"Best of Both Worlds"

Here's something only liberals are supposed to do, and something only conservatives are supposed to do. But if we ever want to break up U.S. political gridlock, all of us should aspire to do both.

Before Tuesday, Election Day 2022, I’d never done a get-out-the-vote phone bank, where you call or text people encouraging them to vote.

Great gosh a’mighty, do I hate the idea of putting people out. I know I’m not alone in that, but I inherited my particular brand of aversion to it from my dad and grandpa. They were always going to extraordinary lengths not to inconvenience people.

I do that, too, and I’d like to think it comes from a similar desire to be conscientious. That was Dad’s and Grandpa’s intention. But for me, I think it’s also a selfish thing, or at least a self-conscious thing. I don’t want to be thought of as putting people out. So too often I just don’t engage at all.

(I try to ask myself, Did you ever think asking someone for help might make them feel good? And actually helping you out might make them feel even better? Sometimes I can outsmart myself that way, sometimes not. Tuesday the self-pep talk worked.)

Instead of texting random potential voters, I decided to text just friends, family, and acquaintances whose numbers I had. [WARNING: The preceding link contains brief nudity.] The message was: Please go vote, and if you already voted, let’s everybody tell one other person who might not be planning on voting to please go vote. And in certain states [as I mentioned in last week’s “Somethin’s Happenin’ Here”], they can even still register today and vote on the spot.”

It was nerve-racking, though. I can play to a sold-out music hall and not feel anything but nervous energy on my way out to the stage. But that kind of audience is fairly anonymous. If I have to put myself out there and get in front of a small, intimate group of people who I actually know, things can get ugly.

A modest Zoloft regimen keeps me from experiencing full-blown panic attacks these days, but Tuesday those familiar pangs of anxiety that used to trigger a freakout started creeping up in my gut as soon as I began selecting the first series of text recipients in the Impactive app.

The app makes the process way easier, but you still have to select each recipient one at a time, by hand. Which was probably good—I wouldn’t want to waste time mistakenly texting my doctor’s office, or the hair salon, or any girls I’ve dated.

(Ultimately I did text some girls I dated, but just the ones who broke up with me. I did not text the ones I broke up with. Which, if you can believe it, was not as long a list as the former list. No, it’s true!)

After choosing 20 or so recipients, you have to send each text individually to keep from exposing people’s numbers to the group. So the process took a looooong time. It really gave my brain a chance to contemplate just how much of a nuisance I was about to become to a bunch of people I cared about. It still felt right to be doing a little something (a very little something) to drive a few more folks to the polls, though.

Halfway through setting up my second batch of texts, I got my first response.

“Fuck off.”

No exclamation point, no all-caps. Just a straightforward, matter-of-fact declaration. Essentially, “You suck and need to go away.”

[NOTE: Sorry for the profanity, kids. I decided I would not be saying the F-word in CeeGees: Ideas and would only rarely use the S-word, but since this is a direct quote important to the story, my hands are tied.]

So, I’m not friends with this guy who responded, just distant acquaintances. I certainly don’t know him well enough to know if he’s a voter, which direction he leans, etc. So I probably shouldn’t have texted him. After that, I stopped texting anyone I didn’t feel confident wouldn’t resent me for it.

What went through my mind when that response came through, though, was: Ah, he must be a Republican, and he thinks he’s telling off a Democrat. Because anybody trying to get out the vote is obviously a Democrat, right? Otherwise wouldn’t he have just responded Stop or Unsubscribe? That’s what the other folks did who initially mistook my personalized text for an automated one.

Making these kinds of generalizations about people, however, is what I imagined this newsletter would try to discourage. Assuming a negative interaction like this one had to be from a certain type of person who was thinking a certain type of thing isn’t too helpful in the vast scheme of things. How did I know the FU guy wasn’t a Democrat (or an independent, or a non-voter) and simply thought I was yet another impersonal computer non-selectively imposing upon his time?

I’ve wanted to tell those rude-ass computers to eff off, myself. [NOTE: A-words are fair game.]

However, my message started off with “Greetings Friends and Fam,” immediately announced my name, and never said anything about voting for anybody in particular. It just encouraged people to vote.

The Big Idea: Getting out the vote shouldn’t be thought of as a liberals-only act. Just like prominently displaying the American flag shouldn’t be an exclusively conservative act. Until we can all agree on this, we’re probably doomed to continue enduring a 50-50 Congress and a divided United States.

