A frustrating part of political analysis in the media and amongst people following the election is the facile way in which we characterize voters based on their votes.  We see this with Trump all the time.  I’ll just mention the Rob Reiner interview which got a lot of shares with “Word”, “Truth”, “Nailedit” affirming that yes Trump voters are racist xenophobes, SMH, what’s the matter with these people.

The process is pretty simple:  look at what the candidate says; gather what you think are the salient features of the talk track; turn those facts into the narrative of the candidate; and then assume that every vote for the person is an endorsement of that narrative.   Trump makes bigoted, misogynist, xenophobic, anti-intellectual statements, therefore people who vote for him are … (It might be useful for Democrats who are baffled at people’s votes to put together a counter-narrative of HRC, picking 5 top facts that someone else  might pick for their narrative and see if that humanizes the vote.)

So, while walking the dog, I tried to lay out the dimensions that go into a vote.  I wonder if it helps us see the millions of people who vote for Trump as something other than rabid bigots; people who vote for Sanders as more than bros or sexists who can’t bear to vote for HRC; and Woman Card carrying HRC supporters as being more concerned about the working class or working poor than NAFTA, the welfare reform bill, or war votes might indicate.

1. Values – Does this person convey values that resonate with what I want?  For me, personally, I resonate with people who view government as having a positive role to play in people’s lives, promote economic opportunity, and treat basic economic outcomes as a right.  If a person scans as sharing those values, they are in my consideration set.  For conservatives, it might be smaller government, skepticism of publicly financed anything, a sense that liberals are elitists who only want to be smarter than me.  For many people, not meeting this test means that the candidate won’t get a vote – period, even if it means not voting (gasp!).
2. Character – this is pretty obvious, but think about integrity.  Sanders may not be the crazy uncle, he may be the guy who’s too old and set in his ways to find it worthwhile to screw anybody.  Trump could scan as a guy who knows what he is, isn’t pretending to be some things he’s not.  Most important, he hasn’t done enough public service to have a record of screwing people.  Again, this might be enough to exclude a candidate from consideration – period, even if it means not voting (gasp!).
3. Other people’s endorsements – also pretty straightforward.  Krugman is the person on whom many of my liberal friends rely on to determine that Sanders is an old-fashioned blunt instrument crank and HRC is the ingenious policy wonk.  Unions used to play a role in helping to sort out what’s in your best interest, and various scorecards from groups such as the NRA, NARAL, NRDC, ADA, Family Research Council, etc. help people decide votes.  If you have an issue that you consider to be the most important, than that rating/endorsement may be all you need to know.
4. Policies – I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I don’t know what’s in the Iran deal, but I support it.  I trust the values and approach of the President, think the US needs an ally other than Saudi Arabia, and I’m a sucker for the transformative political, economic, and cultural power of an emerging  middle class in a developing/evolving country.  But, honestly, I have no fucking idea.  I also know that we should have done the stimulus package in 2008 at the levels Krugman says we should have done them because … that math he did.  A lot of policy conversation among the cognoscenti is parlor talk and based a lot more on proxy thinking and faith in 1 through 3 above.  For many people who come home from work too exhausted to play with their kids, looking at position papers, checking out a Vox analysis, or comparing healthcare plans isn’t going to happen.  This is part of the reason they donate to political parties and participate in intermediating organizations.  The previous three dimensions will have to do – sorry if that makes me stupid, and causes me to vote in ways that appear to you to be not in my self interest, but my feet are killing me and I want to see my kid’s soccer game.
5. Competition – “Who is the best of the lot?  I mean, I’ll never vote for the other Party, so who bugs me the least?”
6. Ability to beat the opponent – no explanation needed.

This list is largely in order with the exception of #6, which might be #1 in certain circles and certain contexts.  But different voters will have different matrices and calculuseseseses (hmmm) at different times in their lives.  Some of the pieces above – values, character, beating the opponent – may be go/no-goes.  Policy, for people who are concerned about one issue above all others, might be the deciding factor for people who rely on the party to sort out the rest.

I think there’s more here, but I’m at 719 words when I typed 719, so I’ll stop at 728.