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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / The “Good” News Is, Maybe Very Few People Actually Care That Much

The “Good” News Is, Maybe Very Few People Actually Care That Much

by Anne Laurie|  May 25, 20124:18 am| 31 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing

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Jonathan Bernstein at the WaPo‘s Plum Line blog speculates on “the sudden shift on gay marriage among African Americans”, and raises a larger issue that’s been mentioned here before:

The key is something that political junkies often find difficult to believe: most people don’t really care very much either way about most political issues, including such hot-button issues as marriage, or abortion, or gun control, or any of the other things that many activists feel so passionately about…

I’d put it this way: Most of us have no strong opinions about many issues. If someone interrupts us with a phone call and asks about one of those issues, we’ll try to figure out what our “team” says about it — in which “team” is simply some group we belong to that has high salience to us with respect to politics or, better, to the question being asked. In doing so, we’re apt to remember the last high-profile position taken we’ve heard…

So it’s not exactly that Obama influenced black opinions, would be my guess. It’s that African American voters who really don’t care very much one way or another about the marriage issue — but do consider themselves on Team Democrat — are now aware that marriage equality is the normal position of that team. Or, perhaps, that those who think of themselves (implicitly or explicitly) as Team Black now have a revised view of what that team’s position is. Or, perhaps, people who are on Team Church and Team Democrat now realize that those two are in conflict and they have to choose, while before they were getting only one signal. Remember, we’re only talking about one in five or so flipping in order to get these results; I don’t know for sure that they are among the least interested in the issue, but I’m guessing that’s the case.

The point is that none of these possibilities are really about anyone’s opinions, if by that we mean actually assessing the policy itself and changing what one believes. I suspect very few people have done that in the last two weeks. Mostly, what’s happening, if I’m right about this, is people who don’t care about the issue very much are just re-aligning themselves with where they believe their group belongs. And if so, the reason that it may have (apparently) had such a strong effect so quickly could be because Obama may not be able to change anyone’s mind on anything they care about, but he certainly can and did cause a significant and immediate shift in the perceived standard position for multiple groups.

Tribalism — and all humans are, to some degree, tribalists — has its upside. Because the rump minority who care about restricting other peoples’ freedom care a whole lot about doing so, the vague perception that “there oughtta be a law against stuff like that” tends to lag common practice. Plenty of couples, married or not, used contraceptives before Griswold v Connecticut settled the ‘right to privacy’ issue; plenty of interracial couples, like President Obama’s parents, married before Loving v Virginia made such marriages legal nationwide. A small minority of retrograde religionistas have convinced the media villagers that no sane politician can defend same-sex marriage… and yet more and more gay couples are marrying, and more “average” voters know / love / work with / are related to married gay people. President Obama did the right thing when he announced that he supported same-sex marriages, and it looks like those individuals who gleefully predicted the “toxicity” of his support may have been behind the curve.

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31Comments

  1. 1.

    runt

    May 25, 2012 at 5:06 am

    It’s almost as if those emoprogs were right when they asked Obama to use his bully pulpit.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    May 25, 2012 at 5:17 am

    @runt: I actually thought the opposite. The strong Team mentality is exactly why the emoprogs are wrong in constantly trying to achieve their goals by criticizing Democrats…it sends mixed signals to people who are paying only nominal attention.

  3. 3.

    Triassic Sands

    May 25, 2012 at 5:51 am

    I live in Washington State, which recently passed a law permitting same sex marriage. Of course, the haters don’t sleep and yesterday I saw the first petition whose authors want the voters of Washington to void the new law (before it even takes effect). It was in front of a grocery store and there was a line of people waiting to sign.

    I guess we’ll see how much or how little people in Washington State care about this issue. It’s hard to believe that they won’t get enough signatures to put the initiative on the ballot in November — that’s one level of caring. Then, the more important verdict will come in November when we see how much Washington voters really do care about the issue.

    I expect a very expensive, ugly, and dishonest campaign to repeal marriage equality between now and election day. The people who are leading and funding that campaign definitely care — a lot.
    We’ll see about everyone else.

  4. 4.

