Considering the 2002 and 2004 elections, I believe that this new "psycho-graphic" model of voter contact has demonstrated that it is superior to the demographic, or location based model that has been a mainstay of political campaigns for decades. Of late, I have also been wondering if the primary lesson of the psycho-graphic voter contact model have implications beyond campaign field efforts. Specifically, I wonder if they reveal a possible advancement beyond the long standing view of politics as a series of policy issue areas, and into a more sophisticated understanding of the way voters make political decisions.
However, I have to wonder if the entire division of politics into discrete policy issues such as national security, the environment, gun control, education, and health care is an arbitrary division of politics that is more reflective of the advocacy establishment in Washington than it is of the way voters actually make political decisions. There may be quite a few health care advocacy organizations in Washington that focus primarily on shaping health care policy, but how many voters are there really in America who separate the problems they may be having with their health care provider away from the other problems in their lives, and then vote based upon that separation? If a parent is having a health care problem, isn't that directly connected to having difficulties raising their children? Would such a voter really separate their health care problems from their parenting problems? Probably not.
As an example of why I think the discrete issue based view of politics is ineffective as describing voting habits, I'd like everyone to take a look at the way bloggers are self-organizing online. Through its new mini-network option, Blogads allows bloggers to create self-organized blogospheres based around whatever topic bloggers wish to organize around. A quick look at these blogospheres shows that people are not self-organizing around discrete policy areas, but are instead self-organizing around lifestyles. There are large blogospheres based around being parents, being gay, being evangelical, being feminist, being liberal, being a lawyer, having a PhD, and about living in a certain area. There are not, however, any of the following: education-based blogospheres, foreign policy based blogospheres, health-case based blogospheres, or civil rights based blogospheres. Despite these issues playing huge roles in our national political discourse, people are not grouping around these issues of their own initiative. There is an environmental blogosphere, but a look at its membership indicates that most of the members and traffic of the blogosphere come from progressive blogs that are actually focused on several but are friendly to progressive environmental concerns. Even the largest enviro-blog, Treehugger, is clearly based on living an environmental friendly lifestyle, rather than upon environmental policy. The last four posts on Treehugger are about grocery shopping, purchasing digital cameras, a movie, and skiing respectively. This is about lifestyle and values, not about policy.
When left to their own devices--and there are few areas where people are left more to their own devices free of institutional influence than the blogosphere--people are clearly organizing around lifestyles, rather than around policy issues. People are organizing around concepts like parenting, rather than around concepts like health care. People are organizing around being gay or evangelical rather around discussing foreign policy or gun control. Law blogs are written mainly by lawyers as an extension of their professional lives, rather than as a focus on tort reform. The same can be said for economists and doctors. Clearly, people are writing about and congregating together based on how they live.
I have spent a lot of time in Washington DC lately, and I know that within the district progressive politics (and conservative politics) is indeed often divided into discrete policy areas such as labor, reproductive rights, the environment, Israel, guns, and many other areas. I think that our national progressive political discourse is divided along these same lines because the people who largely drive our political discourse are based within Washington DC. While this discourse may be representative of the way DC thinks about politics, it is not representative of the way people seem to think about politics. When left to their own devices, people are not organizing themselves in the same way DC is organized. Instead of organizing around discrete policy issues, they are organizing themselves around lifestyles.
I think it would be to the great benefit of the progressive movement if we shifted our focus away from policy areas and toward lifestyles. There are a lot of people in this country who are leading progressive lifestyles but are not necessarily voting, or even identifying themselves, as progressives. People who buy fuel-efficient cars are living progressively. People who commute to work on public transportation are living progressively. People who are avid bicyclists are living progressively. People who drink micro-brews re living progressively. People who watch Bravo are living progressively. While I am sure that a lot of people who do these things are already voting for progressives, what are we offering them in return? Are we not contacting them because they do these things but don't live in a blue area? Is our latest health care proposal really going to do something that will impact their lifestyle, rather than just their next visit to the doctor? I'm doubtful on both counts.
I don't know if more people in this country are living like progressives or living like conservatives. Finding out the answer to that question might be the best and most accurate indicator of the state of conservatism and progressivism in the country. If in fact more people are living like progressives, developing a language, a message machine and a platform hat appeals to such a lifestyle is almost certainly our best way back into power.
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