Let's Talk About Electability

As I was transcribing this, social media was all aflutter about Joe Biden announcing his candidacy for President, and, sure enough, the word “electability” started being thrown around in relation to why he makes a good candidate.

Funnily enough, that’s the topic of conversation with my Anonymous Friend of the Week, otherwise known as Them.

Here’s the interview:

ME:  Let’s talk about electability.

THEM:  Is this about Joe Biden?

ME:  Yup.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  He’s already getting too much press, and he hasn’t even announced yet.

                (Sidenote:  This conversation was had on Sunday.)

ME:  People are saying he should be the nominee—or someone like him—because he’s ‘electable’ and I just wanted to figure out what they mean when they say that.

THEM:  So you don’t know what it means?

ME:  I thiiiiiink I know what it means, but I’m not sure they do.

THEM:  Okay, well, from my perspective, it’s because he’s a straight, white male who’s a bit older, and I think some people think they’re being realistic by saying that we should run him, because maybe Trump voters will flip for someone that, at least visually, represents someone they’d be, uh, comfortable having in power.

ME:  I do want to keep this anonymous, but would you feel comfortable mentioning—

THEM:  I’m an African-American woman.

ME:  I meant are you a Capricorn?

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Sagittarius, baby.

ME:  Wow, okay.  This is about to get interesting.

THEM:  You really are insane.

ME:  You’re the one who agreed to talk to me.

THEM:  We should just stop the interview now.

ME:  Just give me a few more soundbytes and then we’ll be good.

THEM:  I’ll just say something about eliminating the judicial branch.  How about that?

ME:  Oh shit, that might need a separate interview altogether.

THEM:  So you’re for Mayor Pete, right?

ME:  No, I like Mayor Pete, I’m not for anybody yet.  That’s what primary season is for—so you don’t have to be for someone right out of the gate.

THEM:  But you’re not pro-Joe?

ME:  I am not pro-Joe.

THEM:  Why?

ME:  I think he’s got some…Oh boy, I’m going to get dragged for this, uh—some things in common with the current President that make me nervous.

THEM:  Such as?

ME:  He’s handsy with women, he speaks before he thinks, and frankly, I actually don’t like that he’s friends with so many Republicans.

THEM:  Really?

ME:  Yeah, we’re at war.  I don’t want to find out you’re golfing with the other side, Uncle Joe.

THEM:  So you don’t think the right President could bring the country back together?

ME:  If Barack Obama and his superhero of a wife could not bridge the divide between me and the assholes, no, I don’t have hope for anyone else.  Electing the current President was a slap across the face from one side of the country to the other, and even though I’m not exactly pro-violence, I do think my side is owed a slap back before we have to talk about getting in a circle and singing Kumbaya.

THEM:  You’re really fired up.

ME:  There’s no way I’m making it to 2020.  I can tell you that right now.

THEM:  So you don’t think he’s electable?

ME:  I don’t care if he’s electable.  That’s my point.  Not because I don’t want to make sure we get someone in, but because, I think predicting who is electable and who isn’t after 2016 is pointless.  The President was the definition of ‘unelectable’ even according to people in his own party, and he got elected, so why are we trying to figure this out?  And why figure it out a year and a half before we have to?

THEM:  And like I said, the implication is that America won’t elect someone like Kamala Harris.

ME:  That’s your early favorite, right?

THEM:  Right, I’m House of Harris with a rising Warren.

ME:  People—even people who like to label themselves as progressive—are sort of dancing around saying ‘Americans won’t elect a black woman.’

THEM:  Or a woman at all.

ME:  As if what we should be doing is figuring out how to appeal to racists and sexists.

THEM:  There’s this feeling that—we can’t beat these people, so we sort of have to…meet them halfway.  It’s a narrative that’s been going around since immediately after Trump won.  That we did the wrong thing by not finding a suitable candidate for the KKK.

ME:  You know about politics than I do—

THEM:  Says who?