    Raven

    May 25, 2012 at 5:55 am

    @Triassic Sands:

    “Backholm said Muslim leaders took the initiative and reached out to the Ref. 74 campaign, not only requesting thousands of petitions to be circulated in their mosques, but offering to work in partnership through November.

    “Christians and the Muslims have not always worked that well together,” he said. “Here is a place of commonality. We are building bridges.”

    Fucking great.

  5. 5.

    Schlemizel

    May 25, 2012 at 6:09 am

    I have felt for some time that 80% of people don’t give a crap about any issue that does not affect them directly; 10% are for it and 10% are against it. The trick is to get the majority of the 80% to either believe it affects them, to support your side or to hate the other side.

    Its why anti-choice forces love those gross pictures – it makes the choice side look heartless. Its why violence in the name of your cause is always counterproductive – it makes your side look bad. In a sad way the KKK actually helped the civil rights movement when those guys blew up the 16th Street Baptist Church and murdered those 4 children. It showed the 80% who really had nothing personal against black people but also didn’t see anything to bother them how awful the States Rights side was.

  6. 6.

    Schlemizel

    May 25, 2012 at 6:11 am

    @Raven:
    But don’t dare call them the American Taliban because that would be impolite! Poor Little Andy would have to retreat to the fainting couch!

  7. 7.

    Joseph Nobles

    May 25, 2012 at 6:30 am

    @Raven: Fundy Christians will wave a sign about creeping sharia law in one hand, while clasping a fundy Muslim hand in the other to hate the gays.

    Whitewashed tombs, I believe their ostensible Master called them.

  8. 8.

    WereBear

    May 25, 2012 at 6:31 am

    If they don’t care that much; why choose hurt and torment and pain for others?

    Doesn’t it take psychic energy to do evil on people? Why spend it then?

  9. 9.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 25, 2012 at 7:09 am

    @runt: Actually, this is the kind of issue where the bully pulpit works. When you have a population that is open to change (or one that doesn’t care all that much about the issue), a nudge in one direction for a respected leader can have a noticeable effect. Where the bully pulpit is less effective is against people who are dug in on their positions.

    @WereBear: The people who don’t care that much weren’t thinking about the issue and thus stayed with their previous default position – marriage has always been man and woman. Once something caused them to look at an alternative they were willing to do so and accept it. OTOH, those who hate something care deeply and are willing to spend that psychic energy.

  10. 10.

    Shalimar

    May 25, 2012 at 7:19 am

    @Raven: I hope the Muslim leaders remember this wonderful partnership in 2014 when the Christian initiative-du-jour is anti-Muslim instead of anti-gay.

  11. 11.

    Linda Featheringill

    May 25, 2012 at 7:29 am

    Self perception becomes a self-fulling prophecy. If Team Black thinks of itself as being mostly tolerant of homosexuality, a lot of individuals will probably decide they just don’t care about whom you love. Then perhaps the gay minority can be integrated into the greater Team Black. This could add energy and creativity to the Team as a whole.

    And all of this, of course, would be good for Team USA.

  12. 12.

    MattF

    May 25, 2012 at 7:57 am

    Additional good news here is that the Maryland same-sex marriage law will be voted on in November and now will almost certainly get a majority. A first for a popular vote, I think.

    About the general point, I’ll repeat my view that Presidential elections are decided by people who can’t make up their minds. So, when the President explains, in a calm and rational fashion, why he takes a position one way or another, it’s going to have an outsized effect.

  13. 13.

    Lee

    May 25, 2012 at 8:27 am

    I have no idea what it is like for the younger generation in Team Black.

    My sample of 2 white girls in the suburbs of wingnut red North Texas is that intolerance of gays is not acceptable at all.

    They have no concept what-so-ever of racism.

  14. 14.

    Chyron HR

    May 25, 2012 at 8:30 am

    @runt:

    That’s funny, the way I recall it was that the use of the “bully pulpit” would allegedly cause Congress to pass more progressive legislation. Did Obama’s public support of gay marriage cause them to repeal the DOMA while I wasn’t looking?

  15. 15.

    gnomedad

    May 25, 2012 at 8:35 am

    @MattF:

    I’ll repeat my view that Presidential elections are decided by people who can’t make up their minds.

