The Restless Voter

It is one of the oddities of Democracy that elections are decided by the people who think and care the least about politics. These restless "independent" voters seem to have no idea what they want, just a perpetual dissatisfaction with the status quo. This has the advantage of making it difficult for any party to stay in power for too long, but I think it is mistake to read too much into their fickle choices.

Of the three major political contests yesterday, the Republicans won two, the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia, and Democrats won one, the House election in upstate New York. The only messages I see in this result are, first, that people in New Jersey and Virginia cling to the mysterious belief that the governor has some power over the state economy and, second, that people in upstate New York, like most Americans, seem to resent having their local politics made into contests between national interest groups who couldn't find their home towns on a map -- the losing candidate in that race was endorsed by many national figures and raised a lot of out-of-state money, but was not well known to voters in a district where he doesn't even live.

For me the only important election yesterday was the vote in Maine on gay marriage, which sadly went to the anti-marriage side. But anti-marriage voters are dying by the day, and young people are solidly on the virtuous side, so we will outlive the anti-marriage forces soon enough.