Election 2020: Mining the Edges of Reality

The new normal of politics in America: “scurry and curry” where a few votes and voters outweigh the “invisible mass.”

Politics in America has become, to echo a Mad Men era bromide, “mining the masses.” Except in 2020 identity politics, the stuff of segmentation, has been replaced by “scurry and curry” the margins, reasoning that in divided and divisive America margins — not the masses — matter.

So we have Biden reluctantly exiting the comfort of his Delaware basement to do video ops in swing states, and Trump careening repeatedly to make-up “rallies” in states he won “scrappily” or didn’t win “barely” in 2016. Forget Texas (Trump). Forget California (Biden). These are states inhabited by folk who, no matter how they are deliberating right now before Election Day, are becoming increasingly invisible because their collective voice doesn’t matter in Electoral College reckoning. These masses are replaced by swing state folks, the new margins who “haven’t made up” their minds (how they are going to vote). Think Pennsylvania “trumps” the fifth largest global economy (California).

There is another worrying dimension to this shift in American political thinking: as our Presidential candidates grow more desperate to “scurry and curry,” the picture of a larger albeit fragile union seems like a fantasy.

We see evidence of politicians mining the edges of reality, appealing to individual fears, harvesting ambiguity.

And we see the masses become more invisible and less valued.

September 12, 2020