This morning, when I checked our mailbox, there was a hand-printed manilla envelope with no return address. Three “Forever” stamps had been applied, but the carrier also attached an envelope demanding thirty-five cents for insufficient postage. It was addressed to my husband, so I handed it off to him and he opened it with a shrug.
Inside were two extreme right propaganda pamphlets “Rethinking Revelation Chapter 13,” an “end times” rant, by one Bob Fraley; and “Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution” by David Horowitz. That charming little number is another attempt to tie the president to Saul Alinsky, whom, we are expected to believe was the personification of evil and the high-priest of godless communism.
This is a little hard for a native Chicagoan to swallow, when Mr. Alinsky’s message of social responsibility was part and parcel of what I was taught in sociology class at my Catholic girls’ high school there. Barely twenty years ago, being tied to Saul Alinsky’s name would have done nothing but enhance a presidential candidates’s appeal.
Now, with all of this print material sent willy-nilly into the void, I’m a-thinking this represents some serious investment (not withstanding the cheesy postage due). I looked for a postmark and there was none present, leading me to conclude that it must have originated locally.
Much to our amusement, my husband, who is Canadian and has therefore never even registered to vote in the U.S., has long been targeted by Republican mailings. We’re not sure why. Something he bought or inquired about years ago probably tagged him as a potential recruit. He gets petitions to sign, requests for donations and even letters thanking him for all of his support. This latest mailing no doubt belongs to that Twilight Zone of misdirected marketing.
But the message is clear: even crazy fringe groups will have a huge war chest of Super PAC funding indirectly available to somehow enable a particularly ugly and virulent campaign this year.
The more desperate and disorganized the Republicans become, the less they have to lose by resorting to outright lies and association with the most toxic outliers.
They’re on the ropes and it’s no holds barred.
That was the point of Bill Maher’s one-million dollar donation to the Obama Super PAC, as he explained in his Friday night broadcast. This general election will be different from all those that came before.
Unimaginable sums of money are poised to flow into the Republican campaign at a moment’s notice; and a perfectly timed mass-release of misinformation targeting voters individually on their prejudices and fears (like the poison packet in my mailbox) has the very real potential to impact voter turn-out and overwhelm common sense.
As Maher pointed out, it’s happened before even when campaign contributions were limited. Who among us seriously thought there’d be either a President Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, nine months out from their election?
The conventional wisdom has been that, “It’s the economy, stupid!” So, if things continue to improve on that front, we should be safe from the lunatic fringe. Right?
Wrong.
They are lunatics, and, as has been demonstrated by key Republicans on numerous occasions over the past few months, they will say ANYTHING to fire-up their base, no matter how wild or irresponsible.
If only that base turns out in substantial numbers on election day to “purge the infidel,” while the rest of us sort of trickle in, still grumpy with Obama disappointment and confident that common sense will prevail without our help, we could be in for the rudest of surprises.
2008 saw the highest voter turn-out ever in the US. That number dropped significantly in 2008 as new voters who became engaged in the process in 2010 failed to be inspired by Mr. Obama’s first term performance. We’re reaping the product of that disengagement in what amounts to Tea Party control of the House.
But this watershed election is about something much bigger and more consequential than who will be our head of state for the next four years. It is about restoring a balance of power in the Supreme Court, so that the Citizens United decision can be reversed and wholesale degradation of the democratic process can be brought to an end. This is our only chance to get it right for the forseeable future.
For that reason it is tremendously important to remember that no matter how much money the Super PACs throw at this election, dollars don’t vote; people do. That’s why, disappointed as we may be with President Obama’s lack of progressive initiative, we must do everything humanly possible to see him relelected.
The alternative is simply unthinkable.