ME:  It’s your field!

THEM:  But you’re obsessed.

ME:  I am pretty obsessed.  But I was going to say—am I wrong in thinking that we’re barking up the wrong tree by trying to flip voters?

THEM:  As opposed to?

ME:  Firing up the base?  Bringing in liberals who haven’t voted before?  Finding someone who appeals to young people the way President Obama did?

THEM:  Making sure Russia doesn’t interfere again?

ME:  And then there’s that.

THEM:  When people talk about electability, I want to ask them if they’re referring to who Putin would like to elect.

ME:  That’s what I mean—there’s all these variables.  Why not just see who makes it out of what is sure to be an excruciating primary process?

THEM:  There’s this urge to get it right—which is understandable.  But what is right?

ME:  There are people criticizing progressives and liberals for valuing purity in a candidate, but—maybe it’s because—look what happens when you elect someone without shame?  Someone who truly has no issue manipulating the process and using their power in all the worst ways?  Maybe we’re just realizing now that we’ve been lucky—in some respects—all these years.  This President is utilizing every loophole.

THEM:  So now we’re saying—Yes, we need a saint, because—

ME:  Because we have the actual Devil.

THEM:  We need someone we can trust.  And how do you know if you can trust someone?  Well, a lot of times, it comes down to—Do I see myself in this person?  Because most people trust themselves, right?  So if a candidate reminds me of me, it’s going to trigger that thing inside me that believes I’m looking at a good person.  And I’m more apt to go in that direction than to try and see myself in people on the other side.

ME:  It’s that New York Times thing of profiling Nazis and asking why liberals aren’t trying to understand them.

THEM:  Nazis and the Liberals Who Need to Love Them If We Want the White House Back.

ME:  It’s this condescending idea that we need to meet these people halfway.  How do you meet a Nazi halfway?

THEM:  That’s like a bad set-up for a joke.

ME:  We’re talking about things like gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose—how do you meet halfway on those issues?

THEM:  You don’t.  Plain and simple.

ME:  And yet there’s all this talk about we’re all not really that different—

THEM:  Or that there are problems on both sides.

ME:  It just makes for a better story on the news.

THEM:  Or it prevents half the population from turning off their televisions.

ME:  I was saying to someone earlier that it feels like we have to be pragmatic but also optimistic and that can be a hard balance to achieve.

THEM:  It feels impossible a lot of the time.

ME:  So what do we do?

THEM:  We keep trying to get more people engaged.  That’s the key thing.  In the amount of time it takes to get a voter to change their mind, you probably could have signed up ten new voters.

ME:  So I’m…right?

THEM:  You are right—about that.  Yes.

ME:  I love when I’m right.

THEM:  I’m not saying give up on moderate voters and reaching across the aisle, but whichever candidate we wind up with is probably going to turn off nearly as many people as Hillary Clinton did.  We talk about her as if she was this unpopular, uh, candidate and that somebody else easily would have beat Trump, but I don’t know if that’s true.  I think the way things are now, whoever winds up in that spotlight is going to face the same challenges.  People call it identity politics, but it’s just who we are now.  We draw that line and we stick to our side of it.

ME:  But are there Conservatives or moderates who are sick of the President?

THEM:  I’m sure there are, but to me, relying on them feels like a gamble.  We didn’t lose the last election by that much in the grand scheme of things.  We won the popular vote.  This idea that we need to toss out the old way of doing things and start from scratch is—I just don’t see that being viable in the long-term.  But I do think we all need to be making noise about protecting our elections.

ME:  How do we do that when the people who benefit from those elections being rigged don’t want to?

THEM:  Again—no idea.

ME:  We’re not solving any problems here.

THEM:  But maybe we can get people to stop saying ‘electable.’

ME:  If that’s all that comes out of this—

THEM:  It will have been worth it.

Them works in the political arena, but they wouldn’t say they’re obsessed with it.