When commercials from the National Football League pop up around election time with famous players talking up the virtues of voting, it’s hard for me not to see the ads as at least silently partisan.

(Needless to say, the League chose players like the redemptive Tyrann Mathieu [a.k.a. the “Honey Badger”] for 2022’s GOTV ads rather than the second guy featured above from the 2020 campaign.)

Do we really think NFL players, the majority of whom are Black, want people to vote Republican? When they say, or someone in a similar position says, “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, just vote…” I mean, c’mon: that’s said with the understanding that the more votes cast, the better Democrats will do, right?

Okay, but conversely, do we really think NFL brass and owners want people to vote Democrat? They approved the ads, and you’d think they’d be voting Republican…being filthy rich and all.

Right-leaning media like National Affairs magazine certainly play down the notion that big voter turnout benefits Democrats. But when my guy Bernie Sanders (not a socialist, just a Sanders fan) made the statement that Democrats win when the voter turnout is high, Republicans win when the voter turnout is low during his first presidential run, FactCheck.org also said that analysis was wobbly at best.

So just speaking for myself, I probably need to be less cynical and entertain the possibility that those who are encouraging people to vote could, in fact, be conservative. And just in general, everybody, of all political persuasions, should encourage high voter turnout. I know it doesn’t necessarily always make for a healthier democracy, but anything less would be unpatriotic, wouldn’t it?

And along those same lines: I have to admit that I also engage in some biased thinking when it comes to the display of the American flag.

I friggin’ love Bill Burr—took my mom, who also loves Bill Burr, to his show a couple months ago at Assembly Hall, where Indiana University plays basketball—but I didn’t dig it when he made fun of people who fly the American flag outside their house. It kinda startled me—my baked-in Midwestern allegiances really flared up around that joke. If it ain’t the Fourth of July, he seemed to be implying, and you’re still flying the flag? You’re probably a racist MAGAn.

But then I thought about it. I’m not flying an American flag outside my house. I don’t think I’d want Mom, who lives in Southern Indiana, to fly one either anymore. Why? Precisely because I wouldn’t want anyone thinking we were far-right extremists. That’s the truth of it, unfortunately—at least in hers and my neighborhoods.

And it’s just a damn shame. [NOTE: Most D-words also cool.] But it’s reality: any appearance of the flag that isn’t government-related these days means the flag displayer is very likely far-right. If it’s a civilian touting the flag out in the world somewhere, they must be MAGA. It’s a modern-day stereotype that, like most stereotypes, does hold some truth, to the extent that far-right folks have plastered their homes and their cars and themselves with the flag so voraciously that it waters down its meaning, in my mind.

BOTTOM LINE: Every American citizen should feel comfortable raising the flag on a flagpole outside their home without feeling like they’re making a political statement. Sure, you can say “I don’t care what anyone thinks, I’m gonna put up the flag anyway.” But that conviction doesn’t change the fact that you will be perceived as far-right for doing so. (That’s my perception, at least.)

Likewise, every American citizen should vote, and want as many people as possible to vote, and feel comfortable telling others they should vote without feeling like they’re making a political statement, as well.

How we get to that place from here…I can’t tell you.

Either way, if my pre-Election Night calculations are correct—you’ll just have to trust me that I made these predictions early-afternoon on Election Day—Dems will retain their Georgia and Arizona Senate seats in addition to flipping Pennsylvania, while R’s will flip Nevada after winning Wisconsin. Which means the Senate will remain exactly 50-50, just like it’s been the last two years, with Sens. Manchin and Sinema holding the body hostage by refusing to eliminate the filibuster.

And the House will go from ever-so-slightly Democrat-controlled to ever-so-slightly Republican-controlled, which will mean the GOP has a tiny bit more sway, but not so much power that they can really do too much—just like it’s been the last two years.

So it sure feels to me like things are gonna stay this way until the fever breaks and Americans start coming together…for example, until they start agreeing that inherently patriotic acts like promoting voting and waving the flag are indeed patriotic, no matter who participates in them.

Yours,
~Dean

P.S. - I’m about as good at political predictions as I am at dating, but in the next “Somethin’s Happenin’ Here” I’m planning to talk about why I predicted the gut-wrenchingly awful Senator Ron Johnson’s victory in Wisconsin.

P.P.S. - And in “The Music Box”: Best Guitar Riff of the Eighties!