    You’re probably right, and that blows my mind: how out of it do you have to be to have no preference for Obama vs. Romney? I can see maybe sitting on the fence if you’re a long-time Republican who’s decided your party has jumped the shark, but otherwise?

  16. 16.

    gvg

    May 25, 2012 at 8:43 am

    I would say that the media pundits is typically behind on all changes in social trends. I think they learn in college, then don’t notice how fast things change. I started to think this when I realized that the pundits actually thought Obama couldn’t win because he was black, even though the polling was pretty clear early on. Hillary and her generation of political experts was also behind that curve. Some of her comments that were taken as racism, I thought were just older persons cynicism about everyone else’s racism. I knew Florida was past that tipping point just because of observation in grocery stores and seeing changes over the last 15 years. More and more mixed race families which included not just the actual couples but grandparents, which meant they accepted in laws.
    Gays aren’t as visible, but I see the media being behind in all kinds of things now I’m looking. I don’t think most of these guys are really thinkers. they just write most of them without much perception. I can’t say I would do better than them with deadlines and quotas to meet.

  17. 17.

    xian

    May 25, 2012 at 8:59 am

    @gvg: You just did.

  18. 18.

    jibeaux

    May 25, 2012 at 9:01 am

    What I love is how the conservative media is completely convinced that black voters voted for Obama because he’s black and they’re just racist racist racist (as opposed to solidly Democratic); but they were just giddy thinking that the marriage equality stand would lead them to abandon him for Republicans — as if he weren’t black anymore or something. It’s the thinking of someone who does not regularly talk to, even in a pleasantries sort of way, black Democrats.

  19. 19.

    Schlemizel

    May 25, 2012 at 9:11 am

    @gvg:
    I had a black history teacher in High School (1970) and he mentioned off-hand one day that mixed marriages would kill racism because you really can’t hate your in-laws (I know thats not really true but I see his point).

    Once you get to know the real people instead of the stereotype it destroys your stereotype. That will happen as gays are allowed out of the closes & people learn that “Uncle Dave” or “Cousin Sue” are actual living breathing homosexuals and not anything like the lascivious, child molesting deviants they have been portrayed as. Its a big reason why the wingnuts don’t want the closet door to be opened.

  20. 20.

    Kent

    May 25, 2012 at 9:17 am

    I teach at a suburban HS in deep red Central Texas. The overall parent population at my school is probably 65% Republican. The white parent population is probably 90% Republican. The 25% of the school that is black and Hispanic is the only thing that keeps it from being nearly universally Republican.

    The churches around here are as rabid and fundamentalist as anyplace. Although abortion and Planned Parenthood seem to be the local issues of choice these days, not gay marriage. I guess abortion is easier to go after because there aren’t sympathetic faces on the other side. No shows like Modern Family that tackle the abortion issue for example.

    Yet despite coming from this background the kids here are surprisingly tolerant. I have openly gay students who are as either as popular or unpopular as they’d otherwise be if no one knew their sexuality. Just like for everyone else there are cool gay kids and uncool gay kids. It’s just really no big deal anymore. I have one boy, a big football player, who has lesbian parents. Everyone knows. It’s just not any sort of issue with the kids that he happens to have two moms.

    And frankly the cognitive dissonance the kids get when they contrast their real lives with what they hear in church is wearing on them. And I think a lot of kids are abandoning the evangelical fundamentalism that is pervasive around here because of that. It will take a generation or two though.

  21. 21.

    Schlemizel

    May 25, 2012 at 9:22 am

    @Kent:
    stories like that almost give me hope for humanity

  22. 22.

    jibeaux

    May 25, 2012 at 9:44 am

    @Schlemizel: I think more than anything it’s the grandkids. They may keep a wary eye on your choice of mate from across the room and make polite conversation, but just try to resist that bundle of cooing mocha cuteness!
    I think that’s completely true about gay people, though, which is why all of this is so inevitable. Enough people will come out that no matter where you are and how much you bubble yourself in, you will know an openly gay person. And it will become harder and harder to put people that you know, ordinary nice people, into that mental box labeled “abominations.”

  23. 23.

    giltay

    May 25, 2012 at 9:45 am

    @WereBear: It doesn’t take energy to be evil. All it takes is to do nothing. Here, “nothing” means not changing your mind, not taking time to meet and learn about people, not helping people you don’t know )or don’t know are gay). It’s, well, banal.

