The False Mirror: If my candidate doesn’t win, we’ll lose the Presidential election

The False Mirror: If my candidate doesn’t win, we’ll lose the Presidential election

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According to Jean Piaget, all children go through a phase of egocentrism, when their developing brains don’t yet differentiate the child from the rest of the world, and other people. For example, a child might give his mother a toy dump truck for her birthday, thinking that’s exactly what she’d want. Because that’s exactly what he’d want.

Egocentrism fuels political rhetoric. In a way, it has to. A candidate has to believe her way is the best way, and go forth to sell that version of reality. After all, it’s a founding principle of our Democracy that “out of many, one” — E Pluribus Unum.

But when the urge to unite is forged of narrow interests, it’s no longer an ideal. Instead, it’s a bent version of E Pluribus Unum, where differences are masked, and interests are ignored. The “many” are told to sit down and let “the one” speak for us.

It’s easy to tell the two apart. One feels like bullying, and the other feels like participation. One invites the many to participate in Democracy, and the other sees participation as a threat.

A few months ago, when Alan Grayson was hinting at a run for the Senate, a low-level party operative argued here that if he were to do so, it would result in Democrats losing the Presidential election. The egocentricity of “if my candidate doesn’t win, everyone loses,” is obvious, but I’ll go ahead and spell it out: in a presidential election year, ballot voting is almost always straight-ticket. It’s an extraordinary claim, backed up by zero evidence, that a down-ballot candidate would have the reverse effect on the top of the ticket.

Recently on WMFE’s Intersection, political commentator, Dick Batchelor made the same extraordinary claim: “if Grayson is the nominee, he could hurt Hillary Clinton in the Presidential race.” Instead of welcoming voices into the Democratic space (out of many, one), this message is “beat it kid — you’re trashing up the joint with your message of economic equality.” It’s this kind of bullying that made Grayson dig in. It also reveals entitlement by assuming that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee. That may well be the case, but there’s plenty of good Democrats in Florida who are interested in the other Presidential candidates. Is it really necessary to alienate them so early in the race? What should be of concern to the Clinton campaign, is if she can win back the progressive populists flocking to the Bernie Sanders message, should she win the primary.

(snip)

In political campaigns it’s completely understandable that the world would seem to revolve around your candidate. But in terms of organizational structure, egocentrism — forcing an inversion of “out of many, one” — drains the life out of the party. The rank-and-file come to us to be part of something, not to be told who they can vote for.

Primaries are our means of keeping the faith with the rank and file. Embracing a true primary process shows respect to the voters and to Democracy itself.


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