Election Day

So perhaps this election is really my fault. My friends from Gorham likely remember me most as the kid who was going to be President of the United States. Ever since I decided in third grade that I wanted the job, I knew that 2016 was the first election that I would be eligible. I know that I signed at least a handful of yearbooks with the promise that people could visit the White House for my inauguration in 2017.

Over the years, I learned that becoming president was both harder and a lot less attractive a job than I thought it was as an eight year old. However, I never lost my interest in politics in general and presidential politics in particular. I majored in Political Science at Wheaton College and was in an Electoral Politics class during the 2000 election. I remember being fascinated by the procedural details surrounding both the 1998 impeachment trials and the Florida recount. While I had an opinion about both of those situations, I was more intrigued by the processes that our government had established to help resolve those deeply divisive conflicts. I remember actually wanting to become a parliamentarian at one point! (Yes, I was/am a dork!)

When I became a teacher in 2004, I wanted to find a way to share some of that excitement with my students, but without bringing in the partisan bickering that leads to people avoid politics all together. I adapted a project that I did in my Electoral Politics course back in 2000, and had my students research and predict the winner in two states. Then, we totaled up everyone's prediction to see who we thought would win. My class was right in 2004 (despite the conventional wisdom predicting a Kerry victory), 2008 and 2012.

I'm proud of that tradition, partly because I like being right, but also because it shows that my students had learned the lesson that I was trying to teach them: that there is something good and worthwhile to our political system that goes beyond just the person we want to win the election. When we learn to ignore our biases and look at the data that we collected, something important happens. We experience the reality that we don't know everything, that there are things that are beyond our ability to know and that sometimes we are even wrong. Even more, we come to accept that there are some people in the world who see things very differently than we do.

Realizing that many people see the world so very differently from you can be scary. It can make you think that there is some conspiracy that is out to hide the Truth of your opinion. How else could so many people see it differently? I'm oversimplifying things, but I think that people on both sides tonight will be wondering how so many people could have supported the other candidate, win or lose. That should make us wonder something about the assumptions we make when it comes to politics.

We don't generally assume the worst about our neighbors, or even strangers we meet on the street. However, we do seem to assume the worst about people who hold different political beliefs, or who support the "other" candidate. I read an article recently that showed that since 1992 the percentage of Democrats who think that Republicans are reasonable people and vice versa has dropped precipitously. That is revealing something about the way that we as citizens are allowing ourselves to be manipulated by the media and political parties. The media is constantly focused on controversies over policies and political candidates are all too happy to tell us how terrible their opponent is. It's easy to blame the media and the political parties, but they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't translate into ratings and votes.

I'm always skeptical when people tell me that something is "as bad as it's ever been." It's easy to put on rose-colored glasses about the past and assume that things have never been so bad. However, if there is something unique about our time, it's our unwillingness to listen to the opinions of those we disagree with, and be open to actually hearing something of value that could influence or change our opinion. We spend so much time listening to the echo chamber of our own beliefs that it's not surprising that we think other people must either be foolish or even "evil" to not see thing our way.

I hope that what comes out of this election is the end of politics that focuses on "enemies" and a return to a political discourse about what is best for our country, among people of goodwill, who want what is best for our country, and who are smart enough to possibly see something that I have missed. Seeing my fifth graders' ability to put aside their personal opinions for the moment and look at the evidence with unbiased eyes gives me hope for the future. We don't have to settle for the politics that assumes others are fools or degenerates, because they support a different candidate. We can still work together and develop solutions to our problems that are better for having multiple perspectives, rather than just  "the right/my" perspective.

Thanks for reading my rant! Now for the fun of it, I figured I would post my class's prediction for tonight's election. As we discussed in class, a change of three or four states would result in a different winner. The fact that this election, which seems so obvious to people on both sides (or all sides with multiple third party candidates), is going to be this close should tell us something about how we approach politics. Are we really to believe that there are millions of fools or racists or socialists, or whatever negative label we want to use to dismiss them as not important? I choose to believe that most of us are honestly trying to grapple with a complex decision and that I might benefit from some empathy for those who voted for the "other guy."