    I’d like to think that at least some of the change in opinion is Obama’s leadership. If someone you respect says something you don’t agree with, you’re more likely to analyze what they say and maybe you’ll be convinced. I think it’s becoming increasingly obvious that homophobia is due to ignorance and a bigoted desire to avoid the issue. Obama has brought that to the forefront of the minds of many people who respect him and encouraged them to examine their beliefs.

  24. 24.

    FlipYrWhig

    May 25, 2012 at 10:18 am

    @Chyron HR: Exactly. By orthodox Bully Pulpit theory, the president speaks out, the public gets on his side, then the public clamors for the thing he spoke out for and barrages their local Congressfolk to get it, then the Congressfolk do what the public wants. The problem is that the public doesn’t really apply that much pressure, especially when it’s an issue people don’t care about that much (as suggested in the piece), and that Congressional Republicans don’t believe in changing their minds to do something just because their voters say they want it. Ergo, the Bully Pulpit can change minds, but at present it struggles to produce action, i.e. votes.

  25. 25.

    Kent

    May 25, 2012 at 10:36 am

    I do think there is a lot to be said for the original idea that it is the intensity of positions that matter.

    I could give you a long list of political issues upon which I have my own positions. Education, the environment, death penalty, guns, abortion, tax policy, foreign policy, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, health care policy, farm policy, etc. etc.

    However the only two issues that I actually care enough about to devote my own time and energy to are education and the environment. I really just don’t care enough about say…what’s going on in the West Bank, or the Death Penalty, or gun control to worked up about those issues. All three were around before I was born and all three will still be around when I die.

    I expect most Americans are much the same. We can all form opinions on dozens or hundreds of political topics. But the ones we really care about enough to actually act on can probably be counted on one hand.

  26. 26.

    Chris

    May 25, 2012 at 10:47 am

    @MattF:

    I’ll repeat my view that Presidential elections are decided by people who can’t make up their minds.

    Interesting how much that demographic has shrunk. In these olden days, FDR, Eisenhower, LBJ, Nixon and Reagan all won elections with something like a 20% margin of victory; these days, that margin’s shrunk to less than 10%.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    May 25, 2012 at 10:50 am

    @jibeaux:

    I agree that grandkids are often the deciding factor. You can ignore and be rude to an adult, but most people can’t bring themselves to do that to a baby or toddler, especially one that’s half your own flesh and blood.

    It was a slightly different situation, but G’s parents had a nasty divorce, and the only thing that kept them civil was that G’s sister had a baby and decreed that she was not going to play games where she would drive across town multiple times so they could each see him. If they wanted to see him, they would have to be in the same room and not fight. And it worked.

  28. 28.

    AA+ Bonds

    May 25, 2012 at 5:14 pm

    I’m pretty sure that anyone of any race is capable of understanding where the people who run the Republican party will draw the line on oppression, that is, somewhere inside the perimeters of armed guards ringing their mansions

  29. 29.

    AA+ Bonds

    May 25, 2012 at 5:55 pm

    @Baud:

    . The strong Team mentality is exactly why the emoprogs are wrong in constantly trying to achieve their goals by criticizing Democrats

    LOL, so what you’re saying is that when liberals ask Obama to do what they want, and Obama does it, and it works out well and reveals the “safe” position as BS, it makes liberals bad people

    Gotcha

    I mean, I do understand that those who held the “safe” position (using the bully pulpit for gay marriage will destroy the black Democratic vote, etc.) – they’ve been embarrassed by those liberals, so naturally they will look to shore up their own self-image

  30. 30.

    AA+ Bonds

    May 25, 2012 at 5:59 pm

    And so now we have these rabid super-specific definitions from the People Who Were Wrong of how NUH UH THE BULLY PULPIT ONLY WORKS IN THESE STEPS ONE THROUGH FIVE AS DEFINED BY HIGH SCHOOL CIVICS AND STEP THREE HERE CAME BEFORE STEP FOUR SO OBVIOUSLY GAY PEOPLE WERE WRONG TO ASK FOR ANYTHING

    No True Bully Pulpit!

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