Jon Margolis is a political writer for VTDigger.
There will be no closing election-eve rallies.
But then there weren’t any campaign-opening rallies, either. None in Vermont and precious few elsewhere. The 2020 battle for the support of the people has had television ads and social media posts, candidate debates, the usual charges and countercharges, and a few insults.
There’s just one thing it hasn’t had: the people.
The candidates meet — several feet from each other or anyone else — in television studios and carefully selected public venues. Or they appear separately if simultaneously from their home or office via a videoconferencing application (Zoom, Skype, whatever).
The Covid-19 pandemic has sickened millions of Americans, killed more than 220,000 of them, cost tens of millions their jobs, and disrupted normal life for almost everyone. Should anyone care that it has also taken the people out of political campaigns?
Maybe. In a democracy, politics should be personal, even tactile. Hence the expression “pressing the flesh” to describe the process of candidates meeting person-to-person with their constituents.
This year, there are no crowded auditoriums, street-corner gatherings, or parades. Not even any lunchtime speeches to a polite roomful of well-fed members of the Chamber of Commerce, the local union, the teachers retirement fund or the Kiwanis, Lions or Elks Club.
Oh, every now and then a candidate and a handful of his or her supporters will stand alongside a busy street, campaign signs held aloft, and wave at passing motorists, a few of whom honk in support.
That’s not meeting with the people. Like so much of life these days, the 2020 political campaign has been remote, virtual. Like the NBA season played in a depopulated bubble, baseball games with nothing but cardboard cutouts in the stands, movies streamed only at home, politics this year is being performed with no live audience.
Or at least very few. The traditional Democratic Party “Unity Day” event the day after the August primary was on the Statehouse lawn, where anybody could attend. Some candidates have been holding outdoor “meet and greet” events, with appropriate social distancing requirements, or invitation-only events in someone’s backyard.
But no pressing of the flesh. No mingling with the general public, the kind of mingling that can test a candidate and allow voters see how a candidate deals with a challenge from an undecided or a hostile voter.
The candidates do get challenged. In Vermont, the two major candidates for governor and lieutenant governor have appeared in debates where they have been questioned by reporters and by each other.
The reporters know what’s going on and ask informed questions. But they’re not talking with the people, either. They read the polls. They talk to the candidates, their advisers, their big-money contributors, assorted (and sometimes self-proclaimed) political experts.
But not — this year — regular folks. One of the most valuable (as well as one of the most enjoyable) undertakings of covering a campaign is talking to rank-and-file voters. A good political reporter covering, say, a speech being given in a city park will wander away from the hard-core supporters crowded around the podium to chat with people who may just be walking by.
The reporter will ask them what they think about the candidate, about the other candidate, about what’s bothering them these days. Those interviews don’t constitute anything like a random sample of the electorate the way a poll does. But they can produce some information the poll does not. A poll gives respondents a list of issues and asks which ones they consider important. Rarely does the poll ask an open-ended “what’s bothering you these days?” question.
Reporters do ask that question. The answer can be surprising and illuminating. So can an unscripted question from a well-fed (and perhaps slightly inebriated) member of the audience at one of those lunch speeches to the Chamber of Commerce or some other group. It could reveal public concern about an issue that the pollsters hadn’t asked about, the reporters hadn’t written about, the candidates hadn’t noticed.
But that requires audiences. Not this year.
There have been political gatherings in Vermont since the pandemic began: the protests against racial injustice inspired by police killings of African Americans in Minneapolis and Atlanta. The protesters gathered in large numbers in parks and sometimes on the streets.
But a protest is not the same kind of political activity as a campaign event. It has a different purpose, sometimes the opposite purpose. A candidate making a speech wants to appeal to as many people as possible. The candidate wants their votes, as many of them as possible, ideally all of them. A campaign event is inherently inclusive.
A protest does not deliberately repel people. Protesters would rather have more support. But protest leaders, by their tactics and their rhetoric, often do repel those who are not already devoted to their cause. Assuming that the protest leaders are intelligent people (as most of them seem to be), it’s hard not to conclude that they know this, but don’t care. A protest is often exclusive, effectively if not deliberately directing its message only to an in-group.
That could help explain why protest leaders are willing to gather people together, even during a pandemic, while candidates for office will not. A protest wants to make its argument, even at the risk of offending some people. A candidate for office wants as many votes as possible, and tries not to offend anyone.
