his shirt sleeves and get his picture taken slapping people on the back and mentioning local bars and restaurants. People love it when you mention somewhere they’ve been.
Finally, a huge untapped voter base is the “Easily Impressed” vote. The president should develop a special skill that is really impressive, or accomplish a very difficult task.
If the president learned to juggle knives or cured a disease, it would go a long way toward impressing people. People would
say, “Well, if he can cure Restless Leg Syndrome, I’m sure he can handle John Boehner.”
If he can bring the “I Met Him Once,” “He Seems Like a Regular Guy,” and “Easily Impressed” voters on board, President Obama can surely make up the loses in his traditional voters.
It’s a sound strategy that is sure to protect him from losing 200 electoral votes in four years. The only problem is voting patterns and support are not so simple. The media and strategists talk about big groups like they are homogenous when they
are not.
Each voter makes their own decision. While they might follow general patterns because of common experiences, each election is a single data point in a much larger data set. Any one piece of data could vary wildly from the norm.
It’s not a bad way to predict, but it’s a silly way to make actual decisions. Can Herman Cain take 33 percent of the black vote? Maybe. But by doing so, he might lose 100 percent of the “I’d Never Vote for a Radio Host” vote. Those numbers don’t add up.
You can’t treat people like cardboard cutout stereotypes and expect them to fall in line because of their skin color, their religion or their income bracket.
The world is a bit more complex than that and despite what you might hear out there, complexity isn’t a vice.
Don’t get caught up in the (insert identity here) vote because by doing so, you’re accepting that one piece of a person’s identity defines all of their beliefs. Chances are, you wouldn’t want someone to write you off like that.
