How to Impress one-half of the Electorate

Except for the President of the United States a candidate for public office only needs to motivate one-half of plus one registered voters to cast their ballots for you. When the tally is done, the candidate that has the most votes wins the office. That may seem simple but getting to the ballot is the bigger task.

Most candidates for public office start out with a built in electorate constituency that will back them no matter what else they might say or do. That is, no matter what else they say or do than the single position that the candidate declared at the outset to assure that he/she has the necessary support. In American politics today the key word is Abortion. The candidate is either for it or against it. The alignment of support is more zealous and frenetic on the side of being against it.

The American voter is notoriously single-minded in his/her support of a candidate. If the candidate has declared a position against abortion the anti-abortion voter has no choice but to support that candidate against all challengers who are for choice no matter how compelling the need for choice is. When being compelled by ones moral compass means overlooking the flaws in the candidate or his/her other positions, the alleged moral position must prevail. This is why we can get an anti-abortion Governor, Senator or Congressperson who will also support gutting state and federal budgets, decimating employee pensions, cutting upper-income tax rates, laying off tens of thousands of public sector employees, hamstringing environmental protections, deregulating financial institutions so they can self-regulate, in short all the things that are helpful to everyone on the socio-economic ladder on the rung below the "very wealthy." The seminal issue remains abortion, but in recent election cycles who may marry who and who may have access to legal employment has become additional cause celeb for the electorate to hurl insults about.

Charles and David Hoch of Koch Industries fame don't really have a strong opinion on same sex marriage or undocumented immigrants, or on abortion for that matter. What they need are the pivotal issues that voters will get behind and give support to the candidates that will vote in favor of the issues that their corporate industrial empire does care about. Koch Industries' behavior is just the opposite of the voters. Voters will cast their ballots for a candidate who will do them harm, while KI does not. If a Senatorial candidate was both against abortion and for higher corporate taxes and more stringent industrial regulation, do you think the Koch's would support that person? I think not.

There are other million dollar deep pockets that support the anti-abortion candidates, but they too are depending on the voters to commix their emotions about abortion with the economic benefits that accrue only to the wealthy and corporate strata.

Does abortion hurt Koch Industries and the other mega-million dollar conglomerates? Let's look at it. Abortion removes about ¼ of 1% of the population of the US. This number will easily be made up for by both immigration and other births. So KI will not suffer for a loss of consumers. If even one million same sex couples married and did not have the requisite 2.1 children per family, that too is negligible to the economy. The Koch's and their ilk would hardly notice. Actually, I suspect that they would develop goods and services that same sex couples would flock to and business revenues would not suffer.

What would be detrimental to the KI, et al would be the loss of about 12 million undocumented immigrants who pick our fruits and veggies, do our lawn work, clean our offices, drywall our new houses, pluck our chickens at the lowest wage practicable. Supporting a candidate who wants to deport all the "illegals" and their spawn will not get any of them deported, but supporting the candidate who claims conservative positions that include deportation of undocumented workers and their families will get the anti-tax on corporations and wealthy people candidate elected. Now that WILL benefit Koch's and Friends.

A candidate that declares him/her self against business regulations, against higher taxes, against public sector employees get the attention of the moneyed deep pockets of the world. But in the end it is the voters who do the actual electing. They need causes that they can actually understand. On one single level abortion is a simple concept to grasp. One abortion equals one less person born. But nothing is really that simple.

One abortion also equals one less share of a family's limited income; one less mouth to feed if you will. If the anti-abortion contingent stepped in to claim all non-aborted fetuses and provided that child a good life until age 18 and for life if developmentally disabled then there would be a good case for a significant reduction in abortion activity. David and Charles, where are your billions to make that a reality? I suspect that they only use the abortion issue as a means to an end. That is what I call Tuna! – buying and selling without concern for the consequences.

Abortion, and access to health care and the right to marry have become the emotional issues that get a candidate elected or defeated for office. They obscure the real issues that hurt people in far worse ways. Human needs and the needs of a corporation are vastly different. Those needs are at odds with each other. This is why corporations and humans cannot both be persons in the same reality as the Citizens United effort has begun to establish.

A simple equation demonstrates that there will be millions more people in the United States (and the entire world) who just won't be needed for the production of goods and services. We are seeing this in the now chronic unemployment level in the US. About 14 million people want to work and can't secure a living wage to support themselves and families. Our fiscally conservative response to this is what? We have politicians call for tax cuts, reductions in pensions, curtailing of Food Stamps and the other social support services that might allow some taxpayers to keep a few more dollars in their pockets. The other side of that equation is that the lower taxes result in lower revenues to pay for the support of people who are denied jobs. The economic activity spirals downward resulting in more unemployment and a greater need for social support systems.

Conservatives rely on the Them And Us mentality to attempt isolation of themselves from the realities around them. Instead of solving the economic woes of poor people, they are more inclined to wall off their homes in gated communities. Instead of educating people and creating a place for them to live and enjoy liberties, the Conservative is far more willing to build a prison and wall them in using petty crimes and minimum sentencing as their weapon of choice.

The fearful voter is so much more approachable with simple black and white issues than with the realities that are out there waiting to overwhelm the system when they reach Gladwell's Tipping Point. We need to devise a new economic system that accounts for the millions of people are neglected by our present bank-and-profit capital system. This is not to say that Capitalism is not a big part of what is needed. The big change must be in how we measure "profitability" and successful capital investments. Investment success is when more people are benefited by our actions and our votes.